Ariel Sharon, the former Prime Minister of Israel, died today, at the age of eighty-five. In January of 2006, while he was still in office, Sharon suffered a devastating stroke from which he never recovered. A few weeks later, Ari Shavit published “The General,” his Profile of Sharon, in The New Yorker. “The General” was based on six years’ worth of conversation with Sharon, and it tracks, from year to year, Sharon’s changing mind. When Shavit and Sharon first met, in 1999, Sharon was a hard-liner. But by 2003, Sharon had “decided to divert history from its course.” “I don’t think that we need to rule over another people and run its life,” he told Shavit. “I don’t think that we have the strength for that.” It was a shift that astonished Shavit, along with the citizens of Israel and observers around the world.
New Yorker: Remembering Ariel Sharon
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon speaks in front of a financial forum in Tel Aviv 11 February 2004. Former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon died at a hospital near Tel Aviv on January 11, 2014 aged of 85, after spending eight years in a coma. AFP PHOTO/YOAV LEMMER
