c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Ronald Reagan’s death two years ago at age 93 ended America’s “Long Goodbye” to a president who suffered with Alzheimer’s disease for many years after he left the White House in 1989.

Now the people of Israel are saying their own “Long Goodbye” to their own national icon: Ariel Sharon.

Unlike Reagan, Sharon was “on the job,” serving as his nation’s leader when he was felled by a massive stroke in January. Despite world-class medical treatment by Israeli physicians, Israel’s 11th prime minister has remained in a persistent vegetative state since his attack. On April 14, following Israeli law, Ehud Olmert succeeded his mentor as prime minister.

In many ways, Sharon personifies the nation and people he served for nearly 60 years. He was a fervent Zionist, dedicated to the extraordinary return of the Jewish people to their ancient biblical homeland.

Being born at Kfar Malal in 1928 made him a “Sabra” (a native-born Israeli), and at age 14, Sharon joined a paramilitary youth battalion. He was a platoon commander in Israel’s 1948-49 War of Independence when he was wounded by the Jordanians. He longed to be like Cincinnatus, the Roman citizen-soldier who returned to his farm after successfully defending his nation.

But for Sharon _ and millions of other Israelis _ a halcyon civilian life was not to be.

Sharon fought brilliantly in all of Israel’s wars as a forceful commander, a controversial warrior willing to take risks and one who did not always follow formal orders. In August 1973, with no military promotion in sight, a 45-year-old Sharon retired from the Israel Defense Forces and joined the Likud party. It seemed Sharon had hit another dead end because every Israeli government since independence had been led by the Labor party.

But two months later, Sharon was recalled to active duty following the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel on Judaism’s holiest day. The audacious Sharon led his armored division across the Suez Canal and cut the supply lines of Egypt’s Third Army, isolating it from other units.

At war’s end, Gen. Sharon, his head bandaged from wounds (soon to become a symbol of his personal heroism), was only about 63 miles from Cairo. Sharon’s daring feat was a turning point in the Yom Kippur War, and is today studied in many war colleges and military academies.

By 1982, he was Israel’s defense minister in a Likud government headed by Menachem Begin. But Sharon’s gamble that an Israeli invasion of Lebanon could eliminate the threat to Israel’s northern border turned sour; it culminated in the Lebanese Christian militia attack on two Palestinian refugee camps: Sabra and Shaltila.

While a blue-ribbon Israeli commission found that Israel bore “absolutely no direct responsibility” for the attack, Sharon was forced to resign as defense minister. Once again, this time at age 54, his future seemed bleak.

And Sharon carried personal losses as well. His wife, Margalit, died in a 1962 auto accident and their son was accidentally killed when a friend shot him with one of Sharon’s rifles. Margalit’s younger sister, Lilly, and Sharon later married, but she died in 2000. Finally, one of Sharon’s two surviving sons was formally indicted last August on charges of corruption.

But at age 73, Sharon surprised everyone and perhaps himself when he was elected prime minister in 2001, and then re-elected four years later. As prime minister, he completed a controversial withdrawal of 8,500 Jewish residents from Gaza, broke with Likud to form his own party, and until his stroke vigorously moved toward a pragmatic, tough-minded co-existence with the Palestinians, including a two-state solution.

Sharon has been compared to U.S. Gen. George Patton, another aggressive commander, but I believe history will reject this simplistic view. Instead, historians will place Sharon next to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who after reaching the pinnacle of civilian political power also actively sought peace.

Neither man lived to see his dreams fulfilled, but an ancient rabbi taught: “Ours is not to complete the task before us, but we are not free to desist from it.” Ariel Sharon never desisted from his life-long task of striving for peace, survival and security for his beloved Israel.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

KRE/PH END RUDIN

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