Clinton's Jail

.

Following up on this:


Bill Clinton excerpt:

"I said, ‘Natan, what is the deal [about not supporting the peace deal],'" Clinton recalled. "He said, ‘I can't vote for this, I'm Russian...I come from one of the biggest countries in the world to one of the smallest. You want me to cut it in half. No, thank you.'"

Clinton responded, "Don't give me this, you came here from a jail cell. It's a lot bigger than your jail cell."

And here's EG's comment:

As we know, the Gaza Strip too is bigger than a jail cell, although many enemies of Israel call it an open air jail. Can we ask Bill C to adjudicate this matter??

And J responded:

Unbelievable. I assume Jews should be happy they are no longer being put in ovens.

BTW, OG has pointed out:

Starting on page 187 of "The Case for Democracy", the story is that Sharansky resigned on the eve of Barak’s visit to Camp David...Half of the book is about why Sharansky was opposed to the assumptions of the entire Oslo process. He said “I refuse to ignore the Palestinian Authority’s violations of human rights because I remain convinced that a neighbor who tramples on the rights of its own people will eventually threaten the security of my people.”

And this:

Sharansky says that the rejection of the Oslo process that required the United States and Israel to prop up dictators is dead and should be replaced by a bottom approach to peace:

"I have always believed that the only reliable path to peace begins with a bottom-up approach in rebuilding Palestinian civil society, in which Palestinians rebuild their educational system to teach their students to be good citizens rather than suicide bombers; in which Palestinians rebuild their economy through a commitment to initiative and personal freedom; rebuild their security apparatus to secure peace rather than preparing for war; and build proper and healthy civic institutions."

And this:

When Sharansky led his Yisrael B’Aliya faction out of the government prior to Camp David, the New York Times, the chief cheerleader for the Oslo process, was furious. Deborah Sontag devoted an entire article to exploring the paradox of the former human rights activist turned hardline nationalist. She found many eager to comment negatively on Sharansky as a pandering politician, but in all of Israel there was only one obscure chareidi columnist for the Jerusalem Post with a good word to say for him.

In fact, the alleged paradox did not exist. Sharansky continued to be guided by the insight of the moral mentor of the Soviet dissident movement, nuclear physicist Andre Sakharov: a country that does not respect the rights of its citizens will not respect the rights of others.

From the beginning, Sharansky was a critic of the Oslo process. Shimon Peres openly declared that Oslo was based on a ``leap of faith" that the inventor of modern terrorism would become a partner for peace – a messianic delusion that Peres is unable to shake until this very day. From that original leap of faith followed the second great failing of Oslo: the insistent refusal to focus on Palestinian compliance. The messianic belief in the peace process precluded attention to any unpleasant facts that would have revealed how ill-founded was the Oslo faith.

Thirdly, Sharansky bemoaned the lack of national consensus on the Israeli side. Oslo’s proponents were content to push through the most dramatic agreements in Israel’s history with a narrow one-vote advantage in the Knesset, even if that one vote had to be purchased with the promises of a Mitsubishi to obscure MKs on the other side of the aisle.

Sharansky’s most trenchant criticism of Oslo was a direct outgrowth of his experiences as a Soviet dissident. He understood, as no one else did at the time, the direct connection between Palestinian democracy and any hope of peace. The Oslo architects believed that Arafat would become their deputy to stop Palestinian terrorism. From their point of view, then, the stronger Arafat became the better. Yitzchak Rabin savored the idea of Arafat dealing with terrorists unconstrained by ``a Supreme Court, Betselem, and all kinds of bleeding heart liberals."

In article after article over nearly a decade, Sharansky argued that this approach would not, could not, work. Peace would never be achieved with a totalitarian Palestinian regime. Only a Palestinian democracy could make an enduring peace.

- - -

Sharansky on Libya's Fathi Eljahmi (And On Obama)

From the op-ed in today's Washington Post by human rights activist Natan Sharansky who spent nine years in the Soviet gulag and serves as chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

Death of A Dissident

Fathi Eljahmi, the most prominent democratic dissident in Libya, died last Thursday. Eljahmi had endured seven years in unspeakable conditions in the Libyan prison system. His crime? He spoke out, unflinchingly, for freedom of speech and democratic reforms...

...His brother Mohamed, an American citizen, spent years calling attention to the case...At a 2007 conference of democratic dissidents in Prague, I saw how moved President George W. Bush was by hearing Eljahmi's brother tell his story. Bush promised to press the case with the Libyan government. Despite American efforts, though, Eljahmi remained in prison.

Why? Because dictatorial regimes are well practiced at telling the difference between real pressure and lip service.

...The free world has many reasons to approach dictatorial regimes with kid gloves. Sometimes we want their cooperation in addressing regional problems, sometimes we worry about disrupting the oil markets, sometimes we are anxious about global stability. Regarding Libya, from which the West has managed to extract a promise not to develop nuclear weapons and not to support terrorist organizations, there is concern about risking those things that have been gained.

As a result, and with the West's blessing, Libya has succeeded in becoming a global spokesman for brutal dictatorships like its own. We have stood by as Libya was elected to chair the U.N. Human Rights Commission and as it became a key organizer of the Durban II anti-racism conference in Geneva. In a few months, a Libyan will take up the presidency of the U.N. General Assembly...

...Of course it is important to engage peoples around the world in constructive dialogue. But a dialogue with a country's people is not the same as a dialogue with their regime...Today, the ball is in the court of the free world. Will its leaders make Libya pay a heavy price, making clear to Libyans and other oppressed peoples that brutality will not be tolerated and that freedom can one day be theirs? Or will the message match that of the Libyan regime to its people: that in their country, freedom has no future.

The coming days will tell us how the free world has chosen.

In between the lines, is Sharansky talking to Obama?

Soviet Jewry Struggle Memory

The following is excerpted from a description of the wedding of Rachel, daughter of Avital and Natan Scharanksy in Jerusalem two weeks ago when the writer began musing on her connection to Natan. As it bears on actions of my youth and that of my wife, I found it appropriate to post:

On one memorable occasion I remember how shocked my parents were when, twenty-five odd years ago, a group of us disrupted a concert of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Half way through the performance, we shed our outside clothes to reveal the striped “prison uniforms” we were wearing underneath, and handcuffed ourselves to the railings of the balcony in the auditorium, yelling our Soviet Jewry slogans and shaking our fists. As the cellos and violins and violas of the Moscow Philharmonic came slithering to halt, we knew, in the dealthly silence that followed, that our Refusenik brothers and sisters would be listening thousands of miles away on the BBC World Service. It was only a few minutes before infuriated police officers arrived on the scene with large metal pincers to cut us free from the railings, but it was enough.

I speak of it now as if it were a childish prank, but it was not an easy thing to do. We were young and idealistic, but we were also nicely brought up middle-class Jewish girls and boys. We had all been taken by our parents on one Sunday evening or another to hear a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. We had learned to sit politely and not fidget and not applaud between movements. For years we had enjoyed Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saens and Schubert in this bastion of British culture, and now we were more or less spitting in its face.

The second before I had to stand up along with my friends, and shout at the top of my voice into the silent abyss of the stalls, my courage failed me and I did not think I could do it. The only thing, the only thing, which enabled me to get to my feet, was the thought of Natan in his solitary confinement cell, the thought of him never seeing Avital again. The reason why so many Jewish youth were participating in these demonstrations all over the world, was that Natan’s story was not just a prisoner story, or a persecution story, or even a Jewish story. It was a love story.

I am here with her but I am not really here at all; I have risen in one second to my feet at the Royal Festival Hall, and have screamed : “Free Sharansky!” like an animal, at the respectable Russian musicians playing classical music on the stage below.

I have always known, across all of the years, what I was shouting for that night. But today, looking at Rachel’s face, at that beloved and wonderful genetic combination of Natan and Avital, today I really know.

And then, she added this:-

When it was time for the groom to break the glass, Natan took the microphone to say a few words. “I’d like to say something about why we are breaking this glass” he said, alternating seamlessly between English and Hebrew.

“Thirty-four years ago, in a Moscow apartment, Avital and I stood under a sheet held up by four boys, for our own Chuppah. There were barely enough people to make up a minyan. We had never been to a Jewish wedding before, and we had no understanding of what to do. We mouthed the words that the Rabbi told us to say, without knowing their meaning. But the breaking of the glass, this we understood very well. We had one challenge, and the challenge was very clear to us. We knew that we had to get to Jerusalem. No matter what it would take, no matter how many years, we had to get to Jerusalem and build a home there. And this is what we did.”

“So now you are standing under the Chuppah Rachel, a child born in Jerusalem, overlooking Jerusalem, the first sabra in our family, marrying Micha, the first Oleh Hadash from his family. And this begs the question: Why should we break the glass at all? We are here, after all. Jerusalem has been rebuilt, and it is a vibrant city.

But the reason we are breaking the glass is this: the challenge that faces you, Rachel and Micha, is different to the challenge that faced us. You will make a home in Jerusalem, yes, but you must simultaneously have your feet on the ground, building a Jerusalem shel mata, a physical Jerusalem, while always keeping an eye on the Jerusalem shel ma’alah, on what it means, on what it represents. It will be your mission, and the mission of all your generation, to defend Jerusalem, to protect her, to keep her safe. And I think that your challenge may, in the end, be even more difficult than ours”.