Biography - Ariel Sharon is a fifty minute film from the A&E Biography series. This brief program describes the life of Ariel Sharon, an important and influential military and political leader in Israel during the 20th century. With plenty of live footage, the viewer is given a sense of the vexatious struggles between Israel and Palestine that still continue today.
Ariel Sharon grew up in an Israeli farming settlement. His parents had come to Israel from Russia after World War II, when the area had been opened to Jews. Sharon lived through a period of prominent Zionism (the effort to return the Jewish people to Israel). The result of this endeavor was the rapid development and growth of Israel and tensions with Palestine. Throughout his childhood, Sharon witnessed violence and hostility between the Israelis and Palestinians. As a young man, he became involved with the growing Israeli military force and became an outstanding military leader. His achievements as a general created opportunities for attaining political power later in his life; he was appointed Secretary of Agriculture, Defense Minister, and was eventually elected Prime Minister of Israel. His major goal throughout his military and political careers was to keep Israel secure. This objective drove the many controversial acts of his career.
Sharon was known to be argumentative and forward in both behavior and attitude. He tended to be forceful and used offensive tactics both militarily and politically. Incidents such as visiting Temple Mount and bulldozing Israeli buildings when evacuating settlements to return to Egypt are examples of this. In an especially bold and aggressive maneuver, he chased guerrilla fighters from Israel into Beirut and then orchestrated attacks in the city that resulted in many civilian deaths and created mass objections from other nations and the Israeli people.
Despite the fact that Sharon did not achieve peaceful cohabitation between Israel and Palestine, he was extremely influential in Israel's development as a nation. To his credit, the discord between these two nations was, and continues to be, a very complicated issue. The problem formed over many hundreds of years and has confounded many world leaders.
I would highly recommend this program. There were many relevant interviews and footage, so it was not boring or dull. The movie was brief but thorough, sensitive but realistic, and really explained the issues going on in Israel and Palestine. The fact that the topic is so important in our world today is also a reason that I would recommend this biography. I learned a lot from watching this AV presentation and would be interested in learning more about affairs in this region.
