semitism.net

I posted last week, just after Sharon’s stroke, that there was something fishy about the medical decision-making in his case. Turns out I’m not the only one who had questions.

Richard has been tracking the story. As I suspected, Sharon was placed on blood thinners - specifically, a heparin derivative called enoxaparin (sold in the U.S. as Lovenox and elsewhere as Clexane). What were his physicians thinking? The evidence in the medical literature is clear: anticoagulants don’t reduce the risk of death or disability after a stroke, and they definitely increase the chance of brain hemorrhage, which is what happened to Sharon.

On top of that, it turns out he had cerebral amyloid angiopathy, a brain condition that significantly increases the risk of bleeding. Evidently his doctors missed MRI findings that suggested this diagnosis - or covered it up for political reasons…

Haaretz reported yesterday:

Senior executives at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, where Sharon was first treated in December and again since last Wednesday when he had the second, far more severe stroke, admitted this week that the hospital’s doctors had decided to give the pime minister blood thinners despite the diagnosis of CAA….

(A senior member of his medical team) said there was the fear that if made public, the information would be used against Sharon and his Kadima party, particularly in light of the fact that CAA has often been associated in medical literature with Alzheimer’s Disease.

It seems unlikely that, if Sharon survives, his condition will allow him to return to politics. Perhaps it’s appropriate that he was a victim of his own disinformation.

Sharon is one of the minor monsters of the last century - not a Hitler or a Stalin, but a ruthless militant nationalist in the style of Slobodan Milosevic and P.W. Botha. From the massacre of dozens of unarmed Jordanians in Qilya in 1953, to the bloody and useless engagement in Lebanon (which included his notorious order to his troops not to interfere while militant Phalangists slaughtered thousands of Palestinian refugees under Israeli control) to the brutal seige of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, Sharon has shown himself to be not a warrior, but a butcher.

He has made Israeli foreign policy into a great lie. In his determination to expand Israel’s borders, he fathered the settlement movement and its political party, the Likud. He spawned the school of propaganda that conflates expansionism with security, so persistently blurring the distinction between the two interests that most Israelis see their victims - the Palestinians - as implacable aggressors.

The Disengagement did not represent a change of heart for Sharon, nor a departure from his lifelong program. He was working from the same map he’s been using for decades. Haganah veteran and peace activist Uri Avneri explains:

Sharon believed that Israel must annex all the areas between the Mediterranean and the Jordan without a dense Palestinian population. Already decades ago, he prepared a map that he showed proudly to local and foreign personalities in order to convert them to his views.

According to this map, Israel will annex the areas along the pre-1967 border as well as the Jordan valley, up to the “back of the mountain” (an expression particularly dear to Sharon). It will also annex several East-West strips to connect the Jordan valley with the Green Line. In these territories that are marked for annexation, Sharon created a dense net of settlements…

The areas with a dense Palestinian population, Sharon intended to hand over to Palestinian self-government. He was determined to remove from them all the settlements that were set up there without thinking. This way, eight or nine Palestinian enclaves would have come into being, cut off from each other, each one surrounded by settlers and Israeli army installations…

The Gaza strip is one of these enclaves.

It’s of a measure of Sharon’s megalomania that he’s managed to become the indispensible center of Israeli politics (anyone see a parallel to Arafat?). As he lies paralyzed, Israel is paralyzed. The media are mourning the absence of this great peacemaker. Who else can lead Israel?

Actually it will be quite tonic for Israeli politics if Sharon disappears from the scene. Perhaps it will prompt a sober look at where the settlement process has taken the country; and a re-evaluation of Sharon’s policy of unilateralism and marginalization of the Palestinian Authority.

Not only is Sharon gone, but the Likud is weakened and unpopular. UPS interviewed Labor advisor David Kimche, a former Mossad chief, about the government likely to emerge from the March elections:

Kimche predicted (acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) would ask the Labor Party’s leader Amir Peretz to join a coalition long before he would turn to the Likud’s leader Binyamin Netanyahu. Olmert’s relations with Netanyahu are very bad, Kimche noted.

In the coalition negotiations Kadima and Labor would have to agree on a host of policies including peace and security issues.

Peretz will “demand a price knowing that certainly Mr. Olmert will not easily want to take Mr. Netanyahu as his coalition partner,” Kimche said…

Reiterating Sharon’s policies, Kadima said it would… insist the Palestinians implement all their commitments in the roadmap’s first stage. They should dismantle terror organizations, collect illegal weapons and initiate a security reform.

Only after they fulfill “all their commitments” under that stage could they establish an independent Palestinian state with temporary borders, Kadima said.

Kimche indicated Labor would seek to be easier on the Palestinians.

“There is no chance in heaven that we can reach … any form of negotiations (under such conditions),” he said. “I cannot see in the immediate or in the foreseeable future the Palestinian Authority that can … (see to) disbanding … terror infrastructure,” he argued.

Instead Labor advocated Israel “fight terrorism with everything that we have as if there are no negotiations with the Palestinians and … conduct negotiations … as if there are no terror acts.”

Israel should not wait for a Palestinian partner to emerge but work actively to foster one. “If at the same time we have to withdraw or evacuate some of the settlements in the (occupied) territories then we would do it although we in Labor are not in favor of unilateral withdrawals,” he added.

Of course, that’s only one of many possible scenarios. But no matter what happens in the next few weeks and months, the age of Sharon and Arafat is over. There will be new thinking, new coalitions, new strategies. It’s a particularly important time for the American Jewish community to stay active and involved - especially those of us on the left.

Registration is taking place now to vote for delegates to the World Zionist Congress in June. This is one of the bodies in which American Jews have a formal voice in Israeli affairs. Obviously, I’m no Zionist. But I will try to find out more about the slate, and whether any of the delegates are taking a progressive line. Maybe there is an opportunity to send delegates who would support Peretz, and would speak in favor of peace negotiations and just borders.

In any case, we need to work harder than ever this year to forge an alternative American Jewish voice, and to provide an effective counterweight to powerful groups like AIPAC and the Congress of Presidents.