It is forbidden to speak negatively of the sick and deceased in many religions and cultures, including Jewish and Muslim traditions, which both discourage speaking ill of the departed. Idealists might hold that our innate human decency drives us to eulogize the dead and glorify the suffering, but when respectful words become myth, it is time to put flattery to rest.
After Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a severe stroke Jan. 4 that left him comatose, Israel was forced to consider its future. The startle came just weeks before the Israeli parliamentary elections, in which Sharon's Kadima Party was expected to be victorious.
Though power in the party has been reassigned to Ehud Olmert, Sharon's top adviser, Sharon still remains in the spotlight. Well-wishers, such as those who participated in the candlelight vigil on the UA Mall last week, have been holding prayer sessions and singing healing songs dedicated to Sharon. He has been compared in the media to Charles de Gaulle, Civil War Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson and Moses.
Although this is a sensitive time, we owe it to history, to Palestinians and to Israelis to take a moment to question the legitimacy behind all the flattery and consider Sharon's legacy.
Sharon did not leave behind gardens and rivers, and it would be outrageous to consider him a man of peace; Sharon has always been a man of war. Since the beginning of his career, Sharon has humiliated, illegally annexed, demolished and murdered. He manically held on to his 1998 avowal to "run and grab as many hilltops ... to enlarge the settlements" in the occupied territories. With Sharon leading the way, Israel has continuously flouted U.N. resolutions and international law, including the Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, which prohibit dispossession and the mistreatment of "protected persons" and call settlement by a "belligerent occupying power" a war crime.
Sharon has unapologetically executed a brutal campaign of detainments, deportations, assassinations, land grabs and mobility restrictions that have made everyday life for Palestinians living in the occupied territories nearly impossible. By dividing communities with a 25-foot "security barrier," seizing their land, cutting them off from work and school, deporting their family members, killing others and preventing the right of return for Palestinian refugees, Sharon has attempted to make it impossible for Palestinians to continue living in their ancestral homeland.
Where throughout Sharon's lifespan - from the massacre of the residents of Qibya in 1953, to the Middle East wars of 1967 and 1973, to the murder of 20,000 Lebanese (including the slaughter of more than 800 Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila) to his repugnant Al-Aqsa visit just before the Palestinian intifada, to the barbarous destruction of Jenin to Sharon's present policy of unlawful arrests, assassinations and home demolitions in the West Bank - has there ever been a legacy of peace?
Even during Israel's highly publicized Gaza pullout, Sharon never stopped his settlement campaign in the West Bank. Since 2001, at least 34 exclusively Jewish settlements have been built on Palestinian land. It is vilely misleading to sugarcoat a lifetime of heinous military actions because of a few years of so-called "moderate" ones. Israel continues to dominate Gaza's borders and air space, ensuring that the Palestinians continue to be starved of opportunities for economic development and continue living in squalid conditions.
Sharon described his intentions to obliterate the Palestinian people in a March 2002 Time magazine article: "The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful: We must cause them losses, victims ..."
Although it is admirable when a group of people unite in wishing someone well, it is imperative that among all the unwarranted praise, the facts remain clear. Sharon "the Bulldozer" or Sharon "the Butcher of Beirut" or Sharon "the War Criminal" will provide a much more accurate epitaph than Sharon "the Peacemaker."
Yusra Tekbali is a junior majoring in journalism and Near Eastern Studies. She can be reached atletters@wildcat.arizona.edu.