Basic HTML Version
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, SEPTEMBER 20, 1982
PAGE 13
[ To another question, one about possible trouble with the Syrians
in the Bekaa Valley Sharon answers]:
SHARON: •••We can shell Damascus any moment. But••.we sincerely
prefer a peaceful solution. Why should war be always the way to
settle things?
FALLACI: What about that! I thought you liked war.
SHARON: This is the biggest mistake that people make about me. I
mean, to portray me as a warrior, a warmonger who likes to shoot.
I hate war. Only one who has been in war as many times as I have,
only who has seen in war all the horrors I have seen, only who has
lost in war all the friends I have lost, and has been wounded as I
have, can hate war as much as I do. And if you ask me what the
happiest years of my life have been I answer, the three years I
was on my farm, driving my tractor and taking care of my
beautiful sheep.
[ Sharon then explained his view that the Palestinians already
have a state--Jordan, or as he refers to it, in its older term
"Transjordan"--thus excluding the West Bank which the Jordanian
army took over in 1948 and held until 1967.]
SHARON: We shall never permit another Palestinian state••• [in]
what you call the West Bank••••Judea and Samaria shall not be
touched. Nor Gaza. Forget it. Judea and Samaria belong to us.
They have been ours for thousands and thousands of years. Judea
and Samaria� Israel. So is Gaza, all Gaza Strip. And even if
the Bible did not exist, evenif ourreel1ngs did not exist, our
security exists. Our survival. This is a crucial matter because
in that region two thirds of the Israeli population lives and
without Judea and Samaria we would be wiped out immediately.
FALLACI: General Sharon, do you believe in God?
SHARON: Well, I am not religious. I never was, though I follow
certain rules of the Jews like not eating pork. I never eat pork.
However, I think I believe in God. Yes, I think I can say that I
believe in God.
FALLACI: Then pray God also for those who don't believe in him,
please. Because I have the terrible hint that you are about to
throw us all into some apocalyptic disaster.
Population Change in Israel a Major Factor to Consider
One cannot fully understand events in the Middle East without comprehending
one key factor: the shift in Israel's population in favor of the Sephardic
community--those Jews whose ancestral host countries were in the Arab world
rather than Europe. The Sephardic community has found a lot in common with
Prime Minister Begin, an Ashkenazi Jew from Poland, who nevertheless has
held some non-conventional
z
ionist ideas, more to Sephardic thinking.
Milton Viorst, writing in the DAILY TELEGRAPH of London explains the impact
this crucial shift has: