Though not ideal, Sharon is best choice for Israel

Justin Levi Levi is a proud Zionist who
believes that the People are with the Golan. E-mail him at [email protected].
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By the time this column goes to press, Israel will have begun
one of the most important and controversial elections in its brief
history. And soon we will know the effects of this crucial
event’s outcome.

For those of you who have not been following the election too
closely, a brief summary is in order. On one hand, we have Ariel
“Arik” Sharon, the former Defense Minister and
architect of Israel’s botched 1982 invasion of southern
Lebanon. Sharon is currently the head of the right-wing Likud
Party. On the flip side, we have the current
“caretaker” prime minister, Ehud Barak, a member of the
leftist Labor Party, who resigned several months ago pending new
elections.

Imagine a moral quandary such as that which was faced by this
country during the showdown between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Now
imagine that nightmare multiplied by a factor of 10, and you would
get something like the current situation in Israel.

In America, we are accustomed to choosing between the
“lesser of two evils” when we arrive at the ballot box.
Israelis, it seems, must now face the even more formidable task of
choosing the man who will, in all irony, do the least damage to the
country.

Illustration by CASEY CROWE/Daily Bruin Sharon, to begin with,
is identified as a warmonger, viewed by many Arabs as nothing short
of a war criminal. This is mainly due to his actions during the
early days of the Lebanon conflict, in which Israel invaded Lebanon
to provide a security zone. As the accusation goes, Sharon was
responsible for the massacre of over 1,000 Palestinians in the
refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, shortly after the beginning of
the invasion.

For clarity’s sake, it should be noted that such an
accusation is somewhat extreme given the lack of factual basis of
his involvement in the massacre. However, reality does not absolve
Sharon in any way. These two camps, having been victimized by a
forced PLO evacuation, were left undefended against Lebanese
Christian units that were working in conjunction with the Israeli
army.

Considering the persecution faced by Christians at the hands of
the Lebanese at the time, it would be hypocritical to hold those
soldiers to a higher moral standard than that of their
counterparts. The fact remains, however, that Sharon and his
immediate subordinates clearly did not take the necessary steps to
avoid such an atrocity. For that, they can be held morally
accountable.

Those of you who have been following recent events in Israel
will also recognize Sharon as the man who, in late September of
last year, visited the area known to Jews as the Temple Mount and
to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, sparking the recent wave of violence
that has been plaguing the country. This action, seemingly
irrelevant as it was, came from a man who was far more irrelevant
to Israeli politics at the time. If this can spark such a harsh
Palestinian response, imagine the turmoil that Sharon’s
election to prime minister would cause. In that case, I might
finally have to agree with my neurotic Jewish mother and admit that
it might be too dangerous to travel in Israel for a while.

On the other hand, we have Ehud Barak, the man who swept into
Israeli politics with a promise to deliver peace to the
Palestinians, and is about to be driven out by the exact same wave
of emotion, this time directed against him and his absurdly flawed
policies.

While the current violence cannot be intelligently blamed on
him, many Israelis, for the first time since 1967, are privately
and openly questioning the country’s national security as a
result of Barak’s willingness to compromise such areas as the
Temple Mount, East Jerusalem and the strategically valuable Jordan
Valley. He is also readily open to negotiating a return of the
Golan Heights to Syria, which are vital to Israel. Indeed, the
election has turned into a referendum on Barak.

So how does one explain this extraordinary reversal of public
opinion? It seems that Israelis may finally be beginning to realize
that real peace will only occur with popular acceptance, and more
importantly, participation. Barak’s narrow-minded vision of a
peace based solely on a treaty is finally being recognized for what
it really is ““ evidence that the entire peace process has
indeed been based around “land for peace,” rather than
peace for peace.

Let’s take each concession offered in the current peace
talks one by one. The Jordan Valley, while not quite as
strategically vital as it once was, is still nevertheless a crucial
area on Israel’s eastern frontier. It is surprising then that
Barak has not touted this concession more while dealing with the
Palestinians. Rather, he has managed to foolishly focus the
attention on the Temple Mount, formerly a non-negotiable piece of
real estate.

Ultra-doves have often accused some Jews who believe that Israel
should maintain control of East Jerusalem and the West Bank of
lacking historical perspective. So here is my attempt to logically
counter such an accusation.

Before 1967, when the Temple Mount and the Western Wall were
under Arab occupation, Jews were forbidden to worship there, as
were Christian Arabs, even in light of an Israeli-Jordanian
agreement guaranteeing religious freedom at the site. Indeed, given
current Palestinian control over the Temple Mount, Jews are still
prohibited from worshipping, if not in law, then in practice. I
have personal experience with this, and it is not a pleasant
situation.

However, as the organization known as One Jerusalem is quick to
point out, every site holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians has been
completely protected from religious persecution from the very
moment the Israelis took control in 1967.

It should be noted that One Jerusalem is an organization
composed not only of Jews, but of many Christians as well. They, of
course, are the most qualified individuals to comment on the denial
of religious freedom they have faced under Muslim occupation.

My point? Based on the obvious historical realities that pervade
the current situation, the Temple Mount must remain in the hands of
the Israelis not as a symbol of religious triumph, but a symbol of
religious freedom.

If the issue of the Temple Mount wasn’t enough to confound
the current situation, let us take the peculiarly less-widely
discussed issue of the Golan Heights. While a full discussion of
this issue would require an entire article in and of itself,
suffice it to say that there exists not one reason ““ be it
logical, legal, moral, strategic or economic ““ for an Israeli
withdrawal from this vital region and subsequent concession to the
Syrians, as has been proposed by the Barak government. A Nobel
Prize, it seems, is more important to our friend Ehud than the
security of his own country.

Although Sharon has a questionable past, his future as Israeli
prime minister would be one of security, and certainty. The
aforementioned concessions will, in all likelihood, be pulled from
the table.

Essentially, this indicates the true reason that such a
peace-craving public would suddenly be willing to support a man
like Sharon. If he is elected, an increase in violence is almost a
certainty, but Israelis will at least be able to fall asleep at
night knowing that when they wake up the next morning, they will
still be citizens of the state of Israel.

It is thus with a heavy heart that this columnist endorses Ariel
Sharon for prime minister of Israel, a man I find as devoid of
moral fiber as almost anyone our own country could find.

Oh, where have you gone, Natan Sharansky?