A warrior who knew how to get
IN JANUARY 1985, as a colonel in the Israeli Air Force, I ran a course for highranking officers of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), focused on lessons from Israel’s wars. One of the case studies to be discussed was the battle of Um-Katef/Abu-Ageila, in the Six-Day War, when the division of General Ariel Sharon broke the backbone of the Egyptian army and enabled the breakthrough into Sinai, thus paving the way for Israel’s great land victory. This highly complex combined operation, executed impeccably at night, has been studied since in many military academies all around the world as a model of generalship at its best. Needless to say, I was going to invite Sharon to speak about this battle.
The problem was that Sharon was in New York at that time, suing Time magazine for libel. The trial was nearing its end, so I called Sharon’s hotel in New York, hoping to speak with his close friend and confidant, Uri Dan. Instead, Sharon himself answered. “Of course,” he said immediately. “I’ll be in Tel Aviv in a few days and will speak to your course.” Then he added a very strange request: that an officer should wait for him at the airport, to take him straight to the IDF History Unit. When he arrived after the long flight, instead of going home, he spent six hours studying the details of the battle he had fought 18 years before.
The following day, he arrived at our course and gave a mesmerising lecture. Escorting him to his car, I couldn’t help ask why he needed to refresh his memory about a battle he had probably known by heart. He looked at me and said: “Young man, I just spoke to a group of serious people. You have to prepare for that.” Then he added: “Whatever you do, do it properly.” ( Kmo she’zarich, in Hebrew.)
Actually, for Sharon, kmo she’zarich was not exactly “doing things properly”; in his dictionary, the more precise translation was “doing things as they should be done,” with Sharon himself deciding the criteria.
Sixty years ago, when the newborn Jewish state fell victim to ceaseless terrorist infiltrations on its Jordanian and Egyptian borders, and the IDF seemed incapable of stopping them, Major Sharon established Unit 101, a semi-partisan band of warriors which spread havoc in Jordan and Egypt using highly unconventional methods.
Many in the IDF and the Israeli government felt that this was not the proper way to do things, and that Sharon’s military career would suffer, but Israel regained its deterrence.
During the Yom Kippur War, he did many things that his superiors thought improper — so much so that they even talked about firing him. Luckily for Israel, they decided not to. His performance during the first dark days of the war, when he calmly and expertly led his troops in containing the invading Egyptian army, will go down in our history as the quintessence of Israeli resilience. Not to mention his crossing of the Suez Canal, which turned the tables on the Egyptians.
When he retired from active duty in the summer of 1973 he was hungry for a political career, but the Labour establishment, which had ruled Israel for since its inception, viewed the charismatic general with suspicion. Instead of bowing to the existing powers, Sharon surprised them by establishing the Likud Party, which, four years later, ended the hegemony of Labour.
In 1982, as defence minister, when he felt he had had just enough of the Palestinian intransigence in Lebanon, he manipulated Menachem Begin’s government into launching the first Lebanon War. Again, was this done kmo she’zarich? It depends on who you ask. The Kahan Commission of Inquiry, established after the Sabra and Shatila massacre carried out by Lebanese Christians, then Israel’s allies, obviously thought it was not, and sent the defence minister home. Sharon, on the other hand, believed that he had done the right thing by kicking Yasser Arafat and his terrorist apparatus from Lebanon, thus hammering home the message that you cannot mess with Israel for so long and get away with it.
Ten years later, as housing minister, he was entrusted with the awesome task of accommodating 1 million Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (the equivalent of accommodating 50 million immigrants in the United States in one year). He stood up to the historic opportunity. Did he do it properly? The state comptroller, who investigated it later, did not think so and reprimanded Sharon for ignoring budgetary constraints and normal government procedures.
Yet, by giving these people a home in Israel, Sharon achieved one of the