Ariel Sharon – Yitzhak Kaduri
& The Soon Coming Messiah
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon, an Israeli statesman and retired general who served as Israel’s 11 Prime Minister, was a commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948.
As a paratrooper and then an officer, he participated prominently in the 1948 War of Independence, becoming platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade and participating in many battles. Including Operation Ben Nun Aleff.
He was instrumental in creating Unit 101 and the Retribution operation, as well as in the 1950 Suez War, the Six-Day War of 1967, the War of Attrition, and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. As Minister of Defense, he directed the 1982 Lebanon War.
During his military career, he was considered the greatest field commander in Israel’s history and one of the country’s greatest-ever military strategists.
After his assault on the Sinai in the Six-Day War and his encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army in the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli public nicknamed him “The King of Israel” and “The Lion of God”.
After returning from the army, Sharon joined the Likud party and served in several posts in Lihud-led governments from 1977 to 1992 and 1996 to 1999. He became the leader of the Likud in 2000 and served as Israel’s Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006.
In 1983 the Kahan Commission, established by the Israeli government, found that as Minister of Defense during the 1982 Lebanon War, Sharon bore “personal responsibility” for the massacre by Lebanese militias of Palestine civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, for his having discarded the prospect of acts of bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps, and not having prevented their entry.
The Kahan Commission recommended Sharon’s removal as Defense Minister, and did resign after initially refusing to do so. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Sharon championed the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
However, as Prime Minister, in 2994-2005, Sharon orchestrated Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Facing stiff opposition to the policy within the Likud, in November 2005, he left Likud to form a new Kadima party.
He has been in a persistent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006. His stroke occurred a few months before he had expected to win a new election and was widely interpreted as planning on “clearing Israel out of the West Bank” in a series of unilateral withdrawals.
Early life
Sharon was born on 26 February 1928 in Kfar Malal. An agricultural moshav in the British Mandate of Palestine to a family of Belarusian Jews – Shmuel Scheinerman (1896 – 1956) of Brest-Litovsk and Dvora Scheinerman (1900 – 1988) of Mogilev.
Sharon’s parents met at Tbilisi State University, Georgia, where Sharon’s father was studying agronomy (a branch of agriculture), and his mother had just started her fourth year of medical studies. As Bolshevik forces advanced towards independent Georgia, Sharon’s parents immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, fleeing the programs associated with the Russian Civil War.
The family arrived in the Third Aliyah and settled in Kfar Malal, a socialist, secular community where, despite being Mapai supporters, they were known to be contrarians against the prevailing community consensus:
The Scheinerman’s, eventually ostracized……followed the 12933 Arlozorov murder when Dvora and Shmuel refused to endorse the Labo movement’s Revisionist calumny and participate in Bolshvic-style public revilement rallies, then the order of the day.
Retribution was quick to come. They were expelled from the local health fund clinic and village synagogue. The cooperative’s truck wouldn’t make deliveries to their farm nor collect their produce.
Four years after arriving at Kfar Malal, the Scheinermans had a daughter, Yehudit (Dita), and Ariel was born two years later. At age 10, Sharon entered the Zionist youth movement Hassadeh.
As a teenager, he began participating in his moshav’s armed night patrol. In 1942, at the age of 14, Sharon joined the Gadna, a paramilitary youth battalion, and later the Haganah, the underground paramilitary force and the Jewish military precursor to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
Military Career
In the battle for Jerusalem and the 1948 War of Independence, Sharon’s unit of the Haganah became engaged in serious and continuous combat from the autumn of 1947, when the Battle for Jerusalem began.
Without the manpower to hold the roads, his unit took to making offensive hit-and-run raids on Arab forces in the vicinity of Kfar Malal.
In units of thirty men, they would constantly hit Arab villages, bridges, and bases, as well as ambush the traffic between Arab villages and bases.
In his autobiography, Sharon wrote, “We had become skilled at finding our way in the darkest nights, and gradually we built up the strength and endurance these kinds of operations required.
Under the stress of constant combat, we drew closer to one another and began to operate not just as a military unit but almost as a family… We were in combat almost every day. Ambushes and battles followed each other until they all seemed to run together.
For his role in a night raid on Iraqi forces at Bir Adas, Sharon was made a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade.
Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the onset of the War of Independence, his platoon fended off the Iraqi advance at Kalkiya. Sharon was regarded as a hardened and aggressive soldier, swiftly moving up the ranks during the war.
He was shot in the groin, stomach, and foot by the Jordanian Arab Legion in the First Battle of Latrun, an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the besieged Jewish community of Jerusalem. On this day, his brigade suffered 139 deaths in the battle. Sharon wrote of the casualties in the “horrible battle.”
After recovering from the wounds he received at Latrun, he resumed command of his patrol unit. On 28 December 1948, his platoon attempted to break through an Egyptian stronghold in Iraq-El-Manshia.
It was about this time when David Ben Gurion called him “Sharon.” In September 1949, Sharon was promoted to a company commander of the (Golani Brigade’s) reconnaissance unit and in 1950 to intelligence officer for Central Command.
He then took leave to begin studies in history and Middle Eastern culture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Sharon’s subsequent military career would be characterized by insubordination, aggression, disobedience, and brilliance as a commander.
Unit 101
A year and a half later, on the direct orders of the Prime Minister, Sharon returned to active service in the rank of major as the leader of the new Unit 101, a special forces unit whose purpose was to execute reprisal operations in response to Palestinian fedayeen attacks.
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While operating in compact and well-trained teams, they participated in offensive guerrilla warfare. The unit consisted of fifty men, mostly former paratroopers and Unit 30 personnel.
They were armed with non-standard weapons and tasked with carrying out special reprisals across the state’s borders – mainly establishing small unit maneuvers, activation, and insertion tactics. Training included actively seeking enemy engagements across Israel’s borders.
In retaliation for fedayeen attacks on Israel, Unit 101 under a series of raids against Jordon, which held the West Bank. The raids also helped bolster Israeli morale and convince Arab states that the fledgling nation was capable of long-range military action.
The unit was known for raids against Arab civilians and military targets, most notably the widely condemned Qibya massacre in the fall of 1953, in which 69 Palestinian civilians, some of the children, were killed when Sharon’s troops dynamited buildings there in reprisal for a fedayeen attack in Yehuda.
Sharon said that the unit had checked all houses before detonating the explosives and that he had “thought the houses were empty.”
A few months after its founding, Unit 101 was merged with the 890 Paratroopers Battalion to create the Paratroopers Brigade, of which Sharon would later become commander. It continued its raids into Arab territory, culminating with the attack on the Qalqilyah police station in the autumn of 1956.
From 1958 to 1962, Sharon served as commander of an infantry brigade and studied law at Tel Aviv University.
Incidents involving Meir Ha-Zion, among many others, contributed to the tension between Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, who often opposed Sharon’s raids, and Moshe Dayan, who had become increasingly ambiguous towards Sharon.
Later in the year, Sharon was investigated and tried by the Military Police for disciplining one of his subordinates. However, the charges were dismissed before the onset of the Suez War.
1965 Suez War
In the 1965 Suez War (the British “Operation Musketeer”), Sharon commanded Unit 202 (the Paratroopers Brigade) and was responsible for taking ground east of Sinai’s Mitla Pass and eventually taking the pass itself.
Neither reconnaissance aircraft nor scouts reported enemy forces inside the Mitla Pass. Sharon, whose forces were initially heading east, away from the pass, reported to his superiors that he was increasingly concerned with the possibility of an enemy thrust through the pass, which could attack his brigade from the flank or the rear.
Sharon requested permission to attack the pass several times, but his requests were denied. He was allowed to check its status so that if the pass was empty, he could receive permission to take it later.
Sharon sent a small scout force, which was met with heavy fire and became bogged down due to a vehicle malfunction in the middle of the pass.
Sharon ordered the rest of his troops to attack to aid their comrades. His superiors criticized him, and he was damaged by allegations several years later by several former subordinates, who claimed that Sharon tried to provoke the Egyptians and sent out scouts in bad faith, ensuring that a battle would ensue.
Sharon had assaulted Themed in a dawn attack and stormed the town with his armor through the Themen Gap. Sharon routed the Sudanese police company and captured the settlement.
On their way to Nakla, Sharon’s men were attacked by Egyptian MIG-15s. On the 30th, Sharon linked up with Eytan near Nakla. Dyan had no more plans for further advances beyond the passes, but Sharon nonetheless decided to attack the Egyptian position at Jebel Heitan.
Sharon sent his lightly armed paratroopers against dug-in Egyptians supported by aircraft, tanks, and heavy artillery. Sharon’s actions were in response to reports of the arrival of the 1st and 2nd Brigades of the 4th Egyptian Armored Division in the area, which Sharon believed would annihilate his forces if he did not seize the high ground.
Sharon sent two infantry companies, a mortar battery, and some AMX-13 tanks under the command of Mordechai Gur into the Heitan Defile on the afternoon of 31 October 1956. The Egyptian forces occupied strong defensive positions and brought down heavy anti-tank, mortar, and machine-gun fire on the IDF force.
Gur’s men were forced to retreat into the “Sauce,” where they were surrounded and came under heavy fire. Hearing of this, Sharon sent in another task force while Gur’s men used the cover of night to scale the walls of the Heitan Defile.
During the ensuing, the Egyptians were defeated and forced to retreat. A total of 260 Egyptian and 38 Israeli soldiers were killed during the battle at Mitla. Sharon’s actions were surrounded by controversy due to these deaths, which many within the IDF criticized as being the result of an act of unnecessary and unauthorized aggression.
Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War
The Mitla incident hindered Sharon’s military career for several years. In the meantime, he occupied the position of an infantry brigade commander and received a law degree from Tel Aviv University.
However, when Yitzhak Rabin became Chief of Staff in 1964, Sharon rose rapidly in the ranks, occupying the position of Infantry School Commander and Head of the Army Training Branch, eventually achieving the rank of Aluf (Major General).
In the 1967 Six-Day War, Sharon commanded the most powerful armored division on the Sinai front, which made a breakthrough in the Kusseima-Abu-Ageila fortified area.
Sharon’s offensive strategy at Abu-Ageila led to international commendation by military strategists, which pit Sharon at the center of a new paradigm in operational command.
Researchers at the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command studied Sharon’s operational planning and concluded that it involved several unique innovations.
It was a simultaneous attack by several small forces, each with a specific aim, attacking a particular unit in a synergistic Egyptian defense network. As a result, instead of supporting and covering each other as they were designed to do, each Egyptian unit was left fighting for its own life.
In 1969, he was appointed Head of the IDF’s Southern Command. He had no further promotions before retiring in August 1973. Soon after, he joined the Likud (“Unity”) political party.
At the start of the Yom Kippur War on 6 October, Sharon and his assigned reserve armored division were called back to active duty. On his farm, before he left for the front line, the Reserve Commander, Zeev Amkit, said to him, “How are we going to get out of this?”
Shalon replied. “You don’t know? We will cross the Suez Canal, and the war will end there. “Sharon arrived in a civilian car at the front of his fourth war. His forces did not engage the Egyptian Army immediately, despite his requests.
Under the cover of darkness, Sharon’s forces moved to the point on the Suez Canal that had been prepared before the war. On 17 October, bridging equipment was thrown across the canal. The bridgehead was between two Egyptian Armies.
He then headed north towards Ismailia, intent on cutting the Egyptian second army’s supply lines, but his divisions were halted south of the Fresh Water Canal.
Abraham (Bren) Adan’s division passed over the bridgehead, advancing to within 101 kilometers of Cairo. His division managed to encircle Suez, cutting off and encircling the Third Army. Tensions between the two generals followed Sharon’s decision, but a military tribunal later found his action was militarily effective.
Sharon’s complex ground maneuver is decisive in the Yom Kippur War. It undermined the Egyptian Second Army and encircled the Egyptian Third Army. Many Israelis regarded this move as the turning point of the war on the Sinai front.
Thus, Sharon is viewed as responsible for Israel’s ground victory in the Sinai in 1973. A photo of Sharon wearing a head bandage on the Suez Canal became a famous symbol of Israeli military prowess.
Sharon’s political positions were controversial, and he was discharged in February 1974. Sharon was widowed twice. Shortly after becoming a military instructor, he married Margalit, with whom he had a son, Gur. Margalit died in a car accident in May 1962.
Their son, Gur, died in October 1967 after a friend accidentally shot him while they were playing with a rifle. After Margalit’s death, Sharon married her young sister, Lily. They had two sons, Omri and Gilad. Lily Sharon died of cancer in 2000.
Beginnings of a political career
In the 1940s and 50s, Sharon seemed to be personally devoted to the ideals of Mapai, the predecessor of the modern Labor Party.
However, after retiring from the military service, he established Likud in July 1973 by merging Herut, the Liberal Party, and independent elements.
Sharon became the campaign staff for that year’s elections, which were scheduled for November. Two and a half weeks after the start of the election campaign, the Yom Kippur War erupted, and Sharon was called back to the reserve service. Sharon won a seat in the elections, but a year later, he resigned.
From June 1975 to March 1976, Sharon was a special aid to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He planned his return to politics for the 1977 elections; first, he tried to return to the Likud and replace Menachem Begin at the head of the party.
He suggested to Simha Erlich, who headed the Liberal Party bloc in the Likud, that he was more fitting than Begin to win an election victory. He was rejected, however. He then tried to join the Labor Party and the centrist Democratic Movement for Change but was rejected by those parties, too.
Only then did he form his list, Shlomtzion, which won two Knesset seats in the subsequent elections. Immediately after the elections, he merged Shlomtzion with the Likud and became Minister of Agriculture.
When Sharon joined Begin’s government, he had relatively little political experience. During this period, Sharon supported the Gush Emunim settlements movement and was viewed as the patron of the settler’s movement.
He used his position to encourage the establishment of a network of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories to prevent the possibility of Palestinian Arab’s return to these territories. Sharon doubled the number of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during his tenure.
On his settlement policy, Sharon said while addressing a meeting of the Tzomet party: “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Judean) hilltops as they, as they can enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now, will stay ours…Everything we don’t grab will go to them.
After the 1981 elections, Begin rewarded Sharon for his important contribution to Likud’s narrow win by appointing him Minister of Defense.
1982 Lebanon War and Sabra and Shatila massacre
During the 1982 Lebanon War, while Sharon was Defense Minister, the Sabra and Shatila massacre occurred between 16 September and 18.
Between 800 and 3500 Palestinian civilians in both camps were killed by the Phalanges – Lebanese Maronite Christian militias.
The Security Chief of the militia, Elie Hobeika, was the ground commander of the militiamen who entered the Palestinian camps and killed the Palestinians.
The Phalane had been sent into the camps to clear out the PLO fighters while Israeli forces surrounded the camps, blocking camp exits and providing logistical support. The killings led some to label Sharon “The Butcher of Beirut.”
An Associated Press report on 15 September 1982 stated:
Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, in a statement, tied the killings of the Phalangist leader Gemayel to the PLO, saying, “It symbolizes the terrorist murderousness of the PLO terrorist organization and their supporters.”
Habib Chartouni, a Lebanese Christian from the Syrian Socialist National Party, confessed to the murder of Gemayel, and Palestinians were involved. Sharon had used this to instigate the entrance of the Lebanese militias into the camps.
Robert Maroun Hatem, Hobeika’s bodyguard, stated in his book From Israel to Damascus that Hobeika ordered the massacre of civilians in defiance of Israeli instructions to behave like a “dignified” army.
Legal findings
The investigative Kahan Commission (1982) found the Israeli Defence Forces indirectly responsible for the massacre, as the IDF held the area, and that no Israeli was directly responsible for the events that occurred in the camps.
The Commission determined that the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla was carried out by a Phalangist unit, acting on its own, but its entry was known to Israel and approved by Sharon.
Prime Minister Begin was found responsible for not exercising greater involvement and awareness in the matter of introducing the Phalangists into the camp.
The Commission also concluded that the defense minister (Sharon) bore personal responsibility “for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge and not taking appropriate measures to prevent bloodshed.”
It said Sharon’s negligence in protecting the civilian population of Beirut, which had come under Israeli control, amounted to a dereliction of duty of the minister.
The commission recommended in early 1983 the removal of Sharon from his post as Defense Minister and stated: “We have found….that the Minister of Defense (Ariel Sharon) bears personal responsibility.
In our opinion, it is fitting that the Minister of Defense draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed concerning how he discharged the duties of his office – and if necessary, that the PrimeMinister consider whether he should exercise his authority…to…remove him from office.”
Sharon initially refused to resign as Defense Minister, and Begin refused to fire him. After a grenade was thrown into a dispersing crowd of an Israeli Peace Now march, killing Emil Grunzweig and injuring 10 others, a compromise was reached: Sharon agreed to forfeit the post of Defense Minister but stayed in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio.
Ariel Sharon’s resignation as Defense Minister is listed as one of the important events of the Tenth Knesset.
In its 21 February 1983 issue, Time published an article implying that Sharon was directly responsible for the massacre. Sharon sued Time for libel in American and Israeli courts.
Although the jury concluded that the Time article included false allegations, they found that Time had not “acted in malice” and was not guilty of libel.
On 18 June 2001, relatives of the victims of the Sabra massacre began proceedings in Belgium to have Sharon indicted on alleged war crimes charges. Elie Hobeika, the leader of the Phalange militia who carried out the massacres, was assassinated in January 2001, several months before he was scheduled to testify for a trial that may or may not have proceeded in Belgium.
In June 2002, a Brussels Appeals Court rejected the lawsuit because the law was subsequently changed to disallow such lawsuits unless a Belgian citizen was involved.
Political downturn and recovery
After his dismissal from the Defence Ministry post, Sharon remained in successive governments as a minister without a portfolio (1983-1984). Minister for Trade and Industry (1984-1990), and Minister of Housing Construction (1990-1992).
In the Knesset, he was a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee from (1990-1992), and Chairman of the Committee overseeing Jewish Immigration from the Soviet Union.
During this period, he was a rival to then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir but failed in various bids to replace him as Chairman of Likud.
Their rivalry reached a head in February 1990, when Sharon grabbed the microphone from Shamir, who was addressing the Likud central committee and famously exclaimed: “Who’s for wiping out terrorism?”
The incident was widely viewed as an apparent coup attempt against Shamir’s party leadership.
In Benjamin Netanyahu’s 1996-1999 government, Sharon was Minister of National Infrastructure (1996-98), and Foreign Minister (1998-1999). Upon the election of the Barak Labor government. Sharon became the leader of the Likud party.
Campaign for Prime Minister, 2000-2001
On 28 September 2000, Sharon and an escort of over 1,000 Israeli police officers visited the Temple Mount complex, the site of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, the holiest place in the world to Jews and the third holiest site in Islam. Sharon declared that the complex would remain under perpetual Israeli control.
Palestinian commentators accused Sharon of purposely inflaming emotions with the event to provoke a response and obstruct the success of delicate ongoing peace talks. On the following day, a large number of Palestinian demonstrators and an Israeli police contingent confronted each other at the site.
According to the U.S. State Department, “Palestinians held large demonstrations and threw stones at police in the vicinity of the Western Wall. Police used rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition to disperse the demonstrators, killing 4 persons and injuring about 200.” According to the GOI, 14 policemen were injured.
Sharon’s visit, a few months before his election as Prime Minister, came after archeologists claimed the extensive building operations at the site were destroying priceless antiquities. Sharon’s supporters claim that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian National Authority planned the intifada months before Sharon’s visit.
They state that Palestinian security chief Jabril Rajoub provided assurances that if Sharon did not enter the mosques, no problems would arise.
They also often quote statements by Palestinian Authority officials, particularly Imad Falouji, the P.A. Communications Minister, who admitted months after Sharon’s visit that the violence had been planned in July, far in advance of Sharon’s visit, stating the intifada “was carefully planned since the return of (Palestinian President) Yasser Arafat from Camp David negotiations rejecting the U.S. Conditions”. According to the Mitchell Report,
The government of Israel asserted that the immediate catalyst for the violence was the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations on 25 July 2000 and the “widespread appreciation in the international community of Palestinian responsibility for the impasse.”
In this view, Palestinian violence was planned by the PA leadership and was aimed at “provoking and incurring Palestinian casualties as a means of regaining the diplomatic initiative.”
The Mitchell Report found that the Sharon visit did not cause the al-Aksa intifada. But it was poorly timed, and the provocation effect should have been foreseen; indeed, it was foreseen by those who urged that the visit be prohibited.
More significant were the events that followed: the decision of the Israeli police on 29 September to use lethal means against the Palestinian demonstrators.
In addition, the report stated,
Accordingly, we have no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence at the first opportunity or to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the GOI to respond with lethal force.
The Or Commission, an Israeli panel of inquiry appointed to investigate the October 2000 events, criticized the Israeli police for being unprepared for the riots and possibly using excessive force to disperse the mobs, resulting in the deaths of 12 Arab Israelis, one Jewish, and one Palestinian citizen.
A survey conducted by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffe Center in May 2004 found that 80% of Jewish Israelis believed that the Israeli Defense Forces had succeeded in military countering the al-Aqsa Intifada.
Prime Minister
After the collapse of Barak’s government, Sharon was elected Prime Minister in February 2001. His senior advisor was Raanan Gissin.
In September 2003, Sharon became the first prime minister of Israel to visit India. He remarked that India was ” one of the most important countries in the world.” Some analysts discussed developing an axis of Deli, Washington, and Jerusalem.
On 20 July 2004, Sharon called on French Jews to emigrate from France to Israel immediately in light of an increase in French anti-Semitism (94 anti-Semitic assaults were reported in the first six months of 2004 compared to 47 in 2003).
France has the third-largest population in the world (about 600,000 people). Sharon observed that an “unfettered Semitism” reigned in France.
The French government responded by describing his comments as “unacceptable,” as did the French representative Jewish organization CRIF, which denied Sharon’s claim of intense anti-Semitism in French society.
An Israeli spokesperson later claimed that Sharon had been misunderstood. The French then postponed Sharon’s visit. During his visit, Sharon and French President Jacques Chirac were described as willing to put the issue behind them.
Unilateral disengagement
In May 2003, Sharon endorsed the Road Map for Peace by the United States, European Union, and Russia, which opened a dialogue with Mahmud Abbas and announced his commitment to creating a Palestinian state.
He embarked on a course of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip while maintaining control of its coastline and airspace.
Sharon’s plan was welcomed by both the Palestinian Authority and Israel’s left wing as a step towards a final peace settlement.
However, it was greeted with opposition from within his own Likud party and right-wing Israelis on national security, military, and religious grounds.
Disengagement from Gaza
On 1 December 2004, Sahro dismissed five ministers from the Shinui party for voting against the government’s 2005 budget.
In January 2005, Sharon formed a national unity government that included representatives of Likud, Labor, Meimad, and Degel HaTorah as “out-of-government” supporters without any seats in the government (United Torah Judaism parties usually reject having ministerial offices as a policy).
Between 16 and 30 August 2005, controversially expelled 9,480 Jewish settlers from 21 settlements in Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank.
Once it became clear that the evictions were going ahead, a group of conservative Rabbis, led by Yosef Dayan, placed an ancient curse on him known as the Pulsa di Nura, calling on the Angel of Death to intervene and kill him.
After Israeli soldiers bulldozed every settlement structure except for several former synagogues, Israeli soldiers formally left Gaza on 11 September 2005 and closed the border fence at Kissufim.
While his decision to withdraw from Gaza sparked bitter protests from members of the Likud party and the settler movement, opinion polls showed that it was a popular move among most of the Israeli electorate, with more than 80% of Israelis backing the plans.
On 27 September 2005, Sharon narrowly defeated a leadership challenge by a 52—48 percent vote.
Sharon’s main rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, initiated the move within the governing Likud party’s central committee. Netanyahu had left the cabinet to protest withdrawal from Gaza. The measure was an attempt by Netanyahu to call an early primary in November 2005 to choose the party leader.
Founding of Kadima
On 21 November, Sharon resigned as head of Likud and dissolved parliament to form a new centrist party called Kadima (“Forward”). November polls indicated that Sharon was likely to be returned to the prime ministership.
On 20 December 2005, Sharon’s longtime rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, was elected his successor as leader of the Likud. Following Sharon’s incapacitation, Ehud Olmert replaced Sharon as Kadima’s leader for the nearing general elections. Likud and the Labor Party were Kadima’s chief rivals in the March 2006 elections.
His stroke occurred a few months before he expected to win a new election and was widely interpreted as planning on “cleaning Israel out of most of the West Bank” in a series of unilateral withdrawals.
In the elections, which saw Israel’s lowest-ever turnout of 64% (the number usually averages on the high 70%), Kadima, headed by Olmert, received the most Knesset seats, followed by Labor.
The new governing coalition installed in May of 2006 included Kadima, Olmert as Prime Minister, Labor (including Peretz as Defense Minister), the Gil (Pensioner’s) Party, the Shas religious party, and Israel Beytenu.
Alleged fundraising irregularities and Greek island affair
During the latter part of his career, Sharon was investigated for alleged involvement in several financial scandals, particularly the Greek Island Affair and irregularities of fundraising during the 1999 election campaign.
In the Greek Island Affair, Sharon was accused of promising (during his term as Foreign Minister) to help an Israeli businessman, David Appel, in his development project on a Greek island in exchange for large consultancy payments to Sharon’s son Gilad.
The charges were later dropped due to a lack of evidence. In the 1999 election fundraising scandal, Sharon was not charged with any wrongdoing, but his son Omri, a Knesset member, was charged and sentenced in 2006 to nine months in prison.
To avoid a potential conflict of interest regarding these investigations, Sharon was not involved in the 2005 confirmation of the appointment of a new Attorney General, Menahem Mazuz.
On 10 December 2005, Israeli police raided Martin Schlaff’s apartment in Jerusalem. Another suspect in the case was Robert Nowikovsky, an Austrian involved in Russian state-owned company Gazprom’s business activities in Europe.
According to Haaretz, “The $300 million that parachuted into Gilad and Omri Sharon’s bank account toward the end of 2002 was transferred there in the context of a consultancy contract for development of kolkhozes (collective farms) in Russia.
Gilad Sharon was recruited into the campaign to make the wilderness bloom in Russia by Getex, a large Russian-based exporter of seeds (peas, millet, wheat) from Europe. Getex also has ties with Israeli firms that export wheat from Ukraine.
The company owns farms in Eastern Europe and is considered large and prominent. Its Vienna offices are in the same building as Jurimex, behind the $1 million guarantee to the Yisrael Beiteinu party.
On 17 December, police announced they had evidence of a $3 million bribe to Sharon’s sons. Shortly after the announcement, Sharon suffered a stroke.
Incapacitation and end of a political career.
Sharon suffered from obesity from 1980 and also had chronic high blood pressure and high cholesterol – he was reputed to be 170 cm (5ft 7in) tall and to weigh 115 kg (250lbs).
His staff car would reportedly be stocked with snacks, vodka, and caviar. Stories of Ariel Sharon’s obesity were legendary in Israel.
He would even joke about his love for food and expansive gifts. In October 2004, when asked why he did not wear a ballistic vest despite frequent death threats, Sharon smiled and replied, “There is none that fits my size.
He was a daily consumer of cigars and luxury foods. Numerous attempts by doctors, friends, and staff to impose a balanced diet on Sharon were without avail.
Sharon was hospitalized on 18 December 2005 after suffering a minor ischemic stroke.
During his hospital stay, doctors discovered a heart defect requiring surgery and offered bed rest pending a cardiac catheterization scheduled for 5 January 2006.
Instead, Sharon returned immediately to work and suffered a hemorrhagic stroke on 4 January, the day before surgery. After two surgeries lasting 7 and 14 hours, doctors stopped the bleeding in Sharon’s brain but were unable to prevent him from entering into a coma.
Subsequent media reports indicated that Sharon had been diagnosed with cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) during his December hospitalization. Hadassah Hospital Director Shlomo Mor-Yosef declined to respond to comments that the combination of CCA and blood thinners after Sharon’s December stroke may have caused his more serious subsequent stroke.
Ehud Olmert became Acting Prime Minister the night of Sharon’s second stroke, while Sharon was only officially in office. Knesset elections followed in March, with Olmert and Sharon’s Kadima party winning a plurality.
The next month, the Israeli Cabinet declared Sharon permanently incapacitated, and Olmert officially became interim prime minister in office on 14 April 2006. Then, his established government made him prime minister in his own right on 4 May.
Sharon has undergone a series of subsequent surgeries related to his state, and He has remained in a long-term care facility since 6 November 2006. Medical experts indicate that the stroke has likely destroyed his cognitive abilities.
His condition worsened in late 2013, and Sharon suffered from renal failure on 1 January 2014. On January 11, 2014, Ariel Sharon passed away at the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv after being in a coma for the past eight years.
The Former Prime Minister was honored by Israel at the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem at the first of two ceremonies, the second where he was laid to rest in his final resting place at his family farm.
At Sharon’s death, Israel hailed him as a war hero, but many in the Arab world remembered him as a war criminal.
Does this mean that we have heard the end of Ariel Sharon? Not hardly!
There is still a messianic prophecy by Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, who passed away on January 28, 2006.
Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri
Rabbi Yitchak Kaduri, also spelled Yitzhak (died January 28, 2006), was a renowned Mizrahi Haredi rabbi and kabbalist who devoted his life to Torah study and prayer on behalf of the Jewish people. He taught and practiced the kavanot of the Rashash.
His blessings and amulets were also widely sought to cure people of illnesses and infertility. In his life, he published no religious articles or books.
Youth
He was born in Baghdad in 1902, which was verified in a 2005 Mishpacha magazine live interview with the rabbi. Baghdad was then part of the Ottoman Turkish vilayets to Rabbi Katchouri Diba ben Aziza, a spice trader. Some have disputed that he was born in 1898.
As a youngster, Kaduri excelled in his studies and began learning Kabbalah while still in his teens, a study that would last his entire life.
He was a student of the Ben Ish Chai (Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad) and studied at the Zilka Yeshivah in Baghdad.
Rabbi Kaduri moved to the British Mandate of Palestine (Eretz Israel, the Holy Land) in 1923 upon the advice of the elders of Baghdad, who hoped that his scholarship and piety would stop the incursion of Zionism in the post-World War I state. It was here he changed his name from Diba to Kaduri.
Student of Kabbalah
He went to study at the Shoshanim LeDavid Yeshiva for Kabbalists from Iraq. There, he learned from the leading kabbalists of the time, including Rabbi Yehuda Ftaya, author of Beit Lechem Yehudah, and Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer, author of Kaf Hachaim.
He later immersed himself in regular Talmudic study and rabbinical law in the Porat Yosef Yeshiva in Jerusalem’s Old City, where he also studied Kabbalah with the Rosh Yeshivah, Rabbi Ezra Attiya, Rabbi Saliman Eliyahu (father of Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu), and other learned rabbi’s.
In 1934, Rabbi Kaduri and his family moved to the Old City, where the Porat Yosef Yeshivah gave him an apartment nearby with a job of binding the yeshivah’s books and copying over rare manuscripts in the yeshivah’s library.
The books remained in the yeshivah’s library, while the copies of the manuscripts were stored in Rabbi Kaduri’s personal library. Before binding each book, he would study it intently, committing it to memory.
He was reputed to have a photographic memory and mastered the Talmud by heart, including the adjoining Rashi and Tosafot commentaries.
During the period of Arab-Israeli friction that led up to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Porat Yosef Yeshivah was virtually turned into a fortress against frequent flashes of violence.
When the Jewish quarter of the Old City fell to the invading Jordanian Army during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Jordanians set fire to the yeshivah and all surrounding houses, destroying all the books and manuscripts that Rabbi Kaduri could not smuggle to Beit El Yeshivah (Yeshivat HaMekubalim) in Jerusalem.
He knew all the writings of Yitzhak Luria, the founder of modern Kabbalah, by heart. After the passing of the leading Kabbalist, Rabbi Efraim Hakohen, in 1989, the remaining Kabbalists appointed Rabbi Kaduri as their head.
Rabbi Kaduri did not publish his works on Kabbalah; he allowed only students to study them.
He did publish some articles criticizing those who engage in “practical Kabbalah,” the popular dissemination of advice or amulets, often for a price.
He also spoke out against the development of cult organizations frequented by pop celebrities. “Kabbalah should not be taught to non-Jews,” he explained.
Blessings, amulets, and prophecies
Over the years, thousands of people (mainly but not exclusively Sephardi Jews) came to seek his advice, blessings, and amulets (a good luck charm), which were created specifically for the individual in need. He had learned the Kabbalistic secrets of the amulets from his teacher, Rabbi Yehuda Fatiyah.
Many people directly attributed personal miracles to receiving a blessing from Rabbi Kaduri, such as recovery from severe illnesses and disease, children born to couples with fertility problems, finding a spouse, and economic blessings.
His rise to fame, though, began when his son, Rabbi David Kaduri, who ran a poultry store in the Bukharim Market, decided to found a proper yeshivah organization under his father.
Nachalat Yitzchak’s yeshiva was located adjacent to the family home in the Bukharim neighborhood of Jerusalem. His grandson, Yossi Kaduri, participated in this endeavor with him.
Kaduri reportedly received blessings from the Ben Ish Chai (Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad) in 1908 and from the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson) in 1990 that he would meet the Messiah.
In this context, it is worth noting that many regard Rabbi Schneerson as the messiah (ibid.), and contextualization may inform the scope of such a blessing. Regardless, other sources say these blessings were for arichat yamim, a long life, which was certainly reflected in his advanced age.
Kaduri was seen as a prophesier. In late 2004, Kaduri said, “Great tragedies in the world are foreseen,” two weeks before the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; reporter Baruch Gordon of Arutz Sheva connected the two by saying Kaduri “predicted” the tragedy.
In 2005, Kaduri made predictions of further natural disasters.
Involvement in politics
The last two decades of his life were marred by the controversial way some would use him to promote various political parties.
Rabbi Kaduri achieved celebrity status during the 1996 Knesset elections when he was flown by helicopter to multiple political rallies in support of the Shas party and for amulets produced in his name for supporters of that party.
In October 1997, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then in his first term as Prime Minister of Israel, came to visit Kaduri at his synagogue and was recorded as whispering in his ear, “The left has forgotten what it is to be a Jew.” This was considered a divisive action and resonated in the press.
Final days
Kaduri lived a life of poverty and simplicity. He ate little, spoke little, and prayed each month at the gravesites of tzaddikim in Israel.
His first wife, Rabbanit Sara, died in 1989. He remarried in 1993 to Rabbanit Dorit, a baalat teshuva who was just over half his age.
In January 2006, Rabbi Kaduri was hospitalized with pneumonia in the Bikur Holim hospital in Jerusalem. He died around 10 pm on January 28, 2006 (29 Tevet 5766). He was alert and lucid until his last day.
An estimated 200,000 and 300,000 people participated in his funeral procession on January 29. The procession started from the Nachalat Yeshivah and wound through the streets of Jerusalem to the Givat Shaul cemetery near the city’s entrance.
Messiah
Before his death, Kaduri had said that he expected the Jewish Messiah to arrive soon and that he had met him a year earlier.
It has been alleged that he left a handwritten note to his followers, and they were reportedly instructed to open only after Rabbi Kaduri had been dead for one year.
After a period had passed, the note was opened and found to be read after being translated from Hebrew to English (“he will raise the people and confirm that his word and law are standing”), which, by the acronym, suggested the name “Yehoshua.” Yehoshua is the Hebrew version of Joshua or Jesus.
In his note, Rabbi Kaduri mentions that the Messiah would return soon after Ariel Sharon’s death. You can view a clip about Kaduri on YouTube.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lr4QaFXdxc
Surely, Rabbi Kaduri’s encoded message revealing that Jesus is the Messiah was not embraced by the Jewish Community or his hundreds of thousands of followers. Rabbi Kaduri taught against Jesus for more years than most of us are granted to live on earth.
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So then the question remains: who was Rabbi Kaduri’s message for? Jesus Himself spoke to the spiritual teachers of his generation and said,
“……, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Matthew 39-40
To any student of the New Testament, it should not take very long to recognize that the Apostle Paul was the predominant writer of the letters to the Church. Paul says, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” I Timothy 1:15
We know that Paul, as a young man, was first against the supposed sect that followed Christ, even being present at Stephen’s stoning, the first New Testament martyr, and eventually going on with great zeal to persecute believers wherever he could find them as if he was doing God some great service,
So even the young believer in Christ, having a basic grasp on the grace and tender mercies of the Savior, should not struggle or be astonished by the possibility of Christ appearing to Rabbi Kaduri, that his soul would be saved.
That still begs for an answer to the questions. Who was the message for? Could it be one more message to verify to the Christian community that Christ is coming back soon?
In the Western mindset, the brutal atrocities that are taking place in the rest of the world, with Christians being beheaded, tortured, crucified, and whole villages being slaughtered and burned, do not register to them if the stock market is moving up, and the bills are getting paid.
They deal with the natural calamities that strike as no more than Mother Nature playing her role in life rather than the possibility of an angry God sending warnings of His displeasure about the fact that most of His Church in Western culture is sound asleep at the wheel, unprepared for His return.
The signs of the times are upon us, and they are not only on the earth, with the distress of nations, but the heavens are proclaiming the glory of God. Prophecy is being fulfilled every day by those who are awake.
The Gospels give some distinct signs of Christ’s Second Advent to save the Jewish Nation and the human race. The Church will escape the worst of the end-time scenario, but you must be in Christ to be part of this group of people who will not have to suffer the horrors that will come in the end.
Just like Christ appeared to Saul of Tarsus, who we know from the Word of God as the Apostle Paul, I personally believe that Jesus Christ, the long-awaited Messiah of Israel, personally visited Yitzhak Kurudri and gave him a message of His soon-coming. The message is for all that will hear.
More to come