It took quite a bit of mental debate and research to decide to write about this subject, considering the great range of emotion regarding
Ariel Sharon and his role in the history of Israeli military policy and politics over the past few decades. Let's get the obvious out of the way - I'm not a big fan of Ariel Sharon. I'm not a big fan of Israeli foreign or domestic policy, and I feel it is directly responsible for their country's problems. I feel that the United States has had a huge role in that chaos, and that there won't be any end to the chaos we create there for a myriad of reasons.
I will give this much to Ariel Sharon. He did finally learn something during his life -
he learned that fighting and killing doesn't make a damned bit of difference.
As many of us are aware, over the past two years Mr. Sharon, at the behest of the Israeli people who were tired of peace talks and territorial squabbles and international interference, chose to lead his country to simply stop the fighting. The wall started to go up, and then it stopped. The fighting stopped, and a long-term truce began that continues (for the most part) to this day. Settlers were moved out, even to their dismay. Sharon chose to simply stop aggravating the problem, even if it meant such harsh measures and unfinished scars on the landscape of the Promised Land. One might claim that he decided to take 'ignoring the problem' to the most extreme definition. I've started to believe that he was taking a much more bold step, to save his country and to stop the killing.
In this, I think there is a lesson for every single person, whether we be American or Israeli or Palestinian or Iraqi or Iranian or even a member of a multi-national terrorist organization. It is the same lesson that Martin Luther King was teaching us in the 1960s. It was the same lesson that Mohandes K. Gandhi was teaching us in the 1940s. Oddly, I think it is the same lesson that Pope Benedict XVI is trying to get across in his first encyclical document, to some extent.
It's that the only way to stop the violence and the divisiveness is to not engage it. To move on, to go forward. I imagine the only way to regain our country is to do the same.
Given this week of struggle, bitterness, disappointment, and defeat, I feel this is a worthwhile lesson for all of us. It's a lesson that Markos, Armando and kid oakland have all said we need to learn.
It's a lesson that my best friend has tried to teach me over and over. Any struggle will try to tear you in many directions, but the only correct direction is forward.