As we stood on the Hill of the Anemones on Monday, I could not help but remember the time I was there, as a member of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s government, in March 2000, for the funeral of Ariel Sharon’s wife, Lily. Sharon, then leader of the opposition, greeted us warmly. We could not have imagined that less than a year later he would be prime minister. A circle was closed on Monday when Sharon was laid to rest beside his wife.

I knew of Sharon from early in my youth. I grew up in Tel Aviv’s Zahala neighborhood, which was established by commanders who fought in the Independence War. Sharon was one of my childhood heroes and my sister even went to nursery school with Sharon’s son Omri.

As an officer who served in the First Lebanon War, I was among those who felt a great deal of anger toward Sharon, as I was frustrated by the war and its consequences. Yet less than two years later, Sharon played a key role in the establishment of the Shimon Peres-Yitzhak Shamir national unity government, which was something my father Chaim Herzog, then the president of Israel, pushed for. I first got to know Sharon personally in 1988 when I worked for an economic council set up by Peres (Sharon was the industry and trade minister at the time). This was how I earned the privilege of getting to know Sharon’s unique personality.

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