During Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, all of us living in besieged West Beirut were aware that the Israeli military was seeking to eliminate the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and had no qualms about killing large numbers of civilians in the process. We knew this from the aerial bombardment of the area around Beirut's Arab University, where the PLO had many of its offices. Dozens of apartment buildings there had been reduced to rubble. 
 
 Toward the end of Israel's ten-week bombardment and siege of Beirut, a building that housed refugees located several blocks from my home in the Sanayeh neighborhood was entirely destroyed from the air, killing dozens. Immediately after the attack, I surveyed the carnage with a friend. After leaving him to return home, I heard another huge explosion -- it was a car bomb, presumably set off close to the destroyed building in order to kill those trying to rescue survivors. My friend barely escaped with his life. 
 
 This and other examples of the handiwork of the architects of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, preeminent among whom was Ariel Sharon, failed to make it into most of the hagiographic coverage of the man's passing in the American and Israeli media. We were instead told that Sharon was "controversial," and that Palestinians had criticisms of him, but that he was a "hero," a "staunch defender of Israel's security," and most grotesquely, "a peacemaker." 
 
 In September 2012, the New York Times published an op-ed on the 30th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, during which the Israeli military stood by while their right-wing Lebanese allies murdered nearly 1,400 defenseless Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in a Beirut refugee camp. The article, which was based on newly uncovered documents in the Israel State Archives, revealed new details on Sharon's role in, and indirect American diplomatic responsibility for, these atrocities. The New York Times did not, however, feature this account in its coverage of Sharon's death. Instead, it re-ran online a 1983 apologia by Sharon for his invasion of Lebanon, during which there were nearly 50,000 casualties, most of them civilians. 
 
 The Lebanon war that Sharon, then the defense minister, did more than anyone else to launch was an unmitigated catastrophe for the Palestinians, the Lebanese, and in the view of most Israelis at the time, Israel itself. Israel's subsequent occupation of South Lebanon until 2000, the consequent intensification of the Lebanese civil war, the slaughter of untold numbers of innocents, and the deaths of hundreds of Israeli soldiers and thousands of other combatants should all be laid in large part at Sharon's feet. 
 
 Sharon's profound impact on the Middle East stretched far beyond Lebanon. If the creation of a truly sovereign, independent, contiguous, and viable Palestinian state is not possible today -- as most sober observers believe -- this is largely his achievement. From his appointment as agriculture minister in 1977 until his passing from the Israeli political scene after his stroke in 2006, he probably did more than any other Israeli leader to make Israel's colonization of the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem an astonishing success. 
 
 Sharon flew over the region in a helicopter to select sites for new colonies, all the while pioneering novel means of stealing land from its Palestinian owners. As prime minister, he continued this expansion process, which has turned the occupied West Bank into a Swiss cheese patchwork thoroughly dominated by lush Israeli settlements on what seems to be every hilltop. Simultaneously, he engineered a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, while retaining draconian control over it from without, thereby turning it into the world's largest open-air prison. 
 
 Vice President Joe Biden eulogized Sharon today as a "historic leader" who was dedicated to the pursuit of peace. The very idea is ludicrous. Sharon began his career as a military commander renowned for ruthless assaults on innocent civilians -- like the slaughter in the West Bank village of Qibya in 1953, when commandos of his Unit 101 blew up homes over the heads of their residents, killing 69 people. 
 
 The attack led to the first ever U.N. Security Council condemnation of Israel. It was not an isolated incident: Indeed, it established a pattern of dozens of "eyes for an eye," and of the Israeli leadership's systematic deception about what was actually happening on the ground. This approach has characterized Israel's response to any resistance to its expansion since the foundation of the state. 
 
 Sharon was emblematic of the Israeli refusal to accept that Palestinian resistance was an inevitable response to the forcible establishment of a Jewish state and the concomitant expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. In later years, he became one of the most sophisticated employers of the trope of "terrorism" to demean this resistance. 
 
 The characterization not only of those who took up arms against Israel, but of all Palestinians, as "terrorists" can be seen in the transcript of a meeting between Sharon, other Israeli ministers, and U.S. envoy Morris Draper on Sept. 17, 1982, in the midst of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. 
 
 Morris Draper: The hostile people will say, sure the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is going to stay in West Beirut and they will let the Lebanese go and kill the Palestinians in the camps. Ariel Sharon: So we'll kill them. They will not be left there. You are not going to save them. You are not going to save these groups of the international terrorism [sic]. MD: We are not interested in saving any of these people. AS: If you don't want the Lebanese to kill them, we will kill them. 
 
 Everyone present at this meeting, American and Israelis, knew that there were no PLO fighters in the camps. More than 15,000 PLO personnel had been evacuated from Beirut weeks earlier in a deal brokered by the United States. Had any number of these hardened combatants -- who had resisted the Israeli siege of Beirut for nearly two months -- been present, the perpetrators of these massacres would not have been able to operate with total impunity. 
 
 Nonetheless, during this 90-minute meeting with Draper, Sharon repeated the canard that thousands of "terrorists" had remained behind after the PLO evacuation. He used the term "terrorist" 39 times, as part of a ceaseless browbeating of Draper, who had been told to demand that the Israelis immediately withdraw their forces from West Beirut. Instead of complying with Draper's request, Sharon stonewalled, giving the butchers inside the camps many more hours to complete their gruesome work under the glow of star shells fired by Israeli troops to illuminate the killing ground. 
 
 Today, the American and Israeli media are celebrating this very same man. It is hard to imagine this kind of kid-glove treatment of anyone else with such a list of atrocities to his name. But apparently, such inconvenient facts are not welcome. In a more just world, he would have ended up facing the International Criminal Court in The Hague. 
 
 Yoav Lemmer-Pool/Getty Images ||||| JERUSALEM (AP) — Hundreds of Israelis lined up outside Israel's parliament building on Sunday to pay their last respects to Ariel Sharon, the hard-charging former prime minister and general who died over the weekend. 
 
 Workers prepare the gravesite for late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who will be buried next to his wife, outside his ranch in Havat Shikmim, southern Israel, Sunday, Jan. 12, 2014. A state memorial... (Associated Press) 
 
 A military vehicle with the coffin of the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon heads to Jerusalem from a military base near Rishon Letzion in central Israel, Sunday, Jan. 12, 2014. The body of Ariel... (Associated Press) 
 
 Members of the Knesset guard carry the coffin of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the Knesset plaza, in Jerusalem, Sunday, Jan. 12, 2014. Sharon, the hard-charging Israeli general and prime... (Associated Press) 
 
 Members of the Knesset guard carry the coffin of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the Knesset plaza, in Jerusalem, Sunday, Jan. 12, 2014. Sharon, the hard-charging Israeli general and prime... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Sunday May 16, 2004 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pauses during a news conference in his Jerusalem office regarding education reform. Sharon, the hard-charging Israeli... (Associated Press) 
 
 Sharon's coffin was displayed in a plaza in front of the Knesset, where a stream of visitors passed by to snap photos and say farewell. A funeral service to be attended by dignitaries from around the world, including U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, is scheduled for Monday. 
 
 The 85-year-old Sharon, one of Israel's most iconic and controversial figures, died Saturday, eight years after suffering a stroke that left him in a coma. 
 
 "My heart is broken. Israel lost the King of David. There is no other word to describe this man, they don't make people like this anymore," said Uri Rottman, a mourner who said he once served in the military with Sharon. 
 
 "I feel committed to share the very last moment before they're going to bury him," said Eliav Aviram, another former army comrade. 
 
 Sharon was a farmer-turned-soldier, a soldier-turned-politician, a politician-turned-statesman — a leader known for his exploits on the battlefield, masterminding Israel's invasion of Lebanon, building Jewish settlements on war-won land and then, late in life, destroying some that he deemed no longer useful. To his supporters, he was a war hero. To his critics, he was a war criminal. 
 
 Israeli authorities closed off streets around the parliament in anticipation of huge crowds Sunday. Visitors were asked to park at lots in and around the city and were brought to the site by special buses. 
 
 President Shimon Peres and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who succeeded Sharon after the 2006 stroke, was among the visitors. Olmert crossed past a roped-off area to stand silently next to the flag-draped coffin. 
 
 A state memorial is planned Monday at the parliament building. In addition to Biden, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Czech Prime Minister Jiri Rusnok, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and others were expected. 
 
 Afterward Sharon's body will be taken by military convey for burial at his ranch in southern Israel. 
 
 News of Sharon dominated Israeli newspapers and broadcast reports, and Israel's three main TV stations all broadcast live from the memorial. Radio stations were filled with interviews with former officials and military men who shared stories of Sharon's exploits. 
 
 Sharon's career stretched across much of Israel's 65-year existence, and his life was closely intertwined with the country's history. 
 
 Throughout his life, he was at the center of the most contentious episodes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, starting as a young soldier fighting in the 1948 war over Israel's creation. 
 
 In the 1950s, he led a commando unit that carried out reprisals for Arab attacks. In 1953, after the slaying of an Israeli woman and her two children, Sharon's troops blew up more than 40 houses in Qibya, a West Bank village then ruled by Jordan, killing 69 Arabs, most or all of them civilians. 
 
 Residents in Qibya on Sunday remembered the village's darkest hour. Qibya resident Hamed Ghethan was just 4 years old when the raid took place. He said he could remember older residents placing their hands over the children's mouths so they wouldn't make a sound. 
 
 "Sharon's name reminds me of... martyrs from my village," said Ghethan, 65, as he surveyed the ruins of buildings destroyed in the military action. 
 
 As one of Israel's most famous generals, he was known for bold tactics and an occasional refusal to obey orders. 
 
 Historians credit him with helping turn the tide of the 1973 Mideast war when Arab armies launched a surprise attack on Israel on the solemn fasting day of Yom Kippur, causing heavy Israeli casualties. 
 
 Sharon became a minister in Menachem Begin's government in the late 1970s, and voted against the historic 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. But when it fell to Sharon to remove Jewish settlements from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, he obediently ordered protesting settlers to be dragged away and their homes bulldozed to rubble. 
 
 As defense minister in 1982, Sharon launched the invasion of Lebanon, where he became complicit in one of bloodiest incidents of the Lebanese war, when Israeli-allied forces systematically slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in September 1982. An Israeli judicial inquiry found Sharon indirectly responsible for the killings, and he was forced to step down as defense minister. 
 
 Yet over the years, he gradually rehabilitated himself by holding a number of Cabinet posts. 
 
 As opposition leader in September 2000, Sharon demonstratively visited a contested Jewish-Muslim holy site in Jerusalem, setting off Palestinian protests that quickly lurched into an armed uprising that ultimately killed hundreds of Palestinians and Israelis. 
 
 Several months later, he was elected prime minister. While Sharon ordered a tough crackdown on the Palestinian uprising, he made a dramatic about-face in 2003 when he announced his plans for a unilateral withdrawal from occupied lands. 
 
 In 2005, he directed a unilateral pullout of Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip, ending a 38-year occupation. 
 
 He later bolted from his hard-line Likud Party and established the centrist Kadima Party, with a platform promoting further territorial concessions and support for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. 
 
 It seemed he was on his way to an easy re-election when he suffered the stroke in January 2006. ||||| Faced with the intense difficulty of what to say about Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister who died early Saturday after eight years in a coma, President Barack Obama didn’t say much. 
 
 The statement from Obama — who never met Sharon, and wasn’t yet even running for president when he fell into a coma, mentioned nothing about the Israeli leader’s own complicated history with war and peace, remarking only in sending “our deepest condolences” that he was a leader who “dedicated his life to the State of Israel.” 
 
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 In diplomacy, there’s no such thing as a simple eulogy. For some, it’s a lot easier — not a lot of people struggled over what to say about Nelson Mandela last month, for example. But Sharon is a different case. 
 
 The U.S. has been drawn more into the Middle East in recent months due to negotiations over Syria and Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the general stance the government has toward the Arab world. That means every word could reverberate much longer and much farther than the next few days. 
 
 Obama’s statement looked forward, without Sharon. 
 
 (PHOTOS: Obama’s Israel trip) 
 
 “We reaffirm our unshakable commitment to Israel’s security and our appreciation for the enduring friendship between our two countries and our two peoples,” Obama said. “We continue to strive for lasting peace and security for the people of Israel, including through our commitment to the goal of two states living side-by-side in peace and security. As Israel says goodbye to Prime Minister Sharon, we join with the Israeli people in honoring his commitment to his country.” 
 
 Key audiences among Americans, Israelis and Palestinians are watching carefully how Obama and other leaders grapple with it over the next few days. A military funeral for Sharon is planned for Monday afternoon, following a state memorial service held at the Knesset. 
 
 Vice President Joe Biden released a statement with his own condolences, saying he’ll lead the American delegation to the memorial service. Secretary of State John Kerry is also expected to attend. 
 
 There was also Israeli politics to deal with, particularly Benjamin Netanyahu, who since returning as Israel’s prime minister in 2008 has often been seen as sensitive about comparisons to his old rival. With Kerry in the next few weeks preparing to deliver a peace “framework” he’s been haggling over for almost a year with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, the American approach to Sharon could matter to Netanyahu, and thus the fledgling peace efforts most of all. 
 
 Sharon’s the man who was the great Israeli military hero, the defense minister forced to resign, the Israeli prime minister whose return many despised and later embraced. The last, along with Israeli President Shimon Peres, of the founding generation of Israeli politicians, there at the creation of the state in 1948 and throughout the 65 years since. 
 
 He’s the man who’ll forever be associated in the minds of many Palestinians, as well as Israelis and Americans, with the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, which left, by some counts, 3,500 civilians dead. He’s also the man who 20 years later surprised many by making the most substantial steps toward peace since Yitzhak Rabin, including withdrawing from Gaza in 2005. He’s a man who embodied a swaggering Jewish nationalism more than even most Israelis, yet he’s also a man who struck many as more sensitive than most to the idea of equal political rights for Arabs. 
 
 (PHOTOS: The life of Ariel Sharon) 
 
 Behind every American politician’s statement that comes out over the course of the day—from the White House on down to individual members of Congress — is likely a lot of hemming and hawing over what to say, what not to say, and how to say any of it. 
 
 Whatever is said in statements or afterward about Sharon has to be “tactful about using words like ‘bold’ and ‘courageous,’ so that nobody gets the feeling that this is a too-clever-by-half insinuation that we wish he were here today,” said Washington Institute for Near East Studies senior fellow David Pollock. “If they really want to thread the needle, they might say, ‘this was a man who went through some major changes in his lifetime and he became a man of peace — he wasn’t always that, but that was implied.” 
 
 Kerry’s statement was much longer than Obama’s, and deeper, reflecting on a relationship that started when he met Sharon as a young lawyer in Boston to talking with “this big bear of a man.” The United States had differences with Sharon, but despite those, Kerry said “you admired the man who was determined to ensure the security and survival of the Jewish State.” 
 
 “In his final years as Prime Minister, he surprised many in his pursuit of peace, and today, we all recognize, as he did, that Israel must be strong to make peace, and that peace will also make Israel stronger,” Kerry said. “We honor Arik’s legacy and those of Israel’s founding generation by working to achieve that goal.” 
 
 Neither the White House nor the State Department immediately rushed statements out Saturday morning while waiting for the official Israeli government announcement. 
 
 Some arrived earlier, including from former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a joint statement on Sharon “honoring his memory and offering our condolences.” 
 
 “Ariel Sharon gave his life to Israel — to bring it into being, to sustain and preserve it, and at the end of his long service, to create a new political party committed to both a just peace and lasting security,” the statement read. “It was an honor to work with him, argue with him, and watch him always trying to find the right path for his beloved country.” 
 
 Back during Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister in the late 1990s, Sharon worked for him, eventually as his foreign minister. When Netanyahu began staging his return after a 1999 defeat at the polls, Sharon was also looking to complete his own political resurgence with a turn as prime minister, and ultimately beat out Netanyahu, who eventually became one of his ministers. 
 
 Netanyahu quit the government over the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and not long after, Sharon quit his own political party, abandoning the right-wing Likud that he’d been part of for decades to start a new one — Kadima, which translates to “forward.” When Sharon collapsed, they were preparing to run against each other as open rivals, and Sharon was expected to win more seats in the Israeli Knesset but have to deal with internal opposition from Netanyahu. 
 
 In his statement, Netanyahu said, “the State of Israel bows its head over the passing of former prime minister Ariel Sharon,” adding, “His memory will forever be held in the heart of the nation.” 
 
 At the same time, the hatred for Sharon among Palestinians hasn’t dissipated, said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to the Palestinian negotiators who’s now a fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institute. 
 
 “It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, Palestinians or others in the Arab world say about him, since eulogies tend to be neutral, if not positive,” Elgindy said, as word of Sharon’s death circulated Saturday morning. “Obviously, no Palestinian, no Arab, would have anything good to say about Ariel Sharon. He is sort of in a class by himself when it comes to Palestinians, because he has such a brutal history: He is associated with massacres. He’s not simply seen as someone who’s tough or hardnosed or ideological — he is seen as a cold-hearted killer.” 
 
 A Hamas spokesman released a statement saying “We have become more confident in victory with the departure of this tyrant,” adding, “Our people today feel extreme happiness at the death and departure of this criminal whose hands were smeared with the blood of our people and the blood of our leaders here and in exile.”
– Ariel Sharon's death has brought on a bout of hagiography. The American and Israeli media will call him "controversial," but then call him a hero. Joe Biden praised him for his pursuit of peace yesterday, while Henry Kissinger terms him a "peacemaker" in today's Washington Post, noting his late-life willingness to pull out of Gaza. It's a "grotesque" characterization, Rashid Khalidi argues at Foreign Policy. "It is hard to imagine this kind of kid-glove treatment of anyone else with such a list of atrocities to his name." Khalidi was living in West Beirut during Sharon's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and it was obvious Israel "had no qualms about killing large numbers of civilians" to get at the PLO. "A building that housed refugees located several blocks from my home … was entirely destroyed from the air, killing dozens," he writes. Soon after, a car bomb went off, presumably "in order to kill those trying to rescue survivors," nearly killing one of Khalidi's friends. Sharon characterized all Palestinians as terrorists, and did more than anyone to prevent a contiguous Palestinian state. "In a more just world, he would have ended up facing the International Criminal Court in The Hague." Click for the full column.