January 09, 2006
The writer Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Auschwitz survivor, has praised Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon as "one of the few really great fathers of the Jewish people". In an interview with the Italian newspaper "Corriere della Sera", Wiesel said that Sharon was a "charismatic and almost super-human figure" admired around the world. He added that only Sharon's predecessors Ben-Gurion and Rabin had achieved similar heights. Sharon had undergone a political transformation from being a harsh and brutal opponent of his enemies to a man who "more than anybody else" had fought for the reconciliation of two peoples and cultures." Meanwhile, doctors in Jerusalem have announced that they will wake Sharon from his coma to assess the damage the prime minister's brain suffered following his stroke and brain hemorrhage last week. It is generally assumed in Israel that although Sharon's chances of survival are high, according to doctors, he is unlikely to return to frontline politics.
