As President Obama prepares to sign the legislation ending the era of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” we find ourselves thinking of a visit we had with Ariel Sharon in what must have been early 1993. The former defense minister of Israel was out of power at the time, though still in the Knesset, and was in New York. Your editor was then at the Jewish Forward and went up to see the ex-general at an office at midtown.

It happens that we brought along two colleagues — Adam Brodsky, now of the New York Post, and Jeffrey Goldberg, now of the Atlantic — and the three of us spent an hour or so in what could be called a wide-ranging conversation with the man whose autobiography is called “Warrior.” At the end it, one of us asked him what he thought of the plan of the new president, Bill Clinton, to permit gay soldiers and sailors to serve in the American military.

It was an arresting question not only because it was in the midst of the tumult over Mr. Clinton’s demarche. It was also because Mr. Sharon was probably the greatest living field commander, tested in battle both as a young soldier and a mature officer. He was a former defense minister, to boot. Whatever he said, one could be sure, it was informed by experience in the art and practice of war. But what we got for an answer was not a disquisition on unit cohesion or morals or military management.

Rather it was a quizzical look. It seems that not only had the question caught the former defense minister off guard but that Mr. Sharon was also without an answer. So he turned to an aide and asked, “What is our policy on gays in the military?” Then the aide — himself a military officer, if we recall correctly — shrugged to indicate that he didn’t know either. So the onetime defense minister of Israel, one of the greatest commanders of all time, turned back to his visitors and announced that he didn’t know.

Reflecting on that encounter over the years, we have occasionally puzzled over its meaning. On the one hand it seemed to suggest that the question of whether gay and lesbian soldiers should or shouldn’t be permitted in the army wasn’t a high priority for a country in the midst of an existential struggle. Yet one can imagine that Mr. Sharon didn’t want to step into that particular controversy, even if stepping into controversy was his main line of work. Or that he was just keeping his ammo dry, so to speak, as the issue was just over the horizon in Israel.

In the event, the adjustment America is now making was made in Israel in much shorter order. It was a reform that Mr. Sharon, we have the impression from a distance, greeted cheerfully. Our guess is that were he able to receive visitors today, he would brush the questions on this topic aside with his characteristic chuckle and, instead, unfurl one of his ubiquitous maps — of Iran, maybe, or Egypt or Lebanon, now bristling with enemy rockets — and turn the discussion to the strategic threat and the precarious order of battle. Not a bad thing for Mr. Obama to do in this hour of change.