Sharon came, spoke, and went. The speech got some coverage on an inside page of a newspaper, but it wasn’t a headline event. Yet it stayed with me, as did another Sharon speech I attended in Washington during those same years. Listening to Sharon, I didn’t hear a radical ideologue bent on “politicide” of the Palestinians\u2014his usual portrayal<\/a> in Israeli academe. I heard a hard-nosed former soldier concerned first and foremost with Israel’s security and preservation as a Jewish state.<\/p>\n The second Palestinian intifada resurrected Sharon, thanks to people like me. I had supported the Labor-led peace process, knowing it would involve far-reaching compromises. I voted for Ehud Barak in 1999. But when Yasir Arafat tried to leverage Israel by promoting mass terrorism, he changed my mind. I thought it important to erase from the record those concessions that had been offered by Israel at Camp David and, more importantly, at Taba. I saw Sharon as personifying strength, determination, and a willingness to act boldly, not in pursuit of a\u00a0utopian \u00a0“New Middle East,” but of Israel’s national survival. So I cast my ballot for him in 2001, as did a decisive majority of Israeli voters.<\/p>\n The situation was very different in my university setting, where I was a lone soul, both then and in 2003, when I voted for Likud. Since the disengagement and Sharon’s creation of Kadima, I’ve run into people on campus who’ve announced their intention to cast a ballot for the man they once reviled. Now they never will. No elected leader ever meets all expectations, and to believe that they might is to subscribe to a dangerous sort of secular messianism. But of all the votes I’ve cast, I least regret the two I cast for Ariel Sharon, and I would have cast another one.<\/p>\n As to the future, I claim no special insight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I heard Ariel Sharon speak on several occasions, but I only met him once. In 1996,\u00a0as director of the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, I\u00a0set about\u00a0scheduling a speaker for the annual address in Dayan’s memory. In practice, the … Continue reading ![\"Ariel](\"http:\/\/www.martinkramer.org\/sandbox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Sharon.jpg\")
So Sharon got the invitation, and he accepted it. For my academic colleagues, it was as if I had summoned Satan from the depths. While I awaited Sharon’s arrival on the appointed evening, I scanned the audience and saw few if any of them in attendance. (Yael Dayan wasn’t there either.) I recall feeling relieved that the honor of introducing Sharon had been claimed in advance by Zalman Shoval<\/a>, a board member. I would have been hard-pressed to come up with enough admiring words.<\/p>\n