What is the number of Ariel Sharon's victims?

Answer 1

Answer 1

Combatants killed in war are called "casualties," not "victims." Even civilians who are unintentionally killed are called casualties.

Ariel Sharon led the war against well-armed terrorist combatants in Lebanon, 1982-85. This was a necessary military undertaking, to protect Israel's citizens who were being deliberately targeted by terrorist acts. So I think your question should be directed against the terrorists.

Answer 2

Most of the enmity and ire that Ariel Sharon has earned, especially in Arab circles, come from his completely legitimate military successes, especially during the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1948-9, 1956, 1967, 1973, the War of Attrition, and his direction of the Lebanese Civil War. However, Sharon was not an angel and he bears some or all of the weight for three distinct massacres that claimed unnecessary victims.

Qibya Massacre (1953): Called Operation Shoshana by the Israeli Defense forces, Israeli troops under Ariel Sharon attacked the village of Qibya in the West Bank. 69 Palestinian Arabs, two thirds of them women and children, were killed and 45 houses, a school, and a mosque were destroyed. The attack followed cross-border raids from the Jordanian occupied West Bank in which Israeli civilians were killed. The U.S. State Department and Jewish communities around the world condemned the attack.

Battle of Mitla (1956): During the Arab-Israeli War of 1956 (also called the Suez Crisis or the War of Tripartite Aggression), Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan did not order any forward advances, but Sharon nonetheless decided to attack entrenched Egyptian positions at Jebel Heitan. Because of their strong position, the Egyptians were able to bring heavy fire down on the Israeli soldiers. Eventually, Sharon was successful, but a total of 260 Egyptian and 38 Israeli soldiers were killed during the battle. Many within the IDF criticized the battle and its casualties as being unnecessary and unauthorised aggression meant to serve to aggrandize Sharon's reputation.

Massacres of Sabra and Shatila (1982):While it should be made clear the massacres were performed by Lebanese Phalangists and not organized or condoned by Sharon or Israel, as Israel's Defense Minister in 1982, Sharon had overall responsibility for the area of the Sabra and Shatilla camps, since Israel controlled that area in Lebanon. An Israeli commission of inquiry found that Sharon bore "personal responsibility" for the massacre and that he decided Phalangist militias "should be sent in" to the camps from September 16 to 18, despite the risk that they would massacre the civilian population there. The militias killed between 700 and 800 people, according to Israeli military intelligence estimates. In 1983, the Israeli Kahan Commission recommended that Sharon lose his title of Defense Minister due to the grave miscalculation with the Phalangists and this happened.