Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. Differing opinions are what make democratic societies great. Yet once one crosses the not-so-fine line between opinion and one-sided, tendentious accusation, those of us with any moral fiber must protest.
Counting on many students to not be familiar with the intricacies of Middle East politics, Trent Taylor’s article on Friday tried to present embellished facts and obvious propaganda as truth in order to deceive the reader and reach defamatory conclusions about a man who is now unable to defend himself. Ariel Sharon is a soldier, and a great one at that. Calling him a “war criminal” is a gross bastardization of the expression and ultimately allows the term to be used against anybody in uniform. For example, in bestowing the title “war criminal,” the writer conveniently neglected to do the same with General Eisenhower and Prime Minister Churchill, although they ordered countless bombings of German cities during WWII. How easy it is to be selective in name-calling when it serves one’s political agenda.
Sharon’s actions in war (several wars in which a single Israeli defeat would have meant genocide, the total annihilation of millions of Jews) were no different than those of many other soldiers’ defending their country. Holding him, as well as Israel, to a different standard than one would hold America, China, France and Mozambique is unfair. As a military commander, Sharon may have killed for his country, just as thousands of other Israelis were compelled to do in order to protect their wives, sisters, mothers and daughters from an enemy whose goal was “to eliminate the state of Israel” (Yasser Arafat, 1996 – years after he signed the peace accords in Oslo). War is hell, and Israel never wanted any of it.
Now, Taylor mentioned Sabra and Shatila, a massacre that clearly violated the Geneva Conventions, just as ANY targeting of innocent civilians is against the rules of war. This massacre was at the hands of a Christian Maronite militia, not at the hands of Ariel Sharon. Furthermore, a United States court ruled in 1987 that a Time article linking Sharon to the massacre was false and defamatory. Taylor either did not know about this, a glaring omission for someone who took it upon himself to lecture us about the Middle East, or very suspiciously opted to hide this fact if he was aware of it, lest it undermine his own ramblings.
The last piece of obvious falsehood is Taylor’s assertion that Sharon’s construction of a security fence (like the one between America and Mexico, or India and Pakistan) cripples any hope of peace. I’m sure that’s the reason, and not Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s continued acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians. Mr. Taylor says that the fence has left Palestinians with 11 percent of Palestine. Unless he received this statistic from Al-Qaeda Daily, this is not true. The fence extends past the Green Line to include cities that are 100 percent Jewish, leaving 93 percent, not 11 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians. In any case, the fence is not considered a permanent boundary, but instead just a way to keep terrorists from blowing up Israeli schools, restaurants, and buses. It is a fact beyond dispute that putting up this fence has drastically reduced the number of civilian casualties, which, in another display of misleading writing, Taylor completely forgot to mention. In addition, it boggles the mind that he chose not to mention a single Palestinian atrocity from the last hundred years, acts of terror that have filled Israeli morgues with civilians; not one word, only an attack on the Jewish prime minister.
I’d like to say one thing in closing. Shame on you, Student Life. Shame on you for printing such a hateful fabrication. I would hope to never see something of the sort again, whether it is about Prime Minister Sharon, Mahatma Ghandi or FDR. This kind of article makes a mockery of objectivity, fairness and journalistic integrity, and is a blemish on Student Life’s reputation.
Ben is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences.