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Celebrating Freedom - Interview with Natan Sharansky

(Ynet News) Andrew Friedman - 20 years ago today, Anatoly Sharansky was released from a Moscow prison and granted a wish he had made more than a decade before: he was expelled from the Soviet Union and stripped of his citizenship. * Q: 20 years in Israel is a long time. How do you feel? Sharansky: Twenty years ago when I came, I was physically thrown from hell to paradise, from prison to the kotel (Western Wall) in just one day. Of course there are things to fix, lots of problems to work on. But I am still in paradise. * Q: How will you celebrate the anniversary of your release? Sharansky: Every year we have a seder, like on the first night of Pesach. My children ask me questions - every year they have to come up with new questions - and I re-tell them the story of how I went to prison and how I finally made aliya. * Q: Any disappointments? Sharansky: All these years I've tried to promote what I believe should have been the major lesson from our victory over the Soviet Union; namely, the notion that world security and stability can be reached only by linking the issue of international relations to the question of democracy and human rights. This very important lesson was abandoned by the free world. * Q: In your book The Case for Democracy you write about "double thinkers"; citizens of tyrannical regimes that are forced to say one thing but clearly believe another. Do you think Palestinians and other Arabs fall into this category? Sharansky: Just take a plane ride from Saudi Arabia or Iran to Paris and watch how quickly people change their clothes, their mannerisms, their language. Of course they are double thinkers - they've spent their entire lives trying to break free of these restrictions. As for the Palestinians, there is no doubt they are also double thinkers. What - do think the majority want to continue living in refugee camps? They are so happy with no civil society? I know many Palestinians who are angry with Israel because we allowed Arafat to destroy the beginnings of Palestinian society. The entire PA is divided among different Fatah gangs who demand protection money. You think people prefer to live with this reality than to be free? Of course not.
2006-02-10 00:00:00
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