After an eight-year coma, Ariel Sharon died this past week. I say good for him. I am glad that he’s gone, and I say that without malice. No one deserves what he went through as a result of that stroke, not even a heartless killer. And I regret to say that that is exactly what he was, despite the graveside accolades.
Starting with the Qibya massacre in 1953, when troops led by Sharon killed almost 70 Palestinians, as well as destroying 45 homes and a mosque, Sharon made it his business to make the Arab inhabitants of Israel/Palestine miserable, homeless, or dead. He earned his title “The Bulldozer” 
after the 1967 war when he pacified Gaza by destroying thousands of homes. While Sharon is hailed as a hero of the 1973 war – a war resulting from the stalemate policy encouraged by super-genius Henry Kissinger – he is probably best remembered for his role in the murderous 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in the midst of that country’s civil war, culminating in the massacre of Palestinians by Israeli-allied Christian militias in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, then under the control of the IDF.
That might have ended his public career, but it’s hard to keep a good killer down. Even though he was found to be substantially responsible for the deaths of the refugees in Beirut, he was back in subsequent Likud governments as minister without portfolio, then later as housing minister under Netanyahu’s first government in the mid-nineties. I recall his exhortation to settlers on the West Bank at one point during that period that they should “take every hilltop” – this from a man now hailed as one who was willing to trade land for peace.
Sharon’s tenure as Prime Minister was launched by his provocative visit to the “Dome of the Rock” in East Jerusalem, sparking the second Intifada. He used massive force to crush the uprising, reaching into his bulldozer bag of tricks, sending IDF soldiers into neighborhoods and schools in the West Bank, and basically burning the place down. Sharon pushed the separation wall, which is designed to lock in the Israeli government’s maximalist land claims on the West Bank. His much heralded evacuation of settlers from Gaza was a farce – those settlements were never anything more than a chip to be traded away in negotiations. And it was Sharon who chose the current PA leader Abu Mazen – insisted upon it, once Arafat was out of the way.
Rest in peace, big fella. Your legacy lives on.
