Hundreds of Israeli and international dignitaries attended a state memorial ceremony for the late Ariel Sharon on Monday, remembering the former prime minister as a fearless warrior and bold leader who devoted his life to protecting his country's security.
US Vice President Joe Biden and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair headed the long list of visitors who gathered outside Israel's parliament building for the ceremony. Later on Monday, Sharon's body was to be taken from the Knesset to his farm in southern Israel for burial.
"Arik was a man of the land," President Shimon Peres, a longtime friend and sometimes rival of Sharon, said in his eulogy. "He defended this land like a lion and he taught its children to swing a scythe. He was a military legend in his lifetime and then turned his gaze to the day Israel would dwell in safety, when our children would return to our borders and peace would grace the Promised Land."
Sharon died on Saturday, eight years after a devastating stroke left him in a coma from which he never recovered. He was 85.
"I didn't always agree with Arik and he didn't always agree with me," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who resigned from Sharon's government to protest the Gaza withdrawal. Nonetheless, he called Sharon "one of the big warriors" for the nation of Israel. "He was pragmatic. His pragmatism was rooted in deep emotion, deep emotion for the state, for the Jewish people," Netanyahu said.
In a heartfelt address, Biden talked about a decades-long friendship with Sharon, saying the death felt "like a death in the family." When the two discussed Israel's security, Biden said he would understand how Sharon earned the nickname 'The Bulldozer', explaining how Sharon would pull out maps and repeatedly make the same points to drive them home.
"He was indomitable," Biden said. "But like all historic leaders, all real leaders, he had a north star that guided him. A north star from which he never, in my observation, never deviated. His north star was the survival of the state of Israel and the Jewish people wherever they resided," the US vice-president added. Biden also praised Sharon's determination in carrying out the Gaza pullout. "The political courage it took, whether you agreed with him or not, when he told 10,000 Israelis to leave their homes in Gaza, in order from his perspective to strengthen Israel ... I can't think of a more difficult and controversial decision he made. But he believed it and he did it. The security of his people was always Arik's unwavering mission."
