'King of Israel,' Ariel Sharon, Dead at 85

[Fay Dickson-- AKA doofs]

Ariel Sharon —  the military hero and prime minister who was among the most controversial figures in the history of Israel — has died, eight years after the massive stroke that left him comatose. He was 85.

He died Saturday at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, outside of Tel Aviv, where he has been cared for since 2006.

Over his long career Sharon served as Israel's 11th prime minister, headed several ministries including Defense, and rose to the rank of general in the Israeli army, seeing action in all four of Israel's major wars.

Reviled by Arabs over his hardline policies and viewed with a mixture of respect and suspicion by many Israelis, Sharon had been on life support at the hospital far from the public gaze.


A state funeral is planned.

Sharon was born on Feb. 26, 1928, in Kfar Malal, then in the British Mandate of Palestine. His parents had emigrated from Russia. 

"I was born on a farm," he said many year later. "My strength has nothing to do with political apparatus. I get my strength from nature, from flowers."

In 1942, at the age of 14, Sharon joined the Gadna, a paramilitary youth battalion, and later the Haganah, an underground paramilitary force.

He was a platoon commander in the Israeli military at the outset of the 1948 War of Independence, and rose swiftly up the ranks during the war.

In the 1956 Suez War, Sharon commanded a paratrooper brigade, and he headed Israel's most powerful armored division as a major general in the 1967 Six-Day War. His actions on the Sinai front brought Sharon international commendation by military strategists.

Sharon retired from military service in 1973, but was called back to active duty at the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in October of that year. 

 Polls in November 2005 indicated that Sharon was likely to beat Netanyahu at the polls, but on Dec. 18, he suffered a mild stroke while heading to his ranch in the Negev Desert. 

He left the hospital after two days, but on Jan. 4, 2006, suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage that left him comatose and on life support. His deputy Ehud Olmert formally succeeded him as prime minister in April.

Within months, Sharon was transferred to a long-term care unit at Sheba. Medical experts said his cognitive abilities were destroyed by the stroke and he was in a persistent vegetative state with little chance of regaining consciousness, though family members refused to allow them to turn off his life support.

"When he is awake, he looks at me and moves fingers when I ask him to," his son Gilad said in 2011. "He lies in bed, looking like the lord of the manor, sleeping tranquilly. Large, strong, self assured. His cheeks are a healthy shade of red. When he's awake, he looks out with a penetrating stare. He hasn't lost a single pound; on the contrary, he's gained some."

When Sharon suffered from renal failure on New Year's Day, Israeli media reported that doctors were unlikely to take drastic measures to keep him alive.

In the end, he died peacefully. Raanan Gissin, a former senior aide to Sharon, said: "It's a very sad moment for people in Israel because Ariel Sharon was an icon in Israel."

Sharon was widowed twice. His first wife Margalit, with whom he had a son, Gur, died in a car accident in 1962, and Gur died in 1967 after a friend accidentally shot him with a rifle. 

After Margalit's death, Sharon wed her younger sister Lily, and they had two sons, Omri and Gilad. Lily died in 2000.


http://www.newsmaxworld.com/newswidget/Ariel-Sharon-obit-Israel/201...