Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's organs are failing and he remains in critical condition today, an official says.
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Former Israeli leader Ariel Sharon still in critical condition, hospital says
January 2, 2014 -- Updated 1100 GMT (1900 HKT)Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon opens a cabinet meeting October 9, 2005, three months before he suffered a stroke.STORY HIGHLIGHTS- "A number of central systems in his body are not functioning," a hospital spokesman says
- The former Israeli prime minister has been in a coma since 2006
- Sharon orchestrated Israel's invasion of Lebanon and was nicknamed the "Butcher of Beirut"
- He also agreed with the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat on a timeline to halt Israeli-Palestinian violence
Jerusalem (CNN) -- Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's organs are failing and he remains in critical condition Thursday, a hospital spokesman said.
There has been no change in Sharon's condition since news broke Wednesday that his health had worsened in recent days, said Amir Maron, spokesman for Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Israel."His condition continues to be critical, and doctors note a number of central systems in his body are not functioning," Maron said. He said Sharon's close family members are by his bedside.Sharon is known as a highly decorated -- if controversial -- Israeli military figure who became prime minister in 2001. But Sharon has been in a coma since 2006, when he suffered a major stroke that led doctors to put him under anesthesia and on a respirator. His term as prime minister came to an end.A long careerBorn in 1928 in Kfar Malal -- a community that would later become part of Israel -- Sharon graduated from high school in 1945 and began working with the Haganah, a militant group advocating for Israel's independence.He began his rise through the Israeli military ranks in 1953. Sharon helped establish an elite commando unit and was eventually promoted to be an army major general. He held this rank during 1967's Six-Day War, which ended with Israel controversially expanding its territory.Sharon went on to play major roles in subsequent Israeli military conflicts as well, including as head of the Army's Armored Reserve Division during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.He then began segueing into government, including stints as Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's military adviser, agriculture minister and defense minister from 1981 to 1983.Invasion of LebanonSharon also orchestrated Israel's invasion of Lebanon, an effort aimed at Palestine Liberation Organization fighters that also left hundreds of Lebanese civilians dead. His actions led many in the Arab world to call him the "Butcher of Beirut."An official Israeli inquiry found Sharon indirectly responsible for the September 1982 killings of as many as 2,000 Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside of Beirut, Lebanon.The report -- which led to Sharon's prompt resignation -- determined the then-defense minister did nothing to stop Christian militiamen allied with Israel from entering the camps, despite fears they might seek to avenge the killing of their leader the previous day.Sharon did not stay out of the spotlight for long. His adviser Ranaan Gissin said Sharon "he felt betrayed by his government." Sharon also sued Time for a magazine article implying that he had foreknowledge and a greater role in this massacre, with a jury later finding the U.S.-based publisher guilty of defamation but not of malice.Becoming prime ministerSharon went on to hold a several other Cabinet posts from 1984 to 2001, when he won a special election to become prime minister.By then, as head of the Likud party, Sharon was considered a hawk. And early on, he took the offensive by sending tanks and troops into Palestinian territory and ordering the assassination of militant leaders.But Sharon also took steps toward peace, such as agreeing with the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat on a timeline to halt Israeli-Palestinian violence and resume peace talks. But that effort undermined by Sharon's own party, which backed a resolution to never allow the creation of a Palestinian state.Sharon later participated in talks with regional and world powers to discuss a "road map" for Middle East peace.Immediately after he fell ill in early 2006, his power was transferred to Vice Premier Ehud Olmert. Surgeons removed 20 inches of his intestine the following month and, that April, Israel's Cabinet formally ended his run as prime minister after declaring him permanently incapacitated.The former prime minister's health has fluctuated during the time he has been in the coma. In January 2013, doctors said testing on Sharon indicated some brain activity when he was shown photos of his home and heard his son's voice. - January 2, 2014 -- Updated 0326 GMT (1126 HKT)
Gayle Lemmon says the world has focused energy on securing chemical weapons in Syria, but has done nothing to help Syrian children, who are starving and suffering in countless ways. FULL STORY | BLEAK WINTER FOR CHILDREN
Syria's children suffer, and the world just shrugs
January 1, 2014 -- Updated 1444 GMT (2244 HKT)A Syrian woman carries children following airstrikes on Aleppo on December 15.STORY HIGHLIGHTS- Gayle Lemmon: Nations have tried to secure Syria's chemical weapons but not to help children
- Lemmon: Children suffer from starvation and polio, killed by airstrikes and bombs
- She says chemical weapons close to being secured, but not conventional weapons
- Children pay the price, she says. The world has turned its back on them
Editor's note: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a fellow and deputy director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. She wrote "The Dressmaker of Khair Khana," a book that tells the story of an Afghan girl whose business created jobs and hope during the Taliban years.(CNN) -- The world has devoted a great deal of diplomatic energy to securing Syria's chemical weapons. It has yet to do the same for securing Syria's children.
Their future is as important for international security and stability, even if the consequences of inaction will take far longer to be seen and felt.Gayle Tzemach LemmonThe war in Syria between the government of Bashar al-Assad and forces opposed to him has ground on for more than two years and claims new victims each day. More than 100,000 have been killed. Starvation has become a gruesome reality, with a religious leader now saying it is OK to eat cats and dogs given the lack of much of anything else.Polio, likely brought by foreign fighters, has resurfaced to claim tiny victims younger than 2. In the past two weeks, barrel bombs -- drums filled with shrapnel and explosives -- are reported to have killed more than 500 people in the city of Aleppo.A Syrian girl plays in the city of Aleppo, bombed two days after this photo was taken on December 13.According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group with links to Syrian opposition, children accounted for more than 150 of the dead.Refugees fleeing the conflict, most to Syria's overwhelmed neighbors Jordan and Lebanon, top a whopping 2 million. Some U.N. officials expect that number to climb as high as 4 million in 2014. More than 1.1 million of these refugees are younger than 18. Indeed, Syria's youngest citizens are paying dearly for a war they did not create, one that is laying waste to their present and their future.Three out of four Syrian children "have lost a close friend or family member in their country's ongoing conflict" and "many have witnessed violence," notes the International Rescue Committee. Charities such as IRC and Mercy Corps working with Syria's children tell of young people isolated, lonely and struggling with the impossible task of coming to terms with all that they have seen and lost."If we do not act quickly, a generation of innocents will become lasting casualties of an appalling war," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said in November when releasing a report on the grim future facing Syria's children."A grave consequence of the conflict is that a generation is growing up without a formal education," the report said. "More than half of all school-aged Syrian children in Jordan and Lebanon are not in school. In Lebanon, it is estimated that some 200,000 school-aged Syrian refugee children could remain out of school at the end of the year." They join 25 million kids of primary-school-age around the world out of school because of war.Syria in review
Rocket strike kills at least 25 in Aleppo
UNICEF: Syria largest humanitarian crisis
These numbers matter and well beyond Syria's borders.As U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has often noted, security and education are bound together: Low educational attainment is among the strongest predictors of violence. Anyone hoping for a safer, more secure world had better start with educating children.And yet until now, the international community's reaction to the escalating death count and the rising number of hungry, homeless and displaced children has fallen somewhere between a shrug and a sigh. Although U.N. agencies have released a slew of dire warnings about the situation's urgency and its gravity, it is unclear anyone is listening, let alone ready to act to change the calculus on the ground.In September, a round of feverish and focused diplomacy unfolded between Russia and the United States to reach a deal with the Assad regime on its chemical weapons.No nations have engaged in such fully concentrated diplomacy to open and secure humanitarian corridors and bring supplies to cities being starved and cut off from the rest of the world -- and to make sure Syria's children don't go hungry. Although chemical weapons may be close to being secured, conventional weapons face no such limitations and are being used to kill, injure and maim with impunity.This leaves children to pay the price. And so will the rest of us, eventually, if nothing is done to help a lost generation find a way to a more secure future.TOP MIDDLE EAST STORIES
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