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Overview
Warrior, statesman, peacemaker–few world leaders have had as dramatic and pivotal a life story as Ariel Sharon. And as this riveting new biography shows, perhaps no modern leader’s life has been as tightly woven into the history of his nation.Born in 1928 and raised in spartan circumstances on a kibbutz, Ariel Sharon was taught by his parents to take principled stands and then to plow ahead, to “always go see what lies over the next hill.” And for decades to come, Sharon would do just that, forging a life of strength, resilience, and sometimes, according to his detractors, reckless and embittered action, indifferent to the violence it unleashed on his enemies.
Based on unprecedented access to many of the key players in Sharon’s life, hundreds of interviews, and thousands of pages of documents, Ariel Sharon presents a leader who was first and foremost a military man. Sharon fought in Israel’s War of Independence (in which he was left for dead on the battlefield); assembled Israel’s first special forces brigade, the wild Unit 101; and led the Lebanon War, the most controversial campaign in Israel’s history. As a general, he directed military campaigns that are still studied in military academies across the world.
Yet Sharon was also a political animal. This book explores his fraught relationships with prime ministers David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin, as well as with legendary minister of defense Moshe Dayan; Sharon’s removal as defense minister after the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila; his thirty-year championing of the settlement movement in Gaza and the West Bank; his visitto the Temple Mount in 2000, which lit the fuse for the second Intifada; and his startling decision as prime minister to initiate “disengagement,” uprooting settlers, destroying settlements, and dividing his country.
Sharon’s personal life has been equally tumultuous and dramatic, as this book grippingly recounts–his first wife, Margalit, was killed in a car accident; his eldest son, Gur, wounded by an accidental rifle discharge, died in his arms. His second wife, Lily (Margalit’s younger sister), died of cancer, concluding one of the great love stories of Israeli public life. And ultimately came the stroke that felled Sharon, removing him from power at a time when the Israeli people needed his leadership most.
Often mired in controversy and scandal, Sharon was a man of inscrutable character, and his epochal life and elusive personality are both vividly portrayed in this book. Sharon was fueled by a rare combination of qualities: courage, love of power, unbridled tenacity, pragmatism, and, above all, a creed that never changed–complete and uncondtional security for Jews.
Editorials
Library Journal
Ariel Sharon played a massive role in the modern history of Israel as a courageous soldier in the War of Independence, a military leader in successive campaigns, a key member of conservative governments, and, finally, prime minister. He was often controversial and shocked his country when in 2003 he advocated withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank after decades of encouraging settlement. Israeli journalists Hefez and Bloom (editor in chief and managing editor, respectively, Yediot Tiksohret) have compiled a detailed narrative of this central figure in the creation and growth of Israel, a man whose military courage and political opportunism helped secure Israel's survival but whose stubbornness and preference for military solutions obstructed real progress toward peace and stable borders. They explain his long public service as shaped by his physical bravery, resilience, unpredictability, willingness to challenge convention, and ability to change his positions. This comprehensive overview (which includes details on his massive stroke suffered this January) stimulates respect for his strengths but also regret that neither he nor other Israeli leaders were farsighted enough to combine their desire for security with understanding of Palestinian needs. This volume will be a useful addition to collections on the Middle East conflict. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/06.] Elizabeth R. Hayford, Associated Colls. of the Midwest (retired), Evanston, IL Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Kirkus Reviews
An admiring, if critical, life of the Israeli warrior/politician. When Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke in January 2006, he "cast Israel's future in a nebulous light." So write Hefez and Bloom, editors of the Israeli weekly newspaper Yedioth Tikshoret, in this study of a man widely reviled and widely honored both at home and abroad. The point is well taken, for Sharon had just engineered what seemed an impossibility: the removal of unauthorized Israeli enclaves in Gaza and the West Bank after having been "the greatest proponent of Jewish settlement in the occupied territories." The equivocation was characteristic of Sharon, the authors assert; the man-born Arik Scheinerman and given his Hebrew nom de guerre by David Ben-Gurion-himself had long opposed the creation of a Palestinian state and then endorsed it, had favored massive retaliation against Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War but rejected it in the second, had long held out against the withdrawal from the West Bank and then ordered that very thing. What Sharon's legacy will be is anyone's guess, but he will likely be remembered for the creation of the right-wing Likud Party, which has dominated Israeli politics for many years. Hefez and Bloom's account of the strange-bedfellow rivalries across and within party lines is fascinating: the long rivalries among Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, Moshe Dayan, Menachem Begin, Ehud Olmert and Sharon over the years make it seem a miracle that any unified act has ever come out of the Knesset. Sharon's late move to the center, the authors suggest, was heartfelt and not the result of political calculation; even though its coincidence with Colin Powell's lobbying for moderation vis- . . . -visthe Palestinians after 9/11 is interesting, the shift may owe most to Sharon's desire "to change his entry in the annals of history from warmonger to peacemaker."Peacemakers are rare in the Middle East today, and this well-written biography is thus particularly timely.Book Details
Published
October 3, 2006
Publisher
New York : Random House, c2006.
Pages
512
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9781400065875