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palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Old soldiers never die, they just fade away. Or in the case of Ariel Sharon who passed over the weekend at 85, they are strapped in a vegetative state for eight years and then put to rest after a lonely funeral. The late Israeli Prime Minister was eulogized in a service at the Knesset in Jerusalem earlier today and the turnout was low. There was no scramble for foreign dignitaries to board planes and travel hundreds or thousands of miles like they did for Nelson Mandela weeks ago. No one showed up from Africa or Latin America, and Vice President Joe Biden was the only international representative to give an address.........
........Heading up the American delegation to memorialize Sharon, Vice President Biden used the opportunity to reaffirm unbending U.S support to Israel; “We have made the case for Israel around the world,” he said, continuing, “We have never failed to defend Israel’s legitimacy.” Biden then closed his remarks by stressing, “the bond with the U.S. will never, ever be broken.”

Biden did praise Sharon for personal character. He mentioned his “political courage” and “physical courage,” which the former prime minister and minister of defense used “to lead men straight into enemy lines and behind them,” but Biden was careful to not mention any military feat by any specifics. He quickly U-turned to Sharon’s love of the Jewish people, by quoting James Joyce and William Shakespeare. Biden conveyed the sanitized point that Sharon was committed to the “survival of the state of Israel and the Jewish people, wherever they resided.”

“Prime Minister Sharon was a complex man,” said Biden. “Since he passed away in the days ahead there will be much written about him.”.......

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/01/showing-funeral-sharon.html

Noam Chomsky on the Legacy of Ariel Sharon: Not Speaking Ill of the Dead "Imposes a Vow of Silence"

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/13/noam_chomsky_on_the_legacy_of