Decision ‘08

Sharon Once Again Undergoes Brain Surgery

Wow - truly horrible news; at this point one has to wonder if survival is worse than death, from a sheer suffering standpoint. Polls show his newly formed Kadima party would win the election if it were held today, but of course, you can’t be sure how much of that margin comes from sympathy for Sharon’s ordeal.

Micheal Oren, author of the comprehensive and compelling “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East“, writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Irrespective of his prospects for recovery, Ariel Sharon has clearly ended his term as Israel’s prime minister and as the leader of the nascent Kadima Party, which was expected to win a landslide victory in the coming national elections. His passing from public life represents not only the fall of the pre-eminent figure in Israeli politics but, more fundamentally, the conclusion the formative era in Israel’s history–a period Mr. Sharon personified.

Mr. Sharon has been intimately identified with every major event in that history. An infantry officer in the desperate battle for the Jerusalem corridor in the 1948 War of Independence, leader of the paratroopers in the 1956 Sinai campaign, he rose to the rank of general and commanded divisions in the Six Day War of 1967 and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As a government minister, he was the architect of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and the primary force behind the settlement movement. With the sole exception of Shimon Peres, he has been a member of the Knesset longer than any other Israeli, and he remains unsurpassed in his ability to forge and maintain coalitions. He began his political career on the left, swung keenly right, and concluded in the center. Mr. Sharon, more than any single Israeli, represented the finest ideals of the Jewish state–its heroism, resilience and versatility–as well as many of its most controversial policies.

As I’ve said before, even his opponents would concede Sharon is a giant.

It seems beyond hope that Sharon will recover, but whatever hope there is, we send his way…

UPDATE 9:26 a.m.: From Pajamas, we learn that Sharon’s family has left the decision on further treatment up to the doctors, a sure sign of the hopelessness of the situation…

UPDATE 10:18 a.m.: Middle East Newsline has reported that Sharon was declared dead; however, the report appears to be erroneous at this time…