Dear friends of Israel:

On January 4, 2010 it was exactly four years since the former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fell into a coma after he had suffered a second stroke. This sad anniversary was a cause for Sharon’s former spokesman and close co-worker over many years, Ra’anan Gissin, to make public comments. He said that ironically Benjamin Netanyahu has turned out to be the political heir of Ariel Sharon, although the recent Premier once was one of his most vociferous critics. Gissin also noted that Netanyahu, like Sharon, moved to the center of the political map after becoming Prime Minister. In doing so, he has followed the “Sharon school of political thought” when he unilaterally froze the settlement construction and negotiated territorial compromise with the Americans before doing so with the Palestinians. “Those who claimed to be Sharon’s successors failed because the tsunami waves that came after his disappearance were too much for them,” Gissin said. “The tragedy is that his fiercest critics … have turned out to be his real successors. Netanyahu hasn’t formed a Kadima, but he has realigned his own party to the Center.” Israel’s recent Premier has taken this step in order to make the decisions he has to make regarding the negotiations with the Palestinians.

Other Sharon advisors said Netanyahu still had to prove himself before they would mention him in the same breath with their former boss. After the decision regarding the settlement freeze Netanyahu is now facing the same poisonous attacks from extremist elements in his party that Sharon did from him. The question is, however, whether Netanyahu will have Sharon’s courage and ability to understand that leadership has a price and whether he will “walk the walk” and not just “talk the talk”. It remains to be seen if he will be a leader or a slave of his Likud party.

Sharon’s former followers also said that were he to wake now, he would be disappointed by the outcome of at least two of his political decisions. In the time before his illness he established the Kadima party and ordered the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Sharon’s political advisor Erez Halfon mentioned that Sharon personally had a difficult time with the Gaza Strip disengagement, but he thought that it would bring Israel security and show the world who is for peace and who is not. Halfon did not know how Sharon would feel if he saw the result of his decision, but it was still too early to judge the move. He also said: “Sharon will be remembered as a real bulldozer who could move things in every office he held. I still hope a miracle happens and he is allowed to end his life in the country he loved so much in a very different way than the tragic situation he is in right now.”

Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu are good examples for the wide gap between the opposition with its theoretical reasoning and the decisions that a political leader has to make within the realities of this world.

Sharing with you the assurance that even the political realities in this world are subject to God and are serving as instruments for fulfilling His purposes and His word, I am sending you a warm Shalom,

Fredi Winkler