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The Fight for Freedom, from Exodus to Gaza
(Wall Street Journal) Natan Sharansky - On the first night of Passover, Jewish families around the world read the Haggadah, which tells the story of our people's Exodus from Egypt and the beginning of our history as a free people. The conclusion that emerges is that we will always have to fight for our freedom each day and in each generation. When I attended my first seder in Moscow 50 years ago, everyone gathered was a product of the Soviet regime. We all began as assimilated Jews, disconnected from and ignorant of our heritage. Yet soon we began to study Hebrew and Jewish traditions in secret. Many of us had KGB "tails," agents assigned to monitor and report our activities to the authorities. We didn't know that the end of our story would be as spectacular as the Exodus itself and helped bring down the Iron Curtain, allowing millions of Jews to return home to Israel. This year when we gathered to read about those who aspired to kill us, we thought about Hamas. We recalled the hostages, who have spent more than six months in captivity, enduring horrors that civilized minds refuse to imagine. We recalled American universities, where professors and students have celebrated the terrorists' Oct. 7 massacre. Yet reviewing our millennia-long journey strengthened our determination and optimism. If we stand strong in defending our rights as free people in our land, our persecutors will be carried away by the floods of history, as Pharaoh's army and the Soviet empire were before it. The writer, a former political prisoner in the Soviet Union, former minister in Israeli governments, and former Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel, is chairman of the advisory board of the Combat Antisemitism Movement.