Okay, so what does Gilad Sharon, Ariel Sharon's son, tell us in the framework of his efforts to push his father's book "The Life of a Leader-" That Gilad once brought him an omelet with sausage on a roll because dad loves omelets, and that his father once told him: "If I don't wake up from the anesthetic, you just let me smell the omelet, and I will get up right away." What else does he tell us? That it was he, Gilad, who really formulated the Gaza disengagement plan. And for the tiny cherry on top he divulges that his father, who hates presents, refused to accept King Abdullah's gift of an Arabian stallion. "In the Prime Minister's Office there is a basement," Sharon said to the king, according to Gilad, "and that is where they keep all the gifts. What will they do with this gift tie him up in the basement? Who will feed and take care of him-" My colleagues Uzi Dayan and Michal Shabbat and I naturally do not doubt the stories about the omelet and the horse or Sharon's memories of Israeli counter-attacks. Nor do we doubt Gilad's stories about the initial success and then failed military career of the late Maj. Gen. Shmuel "Gorodish" Gonen, his delusions of grandeur, and Gonen's own talks with Gilad's parents. Gilad has mountains of documents, notes and other interesting items, and he invites the reader to delve into them with him. Boxes of papers and notebooks that Ariel Sharon saved for himself, like other leaders, came in handy now that Gilad was writing his book. We are also to believe that Gilad Sharon yearned for peace with the Palestinians, both when his father was prime minister and now. After all, who are we to question again how the disengagement plan was suddenly born in the midst of the Greek island investigation -- which probed the Sharon family plan to build an exotic casino on a tiny island in the Aegean Sea -- which uncovered innumerable testimonies, interviews, bank accounts and incriminating documents that nearly convicted the father and his sons. How did it come about that, just at that moment, the family decided we had to evacuate Gush Katif? How many times did we witness such coincidences- How did this disengagement plan develop just when the noose was tightening around the necks of Sharon and his two sons, and 18 million shekels was found in Gilad's bank account? How did the disengagement begin to be formulated just when the money was traced back to Austrian billionaire Martin Schlaff, suspected of trying to bribe the prime minister? After the police obtained documents indicating South African businessman Cyril Kern had deposited a loan of $1.5 million into one of the Sharon family bank accounts? And after Ariel (Arik) Sharon spoke to then Likud kingmaker, Dudi Appel, while the police were listening in, and got himself into even more trouble- We read a few sections of Gilad Sharon's interview with The New York Times, and discovered that this usually quiet guy, who did not say a word to police interrogators not even "good morning" does indeed know how to talk. He knows how to tell stories, criticize, give TV interviews, analyze and comment on various elements of the case and shed light on the subject. When he wants to, he knows how to open his mouth and let his critics have it. He is certainly no dummy. But in any event, one item in a newspaper interview that dealt with his father's hospitalization is not the whole story, to put it mildly. In the piece, Gilad says that his father was only transferred once from the hospital to the ranch, and expresses the hope that his 83-year-old father will soon come home to stay. Why has this not happened until now? Naturally, he has a prepared answer: "Israeli bureaucracy." With all due respect, Gilad is deceiving the public. "Israeli bureaucracy" is not the real story behind why Ariel Sharon is not home yet. I will cautiously suggest another explanation as to why the elder Sharon stays in the hospital: Moving him to the ranch involves a major financial outlay by the family. That is something neither of the two brothers likely wants to take on. Sharon's pension is also a major part of the farm's income, and they do not want to give that up easily. There are those who say with a thin layer of irony: They treat their father like he was one of the steadiest and best-yielding segments of the family's Sycamore Ranch farm and do not want to erode its value. 500 million shekels a year Before clearing up the issue of the cost of hospitalizing Sharon, my two colleagues Uzi Dayan and Michal Shabbat and I should start off by saying we have a great deal of respect for Ariel Sharon as an IDF major general, MK, minister, and of course, prime minister. He contributed a great deal to the country. His getting mixed up in shady deals that turned into police investigations cannot erase all of his achievements. That is why we are taking this opportunity to defend him. That is why we remind the public that the former prime minister is not to blame for having been left at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer for no good reason. The hospital's view on the matter, which was expressed in the Knesset Finance Committee, is no longer a secret. "If he was conscious and able to speak," a medical source at the hospital said, "I am sure that he would want to go back to the ranch. I have no doubt he would want to be back in his natural surroundings the ranch roads, the cowshed, the wagons and haystacks. That is where he needs to be today, not in an isolated room where no-one is permitted to enter." Sharon has been in the department for those on life support, which has a total of eight beds. For six years he has been alone in a double-room connected to machines, with the HMO bearing the cost: at first NIS 450,000 a year and now half a million. The family, which has not paid for any of this care to date, is not rushing to bring him home. It will just cost them, as we said, too much money. A little over a year ago, the hospital got fed up with losing the additional bed in Sharon's room, needed by other patients; when its representatives explained to Sharon's sons that from a medical standpoint, this patient on life support could get the same treatment at home, the family responded by saying: "Dad is coming home and we very much hope that this happens soon." Most people believed them. But except for the unusual step of taking Sharon to the farm for one weekend -- accompanied by the required Sheba medical staff and at the hospital's expense -- nothing has happened. Contrary to the impression one got from a few articles in the press, Sharon is still lying in the same room and in the same condition at Tel Hashomer. Why has he really not been sent home? A reasonable guess: Such a step would require heavy financing from his sons. Sharon is still receiving a nice pension as a retired IDF major general, as a former MK and prime minister a total of about NIS 500 million annually, but the family is in no hurry to use that pension money, which belongs to him, to improve his quality of life. These boys have it all figured out. It may seem like we are beginning to violate the family's privacy. But it only seems that way, because the question of financing the life support of a former prime minster in a hospital or in his home at the taxpayer's expense is a subject that involves the public, too. So far the decision to keep paying out of the public coffers seems to have won out certainly after the family asked to have him returned home on condition that they not be required to pay the expenses. And certainly after a public committee examined the matter carefully and disappointed the family. The first conclusion by the committee, revealed this past August by the Knesset Finance Committee: Sharon should be moved to his home for ongoing medical treatment. The cost of such treatment would be between NIS 1.1 million per year on the low end and 1.8 million on the high end, depending on how many members of the medical staff provide ongoing care. We can assume the family did not like another of the committee's decisions: that they and the state evenly split the cost of the hospitalization and treatment whatever exceeded the half a million already taken from the national health maintenance organization's fund. The moment of truth had arrived. According to the committee, in the best case scenario, Gilad and Omri Sharon would have to pay NIS 300,000 a year. In the worst case it would cost them double. Since their ailing father's pension is about half a million shekels a year, the family could make it work. Could, but so far they aren't hurrying to put their hands in their pockets. They had hoped that the government would continue paying, and suddenly they were being told that this bottomless money pit full for Sharon's care actually does have a bottom. What has happened since the decision was made three months ago in the Knesset Finance Committee? The elder Sharon, who is visited often by his son Gilad and a little less by his other son Omri, has not yet been returned to the ranch. His dedicated children, it now certainly appears, are in no rush. Their father continues lying in the same double hospital room that is out of bounds to other patients. And the money remains in the family. Tel Hashomer has not yet forced the boys to take their father home. They only drop big hints. They are waiting until the boys are too embarrassed and decide on their own. (Omri Sharon refused to take part in this story and Tel Hashomer also chose not to comment.)
In the name of the father
Despite his son's claims to the contrary, "Israeli bureaucracy" isn't the real story behind why Ariel Sharon, who remains hospitalized and on life support at a cost of NIS 500,000 per year, has not returned home.
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