-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: February 20, 2007 10:22:02 AM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: What George Bush Dreams of Doing to Osama Bin Laden
THE PESSIMIST WAS RIGHT
By Uri Dromi
Ha'aretz, February 15, 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/826601.html
"Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait" by Uri Dan, Palgrave
Macmillan, 320 pages, $18.45
On September 13, 1993, I stood beside Uri Dan on the White House
lawn. As the director of Israel's Government Press Office under
prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, I was in charge of the Israeli
journalists who had traveled there to witness the historic ceremony
of reconciliation between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. A
question hovered in the air: Would the two old enemies, Yitzhak
Rabin and Yasser Arafat, shake hands? The officials came out of the
White House and walked toward the small, tense audience assembled
on the lawn. And then Bill Clinton, with his trademark charm,
turned the two men toward each other: an enthusiastic Arafat and a
dour-faced Rabin who, gripped by a visceral sense of foreboding,
wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else at that moment. Then,
the inconceivable happened: They shook hands, and a roar of joy
went up from the audience. Even cynical longtime journalists could
not disguise their enthusiasm. Everyone joined the celebrations.
Everyone, that is, except Uri Dan. The veteran reporter, who died
in December at age 71, stood beside me frowning and said to his
colleagues in disgust: "What are you so happy about? Many funerals
will come out of this wedding." We all looked at him with pity:
Here was the professional spoilsport, unable to give credit for
success to anyone except his master, Ariel Sharon.
Years passed and indeed, that wedding was followed by many
funerals, many eulogies in both Hebrew and Arabic. Journalist Eitan
Haber, Dan's colleague-rival, claims that it is wrong to say that
the Oslo process failed, because Yitzhak Rabin's assassination
shattered the Israeli-Palestinian trust on which the whole endeavor
rested. I tend to agree with him, but when results alone are
considered, then Dan, more pessimistic than any of the guests who
cheered then on the White House lawn, was right.
Of course, it's easy for pessimists to be right in the Mideastern-
Israeli realm of existence, where something terrible is always
bound to happen. Dan's pessimism, however, was conditional: If his
hero, Sharon, were given a chance to perform his historic duty, the
people of Israel would be saved; if not, they would deserve
whatever calamities they inflicted upon themselves.
Dan's attitude might be dismissed as idolatry or blind adoration
until we recall that in 1982, when Sharon was removed from his
position as defense minister following the Sabra and Chatila
massacre, it was his advisor - Uri Dan - who, in an unforgettable
television interview, said with a feverish look in his eyes: "Those
who did not want Sharon as chief of staff got him back as defense
minister, and those who did not want him as defense minister will
get him back as prime minister." It seemed at the time a wild and
unlikely fantasy, and Dan was roundly mocked for it; eventually,
however, his prophecy was realized in full. Sharon the outcast
became not only Israel's prime minister, but one of our most highly
regarded leaders.
This is the story of a man whose life brought him into Sharon's
intimate circle, from Sharon's early days as a paratrooper
commander leading Israeli reprisal operations to his final days as
prime minister. When Dan turned 70, Sharon wrote to him in a moving
letter: "To me you were and always will be a hardworking and
resourceful journalist, an author and an advisor, a fearless and
impartial professional. But, more than anything, you are to me a
true friend who has always been there, in the moments of joy and
elation; in the harsh hours of personal pain and tragedy; in the
days of joyous victory and in dark nights under crossfire ... or
during the retaliation missions and in the other battlefields, too
numerous to be described here."
Personal Armageddon
Uri Dan was a military correspondent for the army magazine
Bamahane, for the weekly Ha'olam Hazeh and for the daily Maariv. As
a die-hard reporter, he belonged to a dying breed. He heard
Mordechai Gur brief his paratroopers before one of the reprisal
operations in 1950, demanding that every unit prove itself capable
of carrying out any mission given to it, and that each of the
soldiers has a firm resolution: to win. He took part in the famous
1956 parachuting mission at the Mitla Pass, whish spearheaded the
Sinai campaign; he interviewed Ugandan leader Idi Amin immediately
after the Entebbe Operation. But, mainly, he was by Sharon's side.
Dan vows in the book that he never used what Sharon revealed to him
for his journalistic purposes. But Eitan Haber, who was for many
years the military reporter for Yedioth Ahronoth, thinks otherwise.
In an essay he published after Dan's death, Haber wrote that Dan's
scoops in Maariv, a source of great uneasiness to the rival
newspaper, were in fact leaked by Sharon, and that Haber himself
only managed to create a "balance of terror" by finding his own
sources within the Israel Defense Forces.
Haber and Dan did not speak to each other for years, and more
recently even communicated through lawyers: Dan wrote in the
newspaper Makor Rishon that Haber had made up a sentence in Moshe
Dayan's famous eulogy over the grave of Nahal Oz settler Ro'i
Rothberg (who was murdered by Arabs in 1956). Haber proved that the
sentence existed in the original, and the paper issued an apology.
Despite their personal Armageddon, Haber showed integrity when he
told Makor Rishon editor Amnon Lord: "In any case, you should know
that Uri Dan is the greatest military correspondent in Israel's
history."
The title of Dan's book, which has recently come out in Hebrew
(Yedioth Ahronoth, Hemed Books), may be "Ariel Sharon: An Intimate
Portrait," or "Sharon's secrets," but it does not reveal many
intimacies or secrets. The deep abomination that Sharon felt toward
Arafat was no secret; the new revelation Dan offers is that the
Mossad made a failed attempt on the Palestinian leader's life
during the first Lebanon War in 1982, a failure that caused Sharon
to regard the espionage agency and its capabilities with coolness
and suspicion. Dan claims that Sharon aspired to have Arafat
killed, and that only his personal promise to George Bush prevented
the death of the Palestinian president.
But not for long, it seems. Dan reveals a little and conceals much
when he hints that Arafat's death was not caused by any illness. He
himself suggested to Sharon that Arafat be captured and brought to
trial in Jerusalem, like Eichmann, but Sharon reassured him that he
was dealing with the problem in his own way. Then Arafat fell ill,
was flown to Paris for treatment and died. Was Sharon involved?
This is what Dan wrote then in Maariv that in the history books
prime minister Ariel Sharon will be remembered as the man who
eliminated Yasser Arafat without killing him. Let every reader
figure it out for himself.
In hindsight
Speaking of George Bush, with whom Sharon developed a very close
relationship, Uri Dan recalls that Sharon's delicacy made him
reluctant to repeat what the president had told him when they
discussed Osama bin Laden. Finally he relented. And here is what
the leader of the Western world, valiant warrior in the battle of
cultures, promised to do to bin Laden if he caught him: "I'll f***
him in the ass!"
In Sharon's letter to Dan, quoted above, the former prime minister
also wrote that more than anything, he remembered who Dan was to
him during those hours that preceded fateful decisions, in those
special moments of the 'commander's loneliness.' Sharon ruminates
on, saying that Dan was there, saying nothing. Just being there,
and that was what mattered. Dan, it seems, did not always "say
nothing," but rather dared to speak and often disagreed with his
hero. In response he received a barrage of scolding and angry phone
hang-ups, often followed by apologies.
In retrospect, Sharon would have done well to listen to the
reservations of his friend and admirer. Dan, for example, thought
that it was a serious mistake to have Sharon's son Omri enter
politics and run for Knesset (in hindsight, he was so right).
Before Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Dan suggested that Sharon put
the issue up for a referendum, to erase the memory of his defeat in
the Likud's internal poll, but Sharon rejected the idea (an
unfortunate decision). Dan also opposed the establishment of
Kadima, which he described as a group of "opportunistic political
Brutuses." Now, when Sharon's ghost party is plummeting toward a
crash, it seems that his prophecy was true.
Dan also blames the members of the "ranch forum" - referring to
Sharon's close aides, who met at the Sycamore Ranch - from
preventing his access to the prime minister. It was not only that
the boss was kept from receiving Dan's good council; in those
critical moments when Sharon's health was visibly declining, no one
was there during to block his path physically during his first
hospitalization and to declare that he would not leave until he was
completely well. However, Dan writes that Sharon's latter days as
prime minister were profoundly different from most of his previous
years of leadership. For most of his life, he was surrounded by men
of action, officers and commanders, people who got things done.
Toward the end, he was surrounded by lawyers with their own
interests in mind. Dan wrote, adding: "Find the differences."
Uri Dromi is director of international outreach at the Israel
Democracy Institute.
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