Ariel sharon died today at the age of 85. The former Prime Minister of israel discussed his autobiography, warrior on booknotes in 1989. Warrior chronicles mr. Sharons life from his childhood as the son of parents who worked on a collective farm to his enlistment at age 14 in the underground military organization to mr. Sharons resignation as minister of defense following a government commissions conclusion that he was indirectly responsible for the september 1982 massacre of palestinians at refugee camps. This is about an hour. Cspan general ariel sharon you have a book called warrior. Why did you write the book . Guest i thought it would be important to tell the story of the history of the state of israel. It struggles, its happiness, its agonies, its victories and defeats. It was a long story, a long struggle. I felt that looking forward one should emphasize some of the for the jewish people in the future in order to develop and continue. Cspan one of the most interesting things i learned when i looked through your book was that you were born and raised in israel. How many people that live in israel today that you were involved within the government government were actually born there . Guest i think in the government generally i would say 3. 8 Million People in israel, i believe its about 2 million emigrated to israel and the rest were born there. Cspan what was it like in those early days . Guest i was born on a village, on a farm. My father was in the agronomist agricultural scientist and a defenseless farmer. He was a zionist born in russia and came to the jewish homeland. My mother came straight from the university, finishing four years of medicine. She saw then that she would be able to finish her studies in israel more than it would be possible first of all didnt have university and secondly life was very hard. I would like to describe my use would say the materialistic point of view it was real poverty. From the spiritual part of the life, life was very rich. The people were educated, having a strong zionist ideologues ideology and i remember on one hand very hard work, very poor life and on the other hand i remember my father playing the violin and painting. I remember people coming to participate and we used to play and read poetry. So from this aspect, i would say life was very rich. I remember my mother walking without shoes for years, but they were highly motivated people, worked very hard. Physical labor was very important part because we had to work and we started to work, myself very early. But it was regarded also as an important thing and it was always i remember what my parents used to say, its important to work. Physical work is important. And that way it was how i was raised in the village. I was always surrounded by arabr with arabs. We were never afraid of the arabs and looking back to my childhood i always believed that wed be living with arabs and myself i believe that we could live together with some complications. Righto where was the village . Guest the village then was in the center of the country, not far from tel aviv which is one of the main towns in israel. It was a small village with 56 pay families altogether. It was very hard to cultivate land there. No water. For eight years water had to be brought from the closest river, about six miles away, and then in the winter from the swamp about three miles away. I would say it was a hard life. My father was a vision is. He learned many new things. My father introduced many new things. For instance my father in the 30s spoke about the avocado as the fruit of the future. Nobody knew about that. People laughed and joked that he himself tried to do things that he recommended to others first of all on his own farm. We had a round of both farm of course having all the Security Problems. We had always Security Problems and nowadays we speak about philistine and terror but philistine in terror started much earlier. It started more than 100 years ago. Cspan 61 years ago if i calculate correctly, you were born. Are you 61 years old . When reborn in wetland for you born into and how much time, you remember the years before it became an actual country . Israel was at the 1948 decision. Guest i remember israel dwell in the 30s and of course i remember israel very well in the 40s. How this country looked . It was a small community. In 1948 when the war of independence started, the Jewish Community was then 600,000 people. A strong community. A highly motivated, hardworking people. People that didnt have any doubt about the right to the land. I remember my parents always saying, all the rights over the land of israel, then palestine, all of the rights belong to the jewish. All the rights to the land, all the rights over the land are jewish rights. At the same time all the inhabitants in the country should have all the rights. But they made very very clear distinction. The war of independence was very hard work. Israel suffered heavy casualties. About 1 of the total Jewish Population were killed during the war of independence. Myself, i found myself so when i was a child and never saw that we soldier. I doubt that i would be following my parents as a farmer and i thought to and even started to study in the faculty of the agriculture of agronomy in the Hebrew University in jerusalem. At the war started and i found myself a soldier. I started as a private first class and became a corporal. Maybe the hardest thing was for me to be promoted from a private first class to a corporal. And i did all my way in the army. I went through the ranks to the rank of general during the war of independence. I commanded a platoon and then at the end of the war, a company. I was very badly wounded in the battle to open the siege of jerusalem in may of 48 and spent several weeks in the hospital and came back. That is how it looks then. I never thought, i never felt and suffered heavy casualties. I dont remember even though one day that we lost our selfconfidence. People then saw goals ahead of them. We at the beginning of the war, we knew that independence was knocking at our gate and the u. N. Resolution to place on the 29th of november 47. The british left and we knew they were going to leave on the 15th of may 48. So we knew that independence was coming. We knew that hundreds of refugees were waiting in the refugee camps in europe and others for them by the british in cyprus so we knew that the door should be open and so having all those goals and targets, though they were very hard, i dont remember even one day of kind of a crisis or that we lost our selfconfidence although it was a very dangerous work. Cspan are you still in the military . Guest no, i left the military after started filling the underground in argonaut during the british time. Altogether he served for 28 years and i left in 1973, just three months before the yom kippur war thats it twice in october 1973. My last function was the commander. I commanded the stewards up front. Maybe the hardest part of the war attrition. In midjuly 73 i left the army and it became a commander of the reserved armored division. I commanded this Division Three months later was called together with my division. I was called the reserve general Major General to command this division and i happen to cross the suez canal for the turning point of the union and the war. Cspan family. You have been married twice . Guest i got first married in 1953 to a beautiful and charming girl who was a nurse who i knew since she was i think 15 years old. And she was a psychiatric nurse. We had a wonderful son and then in 1962 she was killed in a Road Accident while driving her car to jerusalem. She was a supervisory psychiatric nurse. Very successfusuccessfu l, very young, very successful. Then i was left with our son. He was a wonderful boy with all the difficulties. I still remember the hardest thing i had was how to tell a boy who was five years old about the death of his mother itself a very complicated thing and i remember to those tiers to start telling him about his tragedy. Then i got married with lilly, my present wife who is the sister of my wife my first wife and two boys were worn and then after a few years, i think five years to my first wife was killed, my oldest son was killed in a terrible accident when he was shot by another void who played with a shotgun, very old shotgun, maybe 100 years old. Cspan let me stop you just a second so i can show this picture. Can you tell us who these are . Guest yes, the one who is close to me there is my son who was killed. Cspan the one over here . Guest yes, that was a short time before he was killed in the second one is omri who was an officer in the paratroopers and the younger is july the who is also an officer in the paratroopers and just came back to the farm now and is running the farm. Cspan what impacted the loss of your first life wife and your son have on you . Guest these were of course very hard defense in every aspect. But i managed to overcome and to make life again. It was a terrible thing when my first wife was killed and then it was a terrible thing when my son was killed and he died in my arms when i was rushing him to the hospital. It was no hope because he was wounded in his head and i knew that i saw, i had seen this kind of went before and knew that there was no chance whatsoever. But of course you always have hopes. We were rushing into the Hospital Hospital but he died in my arms. Then i thought for a while that i wouldnt be able to overcome that. He was a wonderful boy, really wonderful. But i managed. I did manage. Cspan how many languages do you speak . Guest hebrew of course, my mother language. And some english. We learn english in school. I understand russian quite well because my grandmother used to speak to us in russian and so i understand russian. I try now to listen to the news and i would understand even in a lecture if it was not too complicated. I understand and speak arabic. I have been living with arabs all of my life created. Cspan it seems like i hear a little bit of french accent under english. Guest no. No french. Im afraid thats the israeli accent. Cspan what about the United States . When was the first time he you came here . I sonia book that you were thinking that one time about going to the university of colorado and agriculture. Guest yes, the first time i came here after the war of independence i had terrible malaria. I caught terrible malaria and i couldnt find couldnt get rid of that. The doctors could not find any solution and they decided it would be a change of climate maybe that id be able to overcome that. So i left than when i was a young mayor, very young. I think then when i left at 23 years old and went to europe first and then i came to the United States. Of course it was the first time when i left the village, are pillaging came to the world. It was, i have many times seems but of course i always remember my first visit coming to manhattan, going with my head up like that in ching those Tall Buildings and of course i remember paris. I remember london and rome and so on. And coming here the first thing that i was encouraged to do by my aunt, susan yardeni, my aunt and she encouraged me then to immediately go to and get a drivers license here. I got it i started to drive and i went on a trip down to up to texas then. I saw then this giant country. I left new york. Remember it was heavy snow and i became i went to florida and tennessee and it became hotter and hotter and i spent new years eve than from louisiana back along the mexican gulf to palm beach, florida where a spent the new years eve. It was so hot and i was completely surprised by the amount of water and bridges. I took so many films that when i came home i found most of the films of the pictures i took were riches. I was so fascinated coming from our dry country and israel. We have rains only through a very short period from the end of november through march. And then everything, in the winter its green and beautiful with beautiful flowers that very short. Then everything is getting yellow and then gray and then in autumn you can see already is becoming brown. So for me those bridges for maybe the first surprise i saw in this country. I should admit i got rid of the beleria but i also was fascinated with what i saw. I thought about studying. I went to the university in jerusalem in november of 47 but the war started than so i had to leave. I thought then to study agronomy as my father did, but i checked here and i wrote to a university. I was mostly interested in the erosion and land preservation. And the center was then i think in denver, colorado. I wrote to them but life developed differently there. I came home and served as an Intelligence Officer and the Northern Command for a mad general leon the commander in chief of norton command. Meanwhile we were facing a wave of palestinian terror coming across the boundaries of the occupy territories by jordan and egypt to the west bank and the gaza district. I was then called to form a special unit to fight terror while the 101st unit, a very small unit at a unit that had tremendous influence on the israeli army. And then i became the commander of the paratroopers. I managed to go back to study much later and i did, then i went to study law and i got my law degree. Cspan you are a member of the knesset. Guest im a member of the knesset and im a member of the government for more than 12 years now. I served as minister of agriculture, minister of defense and now as minister of industry and. Write. Cspan how many members are there just take a couple of minutes here. How many members are in the knesset . Guest in the knesset there are 120 members. Cspan how many of them are a member of the likud party . Guest we have 40 members. We are the largest party. Cspan member of the labour party. Guest 39. Cspan and how many other parties are there . Guest there are some other parties. There are smaller parties. Some religious parties and some other parties from the left and from the right. Altogether 120 members. Cspan how long were you elected for . Guest for years. Cspan how many people did you represent . Guest we dont have this system. Ours is what he called the proportional system. Its the same system that you have here though they are thought about changing and moving into Regional Elections were similar to one that you have here. Cspan who elects new . Guest we are a lot dead there is a list of candidates. The candidates are elected by the Party Convention. The Party Convention is something similar to what you have here. Well likud which is the largest party. Its the Democratic Party having 2600 members and they elect the candidates for the parliament designate. Cspan when someone goes into the voting booth as an israeli citizen and boats, who did they vote for . Guest they vote for a party. They vote for a party. And they call in the number of votes and the number of seats in parliament that a party will get. Of course elections are secret and so on but there is thought about changing the system in israel. Cspan so you do not have to serve the constituency per se . You do not have to go back and shake hands with the end individual district voters . Guest well i have to shake hands with the whole country. Israel is a small country and i will generally speak about israel being almost daily in the headlines. People get the impression that we speak about a giant. Israel is a tiny country. It will take the distance from the river jordan to the mediterranean including the west bank. Its 47 miles. So i speak about a small country. A beautiful country, beautiful country and of course its ours. And everywhere where you did you will find something. Not oil and not any other Natural Resources besides the dead sea. Its 1200 feet below sea level. Israel, this is so close that you can be in jerusalem and the Beautiful Mountain of jerusalem which is 27 hundred feet above sea level. The dead sea is 1200 feet below sea level. If you know your bible and then you dont need a guide book. The place is kept the old name jerusalem the capital of the jewish for the last 3000 years. Islam has been using this name for almost 4000 years. The river jordan he called by then the same amount hop for and not carmel. Cspan we are talking with ariel sharon in talking about his book called warrior published by Simon Schuster. In the middle there we can see that this book was written with david is it chamitoff . Who is he . Guest david is a young writer from boston introduced to me by Simon Schuster. I hate to tell the story. I had to tell the story to somebody. I met with some people and they were very kind to do that. And i decided that i would be able to talk to david. So i worked on this book i think about two and half years but never could take him the real interval so i used to work. We used to see, i used to talk, he used to write and then of course i had to read and read it again and it was very interesting. It was not easy because the man when he started to write, his knowledge about israel was very little and now i can assure that he knows a lot about israel. I enjoyed very much working with him. He wrote several books and i enjoyed working with him. Cspan did you do most of the work here in United States . Guest know, most of the book was done in israel. Cspan is the book written primarily for the american citizens . Guest this book was written for an american reader. In this book there are things that in israel, because the book is translated now and edited for the israeli reader. There are things that israel doesnt have and there are things that should be emphasized more. So we tried to do it in a way that would suit the american reader and might understand the problems of israel, the problems of the state of israel. What we are facing, but might be in the future and tried to attract the interest of people and jewish and nonjewish. Israel is a special country. Cspan there is a lot that has been written about you in several publications and i want to ask you about a couple of them in a second that one of the ways we got to know you was through the Time Magazine libel trial. The best i can can count their only two pages devoted to it in your book. How come so little . Guest it was for that there were many many stories that i could not tell here. There are battles that were not describ