That’s how Charles Krauthammer describes Ariel Sharon’s stroke, in a column that expresses many sentiments I have had here, only more eloquently. He writes:
The stroke suffered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could prove to be one of the great disasters in the country’s nearly 60-year history. As I write this, Sharon’s condition remains uncertain, but the severity of his stroke makes it unlikely that he will survive, let alone return to power. That could be disastrous because Sharon represented, indeed embodied, the emergence of a rational, farsighted national idea that seemed poised in the coming elections to create a stable governing political center for the first time in decades.
Read the whole thing here.
One of the greatest tragedies in American history is that the country was deprived of Abraham Lincoln’s post-Civil War leadership when he was assasinated. The timing of Sharon’s stroke may prove just as tragic for Israel.