The event: The death of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
Date: 10th of Shvat
Arik Sharon passed away this year. Sharon was a man who founded the Likud and rose to the position of prime minister. One of the man's main characteristics was his concern that at all times and all the time he would be 'on the wheel,' as he put it. He made sure to appear and present himself in the media as a security expert, and he never missed a single second to exploit the media to glorify his name.
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Even when the report was negative, he always made sure to star and appear so that he would never, for a single moment, be forgotten by the public. It is not for nothing that the most important sentence associated with his name is: "They didn't want him as Chief of Staff - they accepted him as Minister of Defense, they didn't want him as Minister of Defense - they will accept him as Prime Minister.".
This statement by journalist Uri Dan came after it was determined that he had a hand in the failures of the First Lebanon War, and it was decided that he could no longer serve as Minister of Defense. He presented himself to the general public as a right-wing man who loved the Land of Israel, but later made moves that no one dared to make before him, including the evacuation of Gush Katif, during the disengagement process, at which time he also promised that security would arrive in the area 'and that no more rockets would fall from there.' During those years, he was 'trampled' by leftists, and even when he was suspected of crimes, he took the blame on himself.
In his final days, in a Saturday sermon, the Rabbi Yosef declared that the man "will receive one blow to the head and will not rise." A few weeks later, he suffered a stroke. He founded the Kadima party, and then suffered another stroke that left him bedridden, in a coma until his last day.
This year he passed away.
A few dozen accompanied him to his bedside. As if dead, forgotten by the heart, he lay dormant in the hospital ward and later at his home on Sycamore Farm. People no longer grew up with his stories, and videos or photos of him on Facebook or WhatsApp stopped being posted.
The younger generation is almost unaware of his exploits, his power, and what he did do for the good of the country.
The picture with the bandage: what was there??
This is how worldly fame passes. Ariel Sharon knew how to use the media to his advantage. During the Yom Kippur War, he made sure that the pictures that appeared in the media were mainly those with the bandage on his head. Only later was it discovered that he had no name, but only a slight scratch.
It can be stated that if he were alive today, Sharon would have taken advantage of the new media, and perhaps even been elected president. But that did not happen.
Sharon's funeral procession was a polar opposite to the funeral of another famous person - the rabbi Ovadia Yosef, zt"l, who died three months before him.
Rabbi Ovadia was accompanied by hundreds of thousands. Sharon, as mentioned, by a few dozen. The inevitable comparison was jarring and painful for the secular media, which had difficulty understanding why many more people marched behind the bed of a great rabbi in Israel than the bed of the great general.
Arik Sharon died. But even after his death, right-wingers refused to forgive him, certainly not the evacuees and displaced persons of Gush Katif. They recall that even after the evacuation and despite his promises, he dumped them in remote places, without a fair possibility of real rehabilitation.
