Sharon: An Israeli Caesar

By Uzi Benziman. New York, N.Y.: Adama Books, 1985. 276 pp. $17.95.

Reviewed by Donald Neff

In the words of Israeli newsman Uzi Benziman, Ariel Sharon is intolerant, pusillanimous, violent, irritable, power hungry, a liar and eternally suspicious. And that's only the half of it. Benziman also calls him "deceitful, crafty, uncouth, egotistic, and paranoid." He has "little use for democracy and its values" as well as a "sick personality." Sharon was the architect of the disastrous invasion of Lebanon, which cost 666 Israeli lives and the deaths of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians. In addition, the Israeli Government's Kahan Commission concluded that he was "indirectly responsible" for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Beirut. As a result, Sharon was forced to resign as Israel's defense minister in 1983. Yet, Benziman concludes in his highly critical biography of one of Israel's most controversial leaders, Sharon may one day become prime minister.

The reasons for this lie in Sharon's capacity for self-promotion and his uninhibited ambitions, which have driven him through his career to be openly scornful of his superiors, reckless with the truth, violent, disobedient and a political schemer, according to Benziman. He adds that Sharon is undoubtedly a genuine war hero, although his feats were frequently exaggerated, particularly in the 1973 war, and that excessive violence marked every phase of his life.

Sharon, a native-born Israeli, gained prominence in the Israel Defense Forces in 1953 as the leader of commando Unit 101. Sharon led raids that routinely and indiscriminately killed women and children, writes Benziman. Among the victims were 69 Palestinians, about half of them women and children, killed in a Unit 101 raid against the village of Qibya.

The next year Sharon was made head of the paratroopers, which he led in a series of bloody clashes against Arab forces, including the provocative 1955 Gaza attack against Egyptian troops and the 1956 attack on Qalqilia.

After a comparatively uneventful period, Sharon was appointed the chief of staff of the Northern Command, which faced Syria. His aggressive policies so inflamed relations with Syria that Sharon had to be ordered to limit his operations. In 1967, as a major general at the age of 39, he commanded one of Israel's divisions in the Sinai, where during the June war he won considerable praise for the originality of his tactics. It was in 1969 that Sharon received command of the important Southern Command, which guarded the Sinai, including the Gaza Strip. There Sharon's ruthlessness was given full sway. He launched a campaign against Palestinian guerrillas which Benziman describes as "Sharon's reign of terror." Sharon's forces killed or captured 742 "terrorists" in a six-month period and essentially wiped out Palestinian resistance in the Strip. He also forcibly removed thousands of Bedouins from northern Sinai and openly encouraged the establishment of Jewish settlements in their place.

Despite his actions, which were popular in Israel, Sharon's scheming and quarreling with his superiors left him with no support among the military hierarchy. When Sharon was informed that his life's goal of becoming chief of staff, Israel's top military post, would not be realized, he resigned in the summer of 1973 to embark on a political career. During the 1973 war, however, he was called back to service.

To the outside world, Sharon's division was the heroic force that crossed to the west side of the Suez Canal and, albeit after the cease-fire agreement, cut off Egypt's Third Army from its supply bases. In fact, Benziman asserts, Sharon repeatedly failed to achieve the objectives assigned him, and disobeyed orders so frequently that his superiors sought to fire him. At war's end he was stripped of his rank, Benziman writes, yet Sharon's public relations campaigns resulted in him emerging from the war as a public hero.

He won a seat in parliament and was appointed minister of agriculture after Menachem Begin's upset victory in the 1977 elections. Sharon used his post to win the support of the radical right by embarking on an aggressive program to establish settlements throughout the occupied territories. When other ministers opposed his plans, he browbeat them or used such ploys as claiming new settlements were only expansions of older ones.

It was then only a short step to become minister of defense. In that post, Benziman charges, Sharon not only deliberately misled his cabinet colleagues but Prime Minister Begin too about his plans for the invasion of Lebanon. Rather than limiting the invasion to a depth of only 25 miles in southern Lebanon, as he had assured the cabinet he would, Sharon all along wanted to take Beirut and force Syria's troops out of the country.

It is this man, says Benziman, who still has a good chance of becoming Israel's next leader, largely because "the people hanker after a 'strong man,' someone who can restore order." Benziman concludes that "Ariel Sharon is cut out for the job." What he doesn't answer is the chilling question: "Is Israel cut out for such a leader?"

Donald Neff is the author of histories of the 1956 and 1967 wars in the Middle East and most recently completed a history of the 1973 war.