Ariel Sharon

Re “Sharon Swamps Barak in Israeli Vote for Premier,” Feb. 7:

Ariel Sharon, I think, is the Winston Churchill of Israel, while Ehud Barak, a good and decent man, is its Neville Chamberlain--another good and decent man. Barak, like Chamberlain, has attempted to appease the unappeasable. For years, Churchill got up in Parliament and warned of Hitler and the coming fascist storm. Sharon, like Churchill, is a steely eyed realist. He knows, and he has always known, that the continuing freedom of Israel, its very existence, comes at a high price. He is a ferocious warrior. Can Israel afford anything less?

LOUIS S. LYONS

Woodland Hills

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Many Jews--now Israelis--escaped a mass murderer. Now they elect one. “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”--Albert Einstein.

ROBERT MEYERHOF

Los Angeles

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Re “Is Ariel Sharon Israel’s Milosevic?” Commentary, Feb. 5: There is a concept of righteous violence. In the 1953 raid on Kibya, a mother and three children had had their throats cut by Arab terrorists, and this in turn prompted a reprisal action commanded by Sharon. The Lebanon War was in reaction to and intended to prevent the murders of Jewish women and children--such as those that took place at a school in Kiryat Shemona, Maalot--and the abduction and murder of bus passengers on the coast highway. The terrorist raids by Arafat’s PLO and Ahmed Jabril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine murdered over 150 women and children.

Were the Allies of World War II on the same moral plane as the Nazis when they bombed German cities in reaction to German bombing of civilians in England and on the European continent? Should Israel allow violence against Jews to be a one-way street?

MAX KESSLER

Los Angeles

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Thanks for your excellent piece by James Ron. It states the facts about the past misdeeds of Sharon.

ATIF FAREED

Henderson, Nev.