Who Is Ariel Sharon?

ISRAEL’s prime minister Ariel Sharon has the looks of a Tyrannosaurus rex. And of course a baleful bloodthirsty monster is what Arabs generally think he is. He symbolizes everything they hate about Israel. Most days of the week, Yasser Arafat or his sidekicks bombard him with epithets like Nazi and racist and war criminal, and so do columnists and editorialists from Cairo to Riyadh to Baghdad, all of them naturally under government control. Western leftists demonize him in similar terms. The French left-wing paper Liberation lately published a cartoon of Sharon as a kosher butcher slaughtering Arafat. Accusing him of war crimes, the BBC staged a mock trial on television. Some magistrate in Brussels wanted him brought before Belgian justice, itself a comic turn among the nations. It’s safe to say that for these politically correct mouthpieces Sharon has an even uglier reputation than Saddam Hussein.

Since its inception, the state of Israel has had to defend its right to exist. The Arab neighbors may establish armistice lines or even sign treaties, but as a whole they balk at accepting Israel’s legitimacy, and attack with regular armies or guerrilla forces as occasion arises. The Left hopes to appease this intransigence through the holy grail of a peace process, in the expectation that concession and withdrawal in one sphere or another will generate the indispensable goodwill. Contradictorily, the Right believes that only an unyielding Israel will eventually persuade the Arabs that the costs of their military adventures are too high. The more the Arabs attack, in this view, the worse off they must find themselves. (In the words Dickens put into the mouth of a French aristocrat in A Tale of Two Cities, “Repression is the only lasting philosophy.”)

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

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ISRAEL’s prime minister Ariel Sharon has the looks of a Tyrannosaurus rex. And of course a baleful bloodthirsty monster is what Arabs generally think he is. He symbolizes everything they hate about Israel. Most days of the week, Yasser Arafat or his sidekicks bombard him with epithets like Nazi and racist and war criminal, and so do columnists and editorialists from Cairo to Riyadh to Baghdad, all of them naturally under government control. Western leftists demonize him in similar terms. The French left-wing paper Liberation lately published a cartoon of Sharon as a kosher butcher slaughtering Arafat. Accusing him of war crimes, the BBC staged a mock trial on television. Some magistrate in Brussels wanted him brought before Belgian justice, itself a comic turn among the nations. It’s safe to say that for these politically correct mouthpieces Sharon has an even uglier reputation than Saddam Hussein.

Since its inception, the state of Israel has had to defend its right to exist. The Arab neighbors may establish armistice lines or even sign treaties, but as a whole they balk at accepting Israel’s legitimacy, and attack with regular armies or guerrilla forces as occasion arises. The Left hopes to appease this intransigence through the holy grail of a peace process, in the expectation that concession and withdrawal in one sphere or another will generate the indispensable goodwill. Contradictorily, the Right believes that only an unyielding Israel will eventually persuade the Arabs that the costs of their military adventures are too high. The more the Arabs attack, in this view, the worse off they must find themselves. (In the words Dickens put into the mouth of a French aristocrat in A Tale of Two Cities, “Repression is the only lasting philosophy.”)