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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 12-Jan-2014
12-Jan-14 World View -- Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon dies

Web Log - January, 2014

12-Jan-14 World View -- Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon dies

France's Francois Hollande's affair throws U.S. visit into doubt

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon dies
France's Francois Hollande's affair throws U.S. visit into doubt

Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon dies

Ariel Sharon in October, 1973 (Reuters)

Ariel Sharon in October, 1973 (Reuters)

Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon died on Saturday, after 8 years in a coma caused by a massive stroke in January, 2006. Sharon's death is, perhaps surprisingly, a major international news story, even though he hasn't opened his eyes or spoken a word in 8 years.

Sharon is considered by many to be Israel's greatest national hero. Starting with the 1948 war with Arabs, he fought for Israel in one war after another, often as commander. Many people believe that Israel owes its continued existence to the life of Sharon.

From the Arab point of view, Sharon's victories in all those wars were actually war crimes, where thousands of Palestinian civilians were killed with no justification. The greatest event in this category occurred in 1982, when Christian Arab forces allied with Sharon's Israeli army massacred and butchered hundreds or perhaps thousands of Palestinian refugees in camps in Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. Sharon personally had nothing to do with the attack, but many, including some Israelis, believe that it was a war crime for Sharon not to do anything to stop it, when he allegedly knew that it was in progress.

As Prime Minister in the early 2000s, Sharon began to transform from a warrior to a statesman. He initiated the building of the barrier security fence separating Israel from Arab territory. After the death of Yasser Arafat in November, 2004, Sharon brought about the withdrawal of all Israeli forces and settlements in the Gaza Strip, in a move for peace in cooperation with the President George Bush's May 2003 "Mideast Roadmap to Peace."

When Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in November, 2004, there was a widespread belief that everything in the Mideast would change. It had been thought that there was no Mideast peace agreement because Arafat did everything in his power to stop it, and that with him gone, successful peace talks would go ahead. But as I've written many times, it's a basic principle of Generational Dynamics that great events are determined by masses of people, generations of people, and that politicians are largely irrelevant. The death of Arafat showed that to be true. Things not only didn't get better, they continued to get worse. In Gaza, for example, it had been hoped that the Palestinian residents would create a sound economy and peaceful democracy, but instead, the Palestinian residents spent most of 2005 trashing Gaza, and using it as a base for terrorist attacks against Israel.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat were very similar men. They were born one year apart (1928 and 1929, respectively), and they both survived the bloody, genocidal war between Arabs and Jews that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Each had fought in Arab vs Israeli wars after that, viewed by their supporters as heroes, and by their enemies as terrorists.

However, what always united Sharon and Arafat was that, like all survivors of generational crisis wars, they were determined to make sure that no such war happens again, to their children and grandchildren. So Arafat may have been a terrorist, and he may have been approved suicide bombings that killed Jewish children, but he undoubtedly saw it as the lesser of two evils. Sharon and Arafat shared a view that the greatest evil of all would be to unleash a new genocidal war, one that would kill many more Jewish and Arab children than suicide bombings do. However, their deaths bring exactly the kind of war closer. Jerusalem Post and AP

France's Francois Hollande's affair throws U.S. visit into doubt

François Hollande and French actress Julie Gayet (EPA)

François Hollande and French actress Julie Gayet (EPA)

A gossip magazine has reported that France's Socialist president François Hollande has been riding across Paris each evening on the back of a scooter, arriving at the home of his latest mistress, French actress Julie Gayet. He spends the night there, according to the reports, leaving his officially recognized girlfriend, Valerie Trierweiler back at the Elysee palace, where they live together. An outraged Hollande has demanded that his private life be kept private, and he's even threatened to sue the gossip magazine. However, he didn't deny the facts in the story.

Before Trierweiler, Hollande's previous girlfriend of 30 years and mother of his four children was Segolene Royal. Trierweiler and Royal got into a tweeting spat over Hollande just last year. All this is quite amusing, but it's bad news for Hollande, as his approval rating is now just 15%, the lowest for any president in the past 50 years.

Trierweiler is expected to accompany Hollande on a state visit to the United States next month. That should keep Hollande's latest love affair in the news for some time to come. BBC

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Jan-14 World View -- Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon dies thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (12-Jan-2014) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 12-Jan-2014 12-Jan-14 World View -- Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon dies

Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon dies

France's Francois Hollande's affair throws U.S. visit into doubt

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 12-Jan-2014
12-Jan-14 World View -- Israel's former prime minister Ariel Sharon dies