SHARON'S BRUTAL PHILOSOPHY
By HOLGER JENSEN, Rocky Mountain News, 4/12/2002
24hour.startribune.com
Holger Jensen is international editor of the Rocky Mountain News.
Nicknamed "The Bulldozer," Israel's prime minister is a soldier-politician
whose career has been dogged by persistent accusations of war crimes.
But what kind of man is Secretary of State Colin Powell trying to persuade
to make peace with the Palestinians?...
During the Lebanese invasion, Sharon gave a revealing interview to Amos Oz,
a leading Israeli author, in which he bluntly explained his military
doctrine and railed against pacifist Jews who thought he was being too tough.
It was published in the daily Davar on Dec. 17, 1982. Excerpts:
"You can call me anything you like. Call me a monster or a murderer. ...
Better a live Judeo-Nazi than a dead saint.
"Even if you prove to me that the present war in Lebanon is a dirty immoral
war, I don't care. Even if Galilee is shelled again by Katyushas in a
year's time, I don't really care. We shall start another war, kill and
destroy more and more, until they will have had enough.
"Let them tremble, let them call us a mad state. Let them understand that
we are a wild country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal, that we
might go crazy if one of our children is murdered, just one! If anyone even
raises his hand against us we'll take away half his land and burn the other
half, including the oil. We might use nuclear arms.
"Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to
kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to
have everyone hate us. ... And I don't mind if after the job is done you
put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if
you want, as a war criminal.
"What you don't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not
finished yet, far from it."
Twenty years later, Sharon is still applying that brutal philosophy to a
captive West Bank. And he is so obsessed with destroying Israel's enemies
he won't listen to friends, including the President of the United States. |
