The Sinister Career of Ariel Sharon: From Sabra and Shatila to Gaza

Note: We can see how the Biden administration will attempt to wash its hands of the Israeli genocide in Gaza it financed, armed and propagandized: blame it on the “rogue” government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the man Biden rushed to Tel Aviv to give a full-frontal embrace only weeks ago. Netanyahu will eventually be condemned for all of the excesses in Gaza and the West Bank. He will be portrayed as an extremist, an outlier, who has sullied the reputation of Israel before the world. A man who refused to listen to Biden’s counsel. This is, of course, nonsense. You couldn’t find a living figure more deeply embedded in the history of modern Israel than Netanyahu. He’s been at the center of Israeli policy-making since the early 1970s. He was mentored by the likes of Menachem Begin, Moshe Arens and, most decisively, Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Sabra and Shatila. As such, he’s also been a creature of US policy toward Israel, nurtured and empowered by US largesse and weapons. Netanyahu and his government are no aberration. They represent the logical continuum from the exterminationist policies of Sharon. There’s a direct line from Sabra and Shatila to Gaza and the US has never wavered in helping finance the slaughter. To understand Netanyahu, you must understand where he came from, the political model Sharon established for him, a model of ruthless expansionism and extreme violence. During the fateful Israeli elections in 2001, Alexander Cockburn and I wrote a long profile of the sinister career of Ariel Sharon, the man some admirers went so far as to label the “Israeli Moses.” — JSC