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Emanuel A. Winston , Middle East analyst and commentator, writes extensively about geo-politics and war, often forecasting coming events in the region of the Middle East, including the relations between Washington and Jerusalem.
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By Emanuel A. Winston
January 6, 2006
An early report stated that Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is dead after suffering a massive stroke - a brain hemorrhage which resulted in a 7 hour brain surgery. Then his doctors put him into an "induced coma", that is, totally sedated with anesthetic - with machines maintaining his bodily functions. Later reports insisted that he was alive.
There is a state of "in-between" wherein the machinery available to us through modern science can keep the human body alive while the brain is dead. There is no question that, between heart/lung machines and other devices a comatose person can lay tranquilly in a bed, all pink and seemingly alive.
That is not the most important question.
The question I would have is: What is the political benefit to the new Kadima Party to the daily reports of Sharon's medical condition? In effect, he would still be running for office while in a vegetative state.
When the Head of the Hadassah-Ein Kerem Hospital says Sharon is alive, he is "technically" correct. If PM Sharon is brain-dead then the truth is being stretched for political reasons.
I just read an article in the Mishpachah Magazine (December 2005/Kislev 27, 5766) which spoke of past American Presidents having a series of strokes which were kept secret from the public. Woodrow Wilson was one who was losing his mental faculties due to strokes which caused him to make wild decisions. In 1893 President Grover Cleveland was diagnosed as having cancer of the mouth which was kept secret from the public due (they say) to an economic depression at the time. This article describes how Syrian President Hafez al Assad was secretly diagnosed as having diabetes and congestive heart failure, discovered by Israeli Intelligence. During his time PM Ehud Barak was desperate to turn over the Golan Heights to Syria but Assad died before Barak could complete this transfer.
Then Sharon displaced Barak as PM only himself to flip-flop on all of his campaign promises, concluding with his divestment 10,000 Jewish men, women and children from Gush Katif/Gaza and 4 communities in North Samaria. Now he "promises" to abandon the rest of Judea and Samaria, plus the Golan, the Jordan Valley, half of Jerusalem, etc.
Keeping a brain-dead Sharon semi-alive but in a vegetative state so his new Kadima Party could still claim him as an asset, is a possibility that is not beyond consideration.
Ask the question of the hospital staff and attending neurologist: IS Sharon brain-dead? Have his two sons been asked if it is their desire to keep their father's body alive? Was this a decision of Ehud Olmert and others currently now in power?
The really tough questions have not been asked. The media are going along with press handouts and live press conferences.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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