Word: shiffer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dark star of Shiffer's story is Ariel Sharon; the central theme, how Sharon pressed for the invasion from the day he became Defense Minister in 1981. That is not news, of course, but Snow Ball amply documents Sharon's zealous lobbying in Cabinet meetings and among his generals. Sharon plumped for the attack, according to Shiffer, despite the fact that Israeli military intelligence concluded that the skirmishing between Palestine Liberation Organization forces and Israeli soldiers along the Lebanese border in July 1981 was provoked by the Israelis, not by the P.L.O. The Begin government, which used...
...Shiffer also underscores Sharon's frequent and close meetings with Bashir Gemayel, the Christian Maronite warlord who was assassinated only nine days before his scheduled inauguration as Lebanese President in September 1982. In Shiffer's account, Bashir asks Sharon if Israel would object to the Lebanese sending in bulldozers to flatten "the built-up areas," four weeks before the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut. Sharon's reply: "This is not our business...
...Shiffer says that the conversations in his book are distilled from transcripts, notes and minutes of meetings, all from the Israeli side. Conversations that took place in English have all been translated into Hebrew. Even if the quotations were indisputable, the interpretation by participants would not be. For example, Snow Ball contains a lengthy exchange between Sharon and Alexander Haig, supposedly showing that the former Secretary of State gave Israel the green light for an invasion...
According to Shiffer, Sharon took Haig's monologue as the go-ahead signal. Haig insisted to TIME through a spokesman last week that he never gave Sharon the encouragement implied. According to Haig, moreover, the former Defense Minister has assured him he never took his words as approval. Even if the Secretary of State did deliver the speech cited in Sniffer's book, it at best constituted not a green light but an amber one, full of the normal ambiguities of diplomatic discourse...
...book sheds little new light on Menachem Begin. Since his retirement last September, the former Prime Minister has become a virtual recluse, and is unlikely to share publicly his thoughts on the invasion. Shiffer does state that Begin feels deceived by Sharon about the chances for a swift, complete victory in Lebanon. The book does not say whether the majority of Israelis feel deceived as well...