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Key Figures |
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Ariel Sharon was an Israeli General. | 1928-02-26 | 2014-01-11 | Kfar Malal, British Mandate Palestine |
Ariel Sharon was an Israeli General. In the summer of 1970, he was photographed at a function speaking with Uri Geller (Jacobsen, Chapter Six). This occurred during a period when Geller's popularity was rising in Israel, and he was also seen having lunch with Moshe Dayan at the White Elephant Restaurant in Zahala (Jacobsen, Chapter Six).1
In August 1981, Ariel Sharon was named defense minister by the newly reelected Menachem Begin government. In September of the same year, he was in Washington, D.C. with Begin to lobby the White House in support of a far-reaching Israeli plan for United States-Israeli strategic cooperation against the Soviet Union. Sharon pushed for a downlink for KH-11 satellite imagery to be located in Tel Aviv, insisting it be "dedicated" so that only Israel could read the encoded signals. This suggestion was deemed preposterous by Richard V. Allen, then National Security Advisor, who privately told Sharon so.2
The bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak bombing in June 1981, which Ariel Sharon had supported, led him to conclude that the United States was not a reliable strategic ally. Following this, he turned to a clandestine Israeli intelligence agency under his defense ministry, which then intercepted intelligence on the Middle East and Soviet Union from sensitive American agencies. This included intelligence that Israel had been told it would no longer receive. An American Jew working in the U.S. intelligence community had volunteered his services to this agency years prior and would soon be tasked with spying on his country for Israel.2