Ariel Sharon, Israel's former Prime Minister, was perhaps one of the most controversial public figures in the Mideast.He was born in 1928 in a moshav-an agricultural community in which, unlike a kibbutz, residents own their own property-and was raised by parents who were not only ardent Zionists but also rugged individualists. His father especially was contemptuous of socialism and believed in individual enterprise, raising his son to be self-reliant and physically strong in order to prepare him for the inevitable struggle to establish a Jewish state.Sharon was perhaps best known as the organi