Fury And Determination: D'var Torah for Parashat Bo
In Memory of Ariel
Sharon
Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
This message was first intended as my d’var for Parashat Bo (Exodus
10:1—13:16), dated January 4, 2014. I was thinking about God’s command to
Moses, Bo ‘el Par’oh, “Come unto
Pharaoh,” so different from previous commands to merely “go” to Pharaoh. The rabbis teach that the difference is that,
with the last three plagues, Moses is told to strike at the hardened inner core of the ruthless tyrant, to
destroy him utterly from the inside out.
Coincidentally, January 4 was exactly
the day that, eight years ago, Ariel Sharon had suffered a massive stroke. Now, eight years later, as I set out to write
this d’var, the news in Israel was
all about Sharon’s quickly deteriorating health situation. Reflecting on Sharon’s lifelong
accomplishments, I couldn’t help but think of the warrior who stood up to Egypt
in modern times. In the Torah, Moses
expresses fury as he stands up to Pharaoh and denounces him for his heartless
cruelty. In 1973, it was a similar fury,
a similar fierce determination to survive, that saved Israel from
catastrophe. And it was Sharon who made
it happen.
It was almost exactly eight years ago, on my way to Ben
Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv for a flight back to the States when the news
bulletin came on. It wasn’t good. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had suffered a
massive stroke.
For the next eight years, Sharon would exist in a coma,
breathing on his own but connected to machines that did just about everything
else. Through those years, there were
ups and downs, times when it seemed that he was breathing his last, and times
when his open eyes seemed to communicate that something deep inside him was still
alive, still kicking, still making a heroic stand.
Ariel—the lion of God—was his name, but everyone knew him as
Arik, a nickname that intimated familiarity, friendship, trust. From his earliest days, through the War of
Independence of 1948 and then almost all other wars Israel had fought, you knew
you could trust Arik Sharon. His
soldiers trusted and followed him; and later, when his role in the army was
over, the State of Israel trusted him as its leader. They all had good reason to. Arik Sharon may have been heavy handed; he
may have been well deserving of his other nickname, “The Bulldozer.” Sharon always got his way, sometimes by
ruthlessly rolling right over his enemies and detractors, and just as often
going over the heads of his superiors.
But whether you agreed with his tactics or not, almost all Israelis
today would agree that few politicians before or after Sharon have been as single-mindedly
dedicated to Israel and Israel’s safety and security as he was.
Over the next few days, and certainly into the weeks ahead,
much will be written and said about Sharon, who died early this past Shabbat
morning. Among Arabs, there will be few tears
shed. A dark spot on Sharon’s record
will always be Sabra and Shatila, the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon
where Christian Lebanese Phalnagists—militias armed and sanctioned by
Israel—massacred hundreds of Moslem refugees.
Regardless of the reasons and circumstances of this massacre, Israel was
held responsible. In the US and
elsewhere, country leaders and international bodies condemned Israel in the
harshest terms. The massacre occurred
shortly before the High Holy Days in 1982, and on Yom Kippur Day, in many
Jewish communities, countless rabbis gave sermons that centered on the theme of
“sins of commission and sins of omission,” implying that even though Israel may
not have actually participated in the killings, by turning a blind eye to the
vengeful intentions of the Phalangists, the Jewish nation was still guilty by omission.
It is a tragic fact of all wars that terrible things happen,
sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.
Historian Jonathan D. Sarna, in his book When General Grant Expelled the Jews, writes, “As generals so often
do, [General Ulysses S. Grant] had submerged individuals, focusing instead on
armies and military objectives and categories of people.” Sharon led the invasion of Lebanon in 1982—an
invasion that was originally intended to last only a couple of weeks, but which
extended to eight years. The massacre at
Sabra and Shatila cost him not only his job as Defense Minister; it also lost
him the friendship and trust of his long-time ally, then-Prime Minister Menahem
Begin. (Israel’s Chief of Staff, Raphael
“Raful” Eitan, also resigned in the wake of the Israeli investigation
committee’s findings).
Later, as a result of rising Arab violence against Israel,
Sharon was elected to the office of Prime Minister, an office he shared with
Shimon Peres (now the President of the State of Israel). Sharon was bold and brazen in his reaction to
the terrorists, first subduing the violence (using tactics that were often censured
by critics, but which were nevertheless successful). Later, however, he turned his attention to
the future. Starting work on a separation
barrier between Arabs and Jews in the West Bank, Sharon was aiming for two
goals: First, to stop infiltration of
Arab terrorists into Israel; and secondly, to lay the foundation for a
two-state solution, with the separation barrier serving as the de-facto border.
Then, in 2005, in a move that alienated some of his
staunchest supporters, many of whom had followed him with unwavering loyalty
into five wars, Sharon ordered the withdrawal of all Israelis from the Gaza
Strip. The move was seen as a sign that Sharon
would be willing to disengage from other Palestinian areas, as long as peace
would be the ultimate result.
The Gaza Disengagement was an experiment, a balloon meant to
explore whether peace in return for withdrawal was even a remote possibility. Ariel Sharon didn’t see the calamitous results
of the Disengagement. Half a year later
he suffered two massive strokes that left him comatose. All he knew to the very end was that he had
given peace the best chance he could.
For me, Arik Sharon will always be a hero. He championed a strong Israel that would be
willing and capable of standing up and defending itself against its
enemies. In 1973, three weeks into the
Yom Kippur War, he saved Israel by crossing the Suez Canal with his armored
division, driving deep onto Egyptian territory and encircling the entire Egyptian
army. The brilliant move ended the
Egyptian aggression (and effected an almost immediate order of cease fire from
the United Nations, which failed to do so for the first three weeks of the war,
when the Arabs had the upper hand). If
it were not for this tactic, the result of the Yom Kippur War might have been
much, much worse, possibly spelling disaster for Israel. Sharon certainly understood the implication
of the command given to Moses by God: Bo ‘el Par’oh, “Come unto Pharaoh,”
At the same time, this fierce warrior was capable of seeing
a future where Arabs and Jews would co-exist side by side and who took the
first steps toward realizing this vision.
The tragedy is that his health did not allow him to carry through the
dream of a strong, secure and peaceful Israel.
Sadly, the self-serving politicians who have followed Sharon—both on the
Israeli and on the Arab sides—have done little to advance the cause of peace in
the Middle East.
In his 1989 autobiography, Warrior, Sharon wrote, “The great question of our day is whether
we, the Jewish people of Israel, can find within us the will to survive as a
nation.”
That will always remain the most important question Jews
should ask themselves, now no less than ever.
May Arik Sharon’s memory become a blessing and an
inspiration for all future generations of Jewish Maccabees.
© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman
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