A former leader remains illusive

BENJAMIN JOFFE-WALT THE MEDIA LINE

In the illustrated children’s book Where’s Waldo?, readers are asked to search through confusing, unrealistic scenes to find a lankly, ridiculous-looking man in a striped red shirt named Waldo. Many of the illustrations contain a number of red herrings: red and white objects deceptively similar to Waldo. Locating Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of Israel and arguably the Jewish state’s most influential leader in the last 15 years, is a similarly frustrating task.

The search began on Google. Almost a dozen books have been written about Sharon, including hundreds of eulogy-like profiles, thousands of articles about the stroke that ended his political career and tens of thousands of blogs and Twitter messages speculating about his state since.

Some say he rests at his Sycamore Ranch in Israel’s Negev Desert. Others say he is in Tel Hashomer Hospital outside Tel Aviv. Yet others say he has been transferred to an intensive care unit and is on his last breath. Rumors on Twitter recently even claimed that Sharon had died. Mostly, though, the mainstream Israeli media says very little about the country’s former leader.

“There is certainly a degree of caution, perhaps too much caution, as to what we write and how we write about him,” said Ran Revnik, the lead writer at the Israeli health journal Menta. “It’s not exactly taboo, but the situation is a bit bizarre, because there is a prime minister who is not with us, yet he didn’t die, so it’s a bit out of the box.

“I also think there is just nothing to write,” Revnik added. “When there were changes in his condition, we wrote about it, but now he’s a ‘vegetable.’ What is there to say?”

Sharon, a provocateur for most of his life, is a legend of Israeli military and political history to whom former U.S. president Ronald Reagan once referred as “the bad guy who seemingly looks forward to a war.”

Sharon first rose to fame as a platoon commander during Israel’s War of Independence, then as the head of Israel’s first special forces unit, responsible for the 1953 Qibya massacre, which resulted in more than 65 civilian deaths and massive destruction in the Arab village. Sharon became a national hero during the 1973 Yom Kippur War by crossing the Suez Canal, but was later forced to resign as defence minister after being found personally – but indirectly – responsible for the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacre during the 1982 Lebanon War.

Then, 10 years ago, Sharon famously ascended Jerusalem’s Temple Mount escorted by 1,000 police officers a few days ahead of what became the Second Intifada. He had been a prominent patron of the movement to build Jewish communities in the territories captured in the 1967 war, then, as prime minister, however, he led Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, a move that increased his popularity at home and abroad.

All that ended in December 2005, when Sharon suffered a minor stroke. He was hospitalized for two days and prescribed anticoagulant medication. Then, on Jan. 4, 2006, Sharon suffered a massive stroke while staying at his ranch. He was taken by ambulance to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Centre, where he underwent two separate operations for a total of 21 hours and placed in an induced coma.

On the night of his stroke, Sharon was declared “temporarily incapable of discharging his powers” and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took over the reins of government. Within a few months, Israel held elections and Olmert won handily, officially replacing Sharon.

As Israel went through notable political turmoil during the transition, the press reported rumored scandals regarding Sharon’s care, after it was revealed that he had been prescribed blood thinners in response to his first stroke – despite being diagnosed with a brain disorder known as cerebral amyloid angiopathy. Patients with the disease are known to have a significantly elevated risk of cerebral hemorrhage if they take blood thinners. Medical experts believe Sharon lost all his cognitive abilities during the second stroke and that he is in a permanent vegetative state with little chance of waking up. However, in April 2007, Sharon’s son, Omri, told Israel’s Channel 10 News that his father was able to respond to verbal stimulation with a slight tightening of his hand. Due to immune deficiency, his medical caretakers do not allow anyone to visit him, save the occasional visit by his sons.

My search for Sharon continued with Dov Weisglass, former chief-of-staff to then-prime minister Sharon, who is now a lawyer in Tel Aviv. “As a matter of strict principle, the family will not speak with anyone, or allow any visitors,” he warned. “His sons made a decision, right or wrong, that they do not cooperate with the media whatsoever – it’s nothing personal.”

I got the beeper number for Gilad Sharon, the former prime minister’s other son, from an acquaintance. “Who still uses a beeper?” I thought to myself, and sent Gilad a message.

Two days later, while out at a bar, I got a call.

“Hi, Benjamin?” the caller said.

“Yes,” I said.

“This is Gilad.”

“Which Gilad?” I said, not yet recalling that I had sent the son of Israel’s former leader a beep more than 48 hours ago.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Apparently it’s the wrong number.”

Dial tone.

Getting nowhere, I headed to Sharon’s ranch, which sits fewer than four miles from the northeastern border of the Gaza Strip just outside the city of Sderot. Workers were sweating in the fields and endless rows of citrus trees were lined up in sandy, light soil.

Sharon spent most of his free time in this pastoral valley. During his time as prime minister, he would retreat to the ranch on Fridays with an entourage of his closest advisers, a group that came to be known as the “Ranch Forum,” a reference to their influence over the country’s most important decisions.

Today, barbed wire and surveillance cameras surround the ranch, said to be worth upwards of 10 million dollars. Visitors are greeted by a huge gate through which it is possible to catch a glimpse of a couple of large homes, a basketball court, farming equipment and an expansive compound beyond view.

“They are not here,” the guard said through an intercom, advising me to leave because the Sharon sons were not home. “I’ll give them your number and ask them to call you.”

Feeling a bit like an ashamed stalker, I retreated from the gate and called directory assistance, looking for the personal phone numbers of Omri and Gilad.

“You have the wrong Omri dumb-ass,” the person on the other end said, in a style typical of Israeli telephone etiquette. “There are other Omri Sharon’s on this earth.”

I spoke to a number of Omri and Gilad Sharons, all of whom had similarly delivered answers.

I drove half a mile up the road and meandered about in the Sharon family citrus grove. Sweaty and baking in the noon heat, the trees took on a dazzling bright glow, almost colorless in the sun.

A pick-up truck pulled up and a bald man with a well-rounded face belted out: “Can I help you?”

“Uh, no, I just got lost ... I’ll be on my way,” I answered, assuming the man was a nosy farm laborer from the area. There was something strange about him, though, and I tilted my head, staring inquisitively as my face winced in the sun. He, too, tilted his head, looking straight back at me.

I drove off, only a few minutes later realizing that the sullen questioner had been Omri Sharon. I kicked myself, then continued on the hour drive to try my luck at Tel Hashomer, where Sharon could be hospitalized.

Chaim Sheba Medical Centre is a massive complex of a few dozen large buildings. An official at the hospital told me he was not authorized to give me any information as to the status or whereabouts of the former prime minister without the family’s permission.

“He is a private person, just like you and me,” said a hospital spokesperson, by phone.“You need the family’s permission.”

I piped back that the former prime minister is not, by any objective standard, a simple, private person, and that reaching the family is not exactly a matter of opening the phone book. “Believe me,” I said. “I’ve tried that approach.”

Beyond many episodes of ER, I realized I have very little understanding as to where in a hospital a former prime minister in a vegetative state might be placed after a massive stroke four years prior. I tried neurology. Nope. The recovery wards. Nope. Then long-term care. Not there. Geriatrics. Also, no.

Eventually I was directed, with a nurse’s wink of an eye, to the rehabilitation hospital on the other side of the complex, but it has 800 beds spread out over 14 wings. I tried every single department and, after about an hour of wandering and a few more helpful winks from other nurses, ended up in respiratory care. Then I noticed a few heavily armed guards.

“That’s a bit strange for a few old people on oxygen” I thought to myself. “Bingo!”

A bunch of visitors and a paramilitary policeman with black boots and a machine gun sat in the lobby. No one seemed to be paying any attention to me. I walked through the 18-bed ward and an agent from Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence service, recognizable by his earpiece and sour demeanor, seemed to also pay me no mind.

I asked the head nurse, Marina, about Sharon. Marina and her team of nurses regularly move the former prime minister and monitor him 24 hours a day at a cost of some $400,000 a year to Israeli taxpayers.

Taken aback, Marina said journalists never come to the hospital, and that I must have the permission of Dr. Arie Wolner, head of the department to be there. She directed me to his office and past a third Shin Bet agent who, not paying attention, allowed me through, perhaps thinking I was there for a medical consult.

Wolner’s office was in a back alcove of the respiratory ward right next to Sharon’s room. It occurred to me that I had made it past three armed guards and could simply walk into Sharon’s room, photograph him – or even kill him. The door to Sharon’s room was open; he seemed surprisingly unprotected. Perhaps out of fear of being shot, perhaps out of respect for the Sharon family, I declined the temptation and approached the doctor.

“The family’s explicit request is not to give out any information about Mr. Sharon’s condition,” the doctor said, adding that Sharon’s sons visit regularly. “I’m forbidden to speak to you about this.”

The Shin Bet guard who let me past realized that I was a journalist and took me back to the lobby, where I was detained for an hour by his superior, a former paratrooper and a paramilitary policeman. Surprisingly, the intelligence agents were less interested in my journalistic intentions than in how I managed to get past all three guards without being questioned. They politely asked me a number of questions, searched my belongings and bickered with one another over whose job it had been to stop me. After an hour or so, I was escorted out of the complex. I never did get to see Sharon.

Once a military and political legend who founded the Israeli special forces, took the Suez Canal and forced his country out of the Gaza Strip and, arguably, the most influential provocateur in Israeli history is now lying motionless, fed through a feeding tube, weighing less than half what he once did, his only sign of life the occasional blink of an eye.

^TOP