Israel Palestine 5. Ariel Sharon. Hero or Murderer or Security Threat?
To his fans, who were many, Ariel Sharon was a hero, a defender of his people. His exploits during the 1973 war were legendary. But not everyone agreed. To the Lebanese he was the Butcher of Beirut. Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, under whom Sharon served, saw him as a security threat, an insubordinate general who escalated the Lebanese War into a major crisis. Begin said that he expected to wake up some morning to look out the window and see his office surrounded by tanks. And Sharon's insistence on capturing as much of the West Bank as possible set up a future crisis whose outcome we cannot yet tell.
This is the story of Sharon's life and career, the good, the bad, and the ugly.