Sharon was against the Separation Fence

Normblog's blogger' profile today features Israeli blogger Na'ama Carmi.

To the question : What are your favourite blogs? She answers:

Friends of George (Hebrew) and Normblog.



So I checked out Friends of George. It is in Hebrew, authored by Yossi Gurevitz, who seems to be an Israeli leftist. I'm going to translate one segment of what he says.

This is the passage in Hebrew:

שנתיים לשבץ שפקד את אריאל שרון, בבכי ונהי, קולות מספד ותלישת שיער. איך, איך הלך מאיתנו, מותיר אותנו יתומים. איזה חוש הומור היה לו. ואיך הוא הסתכל לביבי בעיניים ולא מצמץ. וקור הרוח. והחיוך. והטיפול האבהי באנשי הלשכה.
הכל נכון. היה לו חוש הומור מרושע וטוב, הוא היה אדם קר רוח באופן נדיר, הוא בז לנתניהו והפחיד אותו, והיה אכפת לו מאד מהאנשים שעובדים איתו. ובכל זאת.

הוא היה המושחת שבפוליטיקאים הישראלים, במיוחד בתקופה בה היה ראש ממשלה פופולרי. כראש ממשלה, ניהל מלחמת התשה פראית עם הפלסטינים, בהניחו – נכונה, כמסתבר – שהם יישברו ראשונים. לשם כך, היה מוכן להקזת דם של אלפי ישראלים – דמם של אלפי הפלסטינים מעולם לא נחשב בעיניו - ובלבד שלא לבנות את חומת ההפרדה, שהיתה כובלת אותו פוליטית.

And its translation:

The media is full today with mourning and lamentations, remembering that it's been two years since Sharon’s fatal stroke took him from us. They recall how he could look Bibi in the eye without flinching. What a wicked sense of humour he had, and how he cared for his administrative stuff.

All true. He did have a sharp sense of humour. He was uncommonly detached. He loathed Netanyahu and frightened him off; he cared about those working with him.

And yet…

He was the most corrupt of Israeli politicians, especially when he was prime minister. He waged a ruthless war of attrition against the Palestinians, assuming – correctly as it turned out – that they would be the first to break.

To that end, he was willing to shed the blood of thousands of Israeli soldiers (the blood of Palestinians never counted much with him anyway), if that was the price needed to avoid building the separation fence, which he considerd to be an imposition that would restrain his political agenda.

It's the red highlighted sentence that caught my eye: The rationale which so many on the International Left and others - including Condoleeza Rice more recently at Annapolis - have rejected as bogus: That the barrier was put up in order to save life, the lives of Israelis, and by inference, the lives of many Palestinians.

Here we have it from a Lefty who considered building the separation fence as an urgent humanitarian necessity, to prevent Palestinian terrorists from coming into Israel and committing massacres, to avoid the need to pursue and punish the terrorists and their helpers, causing a great deal of bloodshed within the Palestinian population, and paying with the blood of thousands of IDF soldiers in the process.

A lot of bloodshed, on both sides, has been and is being, spared by this fence. You would think that is a good thing.