The Post-Sharon Era began January 5

Ariel Sharon's Legacy
From soldier to statesman, by way of most vilified leader in the world.
by Peter Berkowitz - weeklystandard.com
Sharon is the last of the 48ers - think of Yitzhak Rabin, Ezer Weizman, Moshe Dayan -to occupy the commanding heights of Israeli politics. He belonged to the generation that was born and bred in Israel, that came of age loving the land and fighting in the War of Independence, that was proud of the Zionist dream, that fought hard and lived large, and that, after heroic military careers, governed the nation well into its sixth decade. The 48ers were not always the best of democrats, especially Sharon. And yet time after time, they, and Sharon in particular, rose up to defend their small, surrounded, war-torn, beautiful country, making it possible for Jews to build a free and democratic state in their ancestral homeland.

Peter Berkowitz teaches at George Mason University School of Law and is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. He is the editor of The Future of American Intelligence.