Ariel Sharon, hero of Israel, has passed away. The man was larger than life, a vestige of the early days of his people's rebirth in their land, returning after 2,000 years in the Diaspora. In somber moments such as these, as is customary in Judaism, we ought to set aside controversy and indignation, focusing instead on Sharon's illustrious contributions to Israel's regeneration. I'll never forget the first few days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Battle-weary soldiers fought to exhaustion from their strongholds while Egyptian troops pounded the front, firing from all sides. Through the radio, Arik was trying to calm our forces down, giving them encouragement and the will to keep fighting. He had that rare gift to lead soldiers into the battlefield, instilling in them the will to sacrifice themselves for a greater cause. An air of depression had settled over Israel during the 1950s, a kind of societal fragility that's hard to imagine in today's circumstances. But Arik, called to service, rose up, establishing IDF Unit 101, Israel's first elite outfit. The unit carried out retaliatory operations and set combat standards, both in terms of steadfastness and innovation. In the Six-Day War, Arik Sharon helped launch incredible offensives in Um-Katef and Abu-Ageila. At the beginning of the 1970s, as head of the IDF Southern Command, Sharon laid waste to Gazan terror for 15 years. Sharon showed the world -- 40 years ago -- that you can fight terrorism and win. The greatest manifestation of the Zionist vision post-Independence was the redemption of our ancestral homelands in the 1967 Six Day War. Sharon facilitated the establishment of dozens of cities and towns in Judea and Samaria, where hundreds of thousands of people live today. He engendered a new, irreversible geopolitical reality. I saw him, at his heaviest, prancing around the hills, a map in one hand and heavy engineering tools in the other, paving the way for our boys returning home. In the 1990s, as the housing minister, Sharon was responsible for greenlighting the development of some 150,000 (!) housing units to house Jews arriving en masse from the former Soviet Union. Now, as we separate from one of the late greats of Israel, Ariel Sharon, we can recall the song "I Believe in Someday," written around the time of the War of Independence. Intoning its message, we reassure ourselves that, despite the high price of battle, we have ensured a day when we can live and breathe in our land. The whole Jewish nation salutes you, Arik, on your journey elsewhere.
When Arik was called to service
מערכת היום
מערכת "היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
