Middle Eastern Dilemma?: Cherchez le Lion!

Away from any political bias or comment, I decided today to tackle four of the many personalities that have shaped the Middle Eastern crisis, if not history, based on a common point they share: Their names.
Yes their names. Although seemingly not connected, these 4 men share a powerful etymological tie.

Few years back, on September 2000, when the Aqsa Intifada broke out, the name of Ariel Sharon was catapulted again to the limelight of the news scene.

The name Ariel has always had a familiar ring in my head: For years the Lebanese televisions have hyped "Ariel" as the best washing machine powder ever. Later on, our young minds were fascinated by Ariel, the little Disney's mermaid; earlier on adult males were keen on getting an eyeful of bombshell Arielle Dombasle.

But when Ariel (Sharon this time) notoriously re-emerged in the current events, I had developed by then my inclination to etymology and researching name meanings, and so I decided to look up the roots of this recurring name, be it a washing powder, a cartoon mermaid or a sinister Israeli belligerent.

"Ari-el" read the Webster's New World dictionary, means "The lion (Ari) of God (El)."
The dictionary mentioned that the name is of Hebrew origin, according to the usual judeo-centric trend. However, it has been historically proven that the "El" suffix indicates a Phoenician-Aramaic denomination. And even in Syriac language, Lion = Aryo...

So now we had a lion to our southern borders... But wait! That reminded me immediately of the most famous "lion" governing the areas to the east and north of our borders: Assad!
For you who are not familiar with Arabic, Assad is the translation of lion!

Almost a year later, on September 11, 2001 another major figure on the world and Middle East's scene reappeared clamorously: his name was Osama Bin Laden.
Ironically, the name Osama is another Arabic synonym of: LION!
Voilà, we had three active lions pulling the strings of politics in our region.
Whether Arabic, Hebrew or Aramaic, there was an influential lion somewhere, deciding other people's destinies.

Today as I was finalizing this post, I came across an interesting list of lion-based male names from all over the world. In the list the name "Gurion" caught my eye and, naturally, the name of Israel's David Ben Gurion came to mind.

Born David Green in Poland, he later adopted a Hebrew surname, opting for Ben Gurion, which meant: lion cub!
Unbelievable. Come to think of it, at least nowadays, the Middle East and the Near East are not natural habitats for lions, and yet many powerful personalities are named after those great felines.

Each of these four men are respectively regarded as heroes by their fans and as butchers by their opponents.
So we will leave it to time and history to decide how positive or negative the leonine namesake has been to this region!