Ariel Sharon was an Israeli general and politician who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006. Sharon was a commander in the Israeli Army from its creation in 1948; as a soldier and an officer, he participated prominently in the 1948 Palestine war, becoming a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade and taking part in many battles, including Operation Bin Nun Alef. He was an instrumental figure in the creation of Unit 101 and the reprisal operations, as well as in the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War of 1967, the War of Attrition, the Yom-Kippur War of 1973. Yitzhak Rabin has called Sharon "the greatest field commander in our history". Upon retirement from the military, Sharon entered politics, joining the Likud party, served in a number of ministerial posts in Likud-led governments in 1977–92 and 1996–99; as Minister of Defense, he directed the 1982 Lebanon War. An official enquiry found that he bore "personal responsibility" for the Sabra and Shatila massacre and recommended that he be removed as Defense Minister.

His role in the massacre led to him being known as the "Butcher of Beirut" among Arabs. From the 1970s through to the 1990s, Sharon championed construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he became the leader of the Likud in 2000, served as Israel's prime minister from 2001 to 2006. However, as Prime Minister, in 2004–05 Sharon orchestrated Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Facing stiff opposition to this policy within the Likud, in November 2005 he left Likud to form a new party, Kadima, he had been expected to win the next election and was interpreted as planning on "clearing Israel out of most of the West Bank", in a series of unilateral withdrawals. After suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006, Sharon remained in a permanent vegetative state until his death in January 2014. Sharon was born on 26 February 1928 in Kfar Malal, an agricultural moshav in Mandatory Palestine, to Shmuel Scheinerman of Brest-Litovsk and Vera Scheinerman of Mogilev, his mother, was from a family of Russian Subbotnik Jewish origin.

His parents met while at university in Tiflis, where Sharon's father was studying agronomy and his mother was studying medicine. They immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1922 in the wake of the Russian Communist government's growing persecution of Jews in the region. In Palestine, Vera Scheinerman went by the name Dvora; the family settled in Kfar Malal, a socialist, secular community. Although his parents were Mapai supporters, they did not always accept communal consensus: "The Scheinermans' eventual ostracism... followed the 1933 Arlozorov murder when Dvora and Shmuel refused to endorse the Labor movement's anti-Revisionist calumny and participate in Bolshevik-style public revilement rallies the order of the day. Retribution was quick to come, they were expelled from the local health-fund village synagogue. The cooperative's truck wouldn't make deliveries to their farm nor collect produce."Sharon spoke both Hebrew and Russian. Four years after their arrival at Kfar Malal, the Sheinermans had Yehudit.

Ariel was born two years later. At age 10, he joined the youth movement HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed; as a teenager, he began to take part in the armed night-patrols of his moshav. In 1942 at the age of 14, Sharon joined the Gadna, a paramilitary youth battalion, the Haganah, the underground paramilitary force and the Jewish military precursor to the Israel Defense Forces. Sharon's unit of the Haganah became engaged in serious and continuous combat from the autumn of 1947, with the onset of the Battle for Jerusalem. Without the manpower to hold the roads, his unit took to making offensive hit-and-run raids on Arab forces in the vicinity of Kfar Malal. In units of thirty men, they would hit at Arab villages and bases, as well as ambush the traffic between Arab villages and bases. Sharon wrote in his autobiography: "We had become skilled at finding our way in the darkest nights and we built up the strength and endurance these kind of operations required. Under the stress of constant combat we drew closer to one another and began to operate not just as a military unit but as a family....

E were in combat every day. Ambushes and battles followed each other until they all seemed to run together."For his role in a night-raid on Iraqi forces at Bir Adas, Sharon was made a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade. Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the onset of the War of Independence, his platoon fended off the Iraqi advance at Kalkiya. Sharon was regarded as a hardened and aggressive soldier, swiftly moving up the ranks during the war, he was shot in the groin and foot by the Jordanian Arab Legion in the First Battle of Latrun, an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the besieged Jewish community of Jerusalem. Sharon wrote of the casualties in the "horrible battle," and his brigade suffered 139 deaths. Jordanian field marshal Habis Al-Majali claimed that Sharon was among 6 Israeli soldiers captured by the Jordanian 4th battalion during the battle, that Habis took them to a camp in Mafraq and the 6 were traded back. Sharon denied the claims. "Sharon is like a grizzly bear," he grumbled.

"I captured him, I healed his wounds." In 1994 and during the peace treaty signing ceremony with Jordan, Sharon wanted to get in touch with his for

The Iron Tree is the first book in the Crowthistle Chronicles, written by Cecilia Dart-Thornton. Written and published in August 2004, ISBN 0-330-43301-6, The Iron Tree is a suspenseful fantasy novel. Although the inside of The Iron Tree states that the Crowthistle Chronicles will consist of three books, The Iron Tree The Well of Tears Fallowbladethere are four books in total: The Iron Tree The Well of Tears The Weatherwitch Fallowblade The story begins in a small desert town of R'shael in the kingdom of Asqualeth. Jarred and his friends set off on an adventure to explore the world of The Four Kingdoms of Tir. On the way they are ambushed by Marauders, mountain folk that are deformed and spend their lives pillaging villages and unwary travelers. Jarred is found out by his friends to be invulnerable however one of their part is injured and they are forced to take refuge in Marsh Town in the kingdom of Slievmordhu. There Jarred falls in love at first sight with a Marsh daughter Lilith; when the party are to depart Jarred decides to stay and start a family with Lilith.

Little do they know, they will find Jarred's gift and Lilith's curse stem from a past that intertwines them. Kliatt called the book "uneven and flawed", but "more successful in the latter part of her tale"; the Iron Tree at Cecilia Dart-Thornton's web site

Minuscule 870, ε 104, is an 11th-century Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament on paper, with a commentary. The manuscript has no complex content, it was prepared for liturgical use. The codex contains only the text of the Gospel of Luke on 14 paper leaves; the text is written in one column per 23-24 lines per page. The text is divided according to the κεφαλαια, whose numbers are given at the margin, but there is no τιτλοι at the top of the pages. There is a division according to the smaller Ammonian Sections, but without references to the Eusebian Canons, it contains lectionary markings at the margin for liturgical reading. The Greek text of the codex is a representative of the Byzantine text-type. Kurt Aland placed the text of the codex in Category V, it was not examined by the Claremont Profile Method. C. R. Gregory dated the manuscript to the 11th century; the manuscript is dated by the INTF to the 11th century. The manuscript was added to the list of New Testament manuscripts by Gregory.

Gregory saw it in 1886. The manuscript is housed at the Vatican Library, in Rome. List of New Testament minuscules Biblical manuscript Textual criticism Minuscule 869 Gregory, Caspar René. Textkritik des Neuen Testaments. 1. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs. P. 228. "Liste Handschriften". Münster: Institute for New Testament Textual Research. Retrieved 7 August 2011