Politics and Policy Archive
Welcome to Politics and Policy where you will find the latest thoughts and
reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the important political and public policy
questions facing us as Jews and as Americans living in the ever more interdependent global
village of today. Every other week you will find a new article on this page.
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Of Prophet and Loss: Whither Sharanskys Heroic Stature?
By Walter Ruby
If I had been asked ten years ago for the name of my greatest living hero, I would have
replied without reservation, "Natan Sharansky." If someone had posed the same
question to me two years ago, I would still have said, "Sharansky," albeit with
serious reservations.
Today, I no longer consider Natan to be a hero. Yes, he is the once great man who fought
for the rights of all Soviet citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, and through sheer force of
will and force of truth somehow managed to vanquish the seemingly invincible Soviet
tyranny. More recently, though, as a minister in successive Israeli governments who has
shown a penchant for harsh treatment of the Palestinians, Sharansky has tarnished his
former promise as a moral leader committed to freedom for all peoples. Not so long ago,
the Natan Sharansky who had built bridges in the 1970s between the Jewish emigration
movement and the Soviet dissident movement headed by Andrei Sakharov appeared to be the
only living Jew with the potential to unite our own badly divided people around a vision
blending ahavath Yisrael (love of the Jewish people) with tikkun olam (the mending of the
world). These days, however, tikkun olam is nowhere in sight as this one-time champion of
universal human rights has become an increasingly strident leader of Israels
national camp, now pressing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to step up Jewish
settlement of the West Bank.
Reading Natans recent pronouncements is all the sadder when one recalls the younger
Sharansky of the 1970s and 1980s, who was so self-evidently the greatest moral leader in
the Jewish world. Who can forget his defiant and soul stirring Next Year In
Jerusalem speech in a Soviet courtroom before he was led off to the gulag in chains,
or the sheer indestructibility of his spirit as he managed to keep mind and body intact
during eight long years of near total isolation inside a Soviet punishment
cell?
Sharanskys greatness was never more evident than on the unforgettable night in
February 1996 when I first glimpsed him in the flesh at Ben Gurion Airport. He had been
flown there after being liberated from the gulag to be accorded a heros welcome by
the entire nation of Israel. Amidst all the hoopla of that airport mob scene, the speeches
by Israels leading politicians, and the clamor for his attention by hundreds of
journalists and Soviet Jewry activists from around the world, Sharansky sat imperturbably
on the podium holding hands with his beloved wife Avital, from whom he had been torn 12
years before. Here was a balding, shabbily dressed, and utterly ordinary-looking man who,
at that moment, was the symbol of all that was good and noble in the Jewish spirit.
When Natan rose to speak in the halting, yet highly literate Hebrew he had learned in
underground ulpanim during the 1970s and somehow had maintained through his long years of
isolation, he metamorphosed before our eyes from a symbol, a face on a poster, into a real
human being, a simple Jew, a mensch, who spoke the plain truth without artifice or
pretense and whose thoughts, even at that moment of personal triumph, were with the
thousands of prisoners still marooned in the gulag. On this happiest day of our
lives, Sharansky said, I am not going to forget those whom I left in the
camps, in the prisons, who are still in exile or who still continue their struggle for
their right to emigrate, for their human rights.
Then Avital, a deeply religious Jew and devotee of the settler movement, led Natan to an
outdoor rally at which she was wildly cheered by a mainly right-wing crowd. She turned to
then Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who sat behind her on the podium, and demanded that he
protect our country and not give up one bit of it. Peres, Ariel Sharon and
other politicians gave their own windy self-serving orations, only reinforcing the
impression that they were morally dwarfed by the small, pale man sitting among them,
shaking his head from time to time as though to assure himself that he was not still back
in his prison cell having a particularly vivid dream.
When it was finally his turn to speak, Natan effortlessly elevated the discourse above any
political agenda, including that of his wife. He told the audience, During those
difficult years when I heard not a word from anybody, there was not a single day that went
by, not a single moment that passed, in which I did not feel a connection with all of you.
Even when I was in solitary confinement, I sang the song, How good it is to be
together, as brothers. Spontaneously, voices in the front row began singing
the words from the Book of Psalms: Heenay Mah Tov U Mah Naim Shevat Achim Gam
Yachad. Natan, Avital and the rest of the audience joined in and suddenly the song,
considered by many Israelis to be Socnut (Jewish Agency) shmaltz, magically reassumed its
timeless power, bringing together everyone at the rally -- leftists and rightists alike --
for a transcendent moment of mutual recognition and acceptance.
So what went wrong? Why has Sharansky not lived up to his great promise? Certainly, he was
in an unenviable position, given that Jews from clashing moral and political positions all
looked to him with such hope. Sharansky drifted haltingly toward the right over the years,
evidently torn between a political constituency (Israels Russian immigrant
population) that deeply mistrusted the Palestinians, and a smaller group of liberals who
looked to him to lead the struggle for universal human rights, including Palestinian human
rights. There was clearly no formula for squaring that circle, although he sometimes
seemed to try; insisting, on the one hand, that a failure to settle Har Homa would amount
to an end to Zionism while advocating, on the other, more humane treatment of
Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem by Israeli officialdom.
Natan took the lead in pointing out Palestinian violations of the Oslo Accords, including
the printing of anti-Semitic material in school textbooks, yet had nothing to say about
Israeli violations, including the refusal to free many security prisoners who had been
slated for release under the terms of the agreement. The authoritarian style of the Arafat
regime vividly reminded him of the Soviet Union, and he frequently expressed doubt as to
whether Israel could make peace with a dictatorship. Somehow, he appeared to miss the
irony that during its long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel habitually
resorted to the kind of abuses of Palestinian human and civil rights for which he so
vociferously denounced Arafat.
My most recent personal encounter with Sharansky came in 1998 when, as Interior Minister
under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he came to New York to promote the re-publication
of See No Evil, his powerful 1987 account of his years in the gulag. When Natan called on
me at a press conference, I asked how, given his own experiences as a political prisoner,
he could accept the longstanding Israeli practice of administrative detention,
arresting and holding Palestinian prisoners for extended periods, often without access to
a lawyer or without a specified trial date. Sharansky smiled wryly and said, Walter,
you always ask the tough questions. He then explained that while he is personally
uncomfortable with administrative detention, he believes that practice to be justified
under the unique circumstances in which Israel lives. After all, he reminded me, he and
other Soviet refuseniks were totally non-violent and sought only to leave the Soviet
state, not to destroy it. Many Palestinians, on the other hand, are indeed violent and
committed to Israels destruction. He had a point, of course, but however one cut it,
the irony of the one-time political prisoner and champion of human rights advocating
jailing other prisoners without charges was simply too much to swallow.
Today, as Housing Minister in Sharons new government, Sharansky is pressing for the
stepped-up building of apartments in West Bank Jewish settlements even though thousands of
housing units built for settlers in recent years stand empty. Two weeks ago, he came to
New York to urge American Jewry to step up pressure on the Bush administration to mute its
criticism of Sharons increasingly hard-line response to the Palestinian intifada.
Sharansky has made his choice. He clearly has given up efforts to find common ground among
Jews with differing visions, and instead has taken his place as a lion of the Israeli
right. Even in this sadly circumscribed role, Natan evinces a personal integrity and
soaring intellect that only make his choice all the more tragic, not only for those
Israelis and Jews who still dream of an accommodation with the Palestinians, but for all
of Am Yisrael -- left, right and center. Sharansky was the only leader with the moral
stature to get Jews of all political and religious stripes to end mutual demonization and
recognize each others Jewishness and humanity. Natan summoned forth exactly that
sense of Jewish wholeness and connection on that magical evening at Ben Gurion Airport so
many years ago, and he had the potential to be our peoples unifier on a more
sustained and lasting basis. But it seems, at least for the present, that he is
unavailable for the job.
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