I have done a podcast, a Q&A, with Natan Sharansky: here. He is — what? “The great dissident and refusenik,” as I say in my introduction. “The Israeli politician. The Jewish leader. The human-rights activist.” He and I discuss questions concerning Israel and Jewry: immediate questions, forever questions.
Let me provide a sample. I ask whether he was shocked by October 7. He has seen and experienced a lot in his life: starting when he was quite young, in the Soviet Union. He does not seem to me the type to be shocked. He answers as follows (and I will paraphrase):
You always have to be ready to fight, and you can’t take Israel’s existence for granted. But I was shocked by two things: by the unbelievable brutality, accompanied by the desire of the murderers to put all this on the internet, for the whole world to see; and by the failure of our national-security apparatus.
(As I continue, I will have my words in roman type, and Sharansky’s — my paraphrases — in italics.)
I remember America in the days after 9/11. “Nothing will ever be the same again,” people said. “There is before 9/11 and after 9/11.” Frankly, things were pretty much the same by Thanksgiving, if not earlier.
People are saying that, after October 7, Israel will never be the same again. There is before and after. True?
I hope things will not be the same. We must lose the illusion that we can balance carrots and sticks, that we can live peacefully with dictators and terrorists. And we must lose the illusion that we can afford to be disunited. On October 6, we were the most polarized society on earth. On October 8, we were one fighting family.
I hope the illusions of the past do not return.
Israel has always moved heaven and earth to get its people back — people being held captive or hostage. Israel has been known to trade hundreds of Arab prisoners for a few Israelis, or one. Some think the country can no longer afford to do this — that captives and hostages must be written off (as casualties of war).
Well, look, I feel my personal experience. So I do know that it is very important to know that your country will do everything possible to bring you back.
Let me pause to note that Sharansky was a prisoner in the Soviet Gulag for nine years. KGB agents told him he had been forgotten and abandoned. But he had confidence that his wife, Avital, was working for him in Israel, and that the whole of Israel was behind her, and him.
At the same time, a country cannot commit suicide. So you have to do everything possible to get your people back, short of endangering the existence of the state.
People speak of an “existential threat.” Israel is facing one, from Iran and its tentacles (including Hamas). Ukraine is facing one.
Our struggle here, and the struggle in Ukraine — these are not only challenges to our countries but also to the Free World. Ukraine is fighting for the future of the Free World — whether you love Ukraine or don’t love Ukraine. Whatever your attitude is to Putin.
Putin wants to change the rules under which this world is run. He wants to restore the Russian empire, and he wants to eliminate key rules and institutions: rules and institutions that were established so there could be peaceful coexistence between weak nations and strong nations. Putin wants to destroy all this.
Our struggle and Ukraine’s struggle have their own peculiarities, but they both relate to the future of the Free World.
On the role of Iran in the October 7 attack:
It’s obvious. You don’t need to look for intelligence. Iran was behind Hamas for many, many years. It inspired Hamas, it supported Hamas with weapons. With money. And Iran has been a host and home for Hamas.
With Hezbollah, it seems inevitable that we will have to fight. Hezbollah is part of the Iranian army, plain and simple. Hamas is a little bit more complicated — but still, it is an arm of Iran.
There appears to be a new axis: Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Hamas . . .
It’s not new, but it’s a more demonstrative axis. Putin welcomed Hamas in Moscow last March. And he embraced them after the October 7 massacre. It’s not accidental that Hamas released three of our hostages who also have Russian citizenship. It was a special gift to Putin.
Israel is in a very difficult situation. A cruelly difficult situation. It must wage a war against Hamas, even as Hamas fighters embed themselves in hospitals and schools. Even as they use children and others as shields.
Yes, we are in a very difficult situation, I will say that. Yet, even in this situation, we have the most moral army in the world. Even after the brutality, the horrors — the murder, the rape, the torture, the kidnapping — of October 7.
We understand that we have to kill Hamas before Hamas kills us all. They are stockpiling weapons in schools and in mosques. And Israel?
We warn people of our attacks. We want them to leave the areas that we are targeting. This robs us of the element of surprise — and surprise is very important in warfare. We are ready to risk the lives of our soldiers in order to kill fewer civilians.
Look: We want to win, and we want to minimize the number of civilian casualties. I have a feeling that Hamas has the absolute opposite aim: The higher the civilian death toll, the bigger their victory, because that is like their last hope, now that they really understand we are serious. Their last hope to survive in those tunnels is to make us stop this war, and they do that by speaking of Palestinian children killed and mobilizing world opinion against us. That’s what they’re doing.
On the response of the U.S. government:
I was very pleasantly surprised by the immediate reaction of President Biden. First of all, it was clear that he takes this personally and emotionally. And that he is not hesitant to recognize and to declare the right of Israel to destroy Hamas. Also, he sent weapons.
I am reminded of 50 years ago — in the Yom Kippur War — when Nixon and Kissinger waited to send weapons. They came at the last minute. In this case, they came in the first hours.
The question now — as in all our operations — is: How long will America keep supporting us? Will we be able to finish the war, accomplish our goal?
In the United States and throughout the world, there have been anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations and incidents. My hunch is: Some percentage of these people are antisemitic — genuinely so. The others are going along for the ride. The Palestinians are a cause of the Left, and Israel a bogeyman.
Of course, whether a person is motivated by antisemitism — the real Judenhass — or “politics,” the outcome can be the same.
No doubt there is a neo-Marxist ideology that says, “All the world is a struggle between oppressors and oppressed. When the oppressed fight — when the oppressed attack — that is progress. When the oppressing fight, that is regression.” This primitive ideology helps antisemites raise their head.
Antisemitism always exists. Sometimes it’s below the surface, sometimes above. And when external conditions allow, the antisemites raise their head.
I will give you the example of Russia. Historically, there has been a lot of antisemitism in Russia. But Putin has been something different. Now, however, with Russia at war, Putin must do everything possible to protect his dictatorship. Inevitably, antisemitic feelings come to the surface, because there is no better way for a dictator to control people than to have an external enemy, and there is no more natural enemy for people than Jews.
Antisemitism comes to the surface when rulers need it or when conditions permit.
So at this moment I cannot say which is more important: hatred toward Jews or so-called progressive ideology. One helps the other.
There have been thousands of books about antisemitism: documenting it, exploring it, seeking to explain it. There have been many more thousands of articles. I used to read a fair number. But no explanation for antisemitism is quite satisfactory for me. That includes the commonest, and strongest, one: envy. I’m not sure you can ever understand antisemitism; you just have to be alert to it, and oppose it, and defeat it. “Eternal vigilance” and all that.
Jews have always been the ones swimming against the stream. They are the other. If you look at history, we insisted on monotheism, when nobody else was ready to accept it. As a result, we had to be against all the other gods who existed. Then we insisted on not leaving Judaism when the rest of the world discovered Christianity. Etc.
People always need the other — an other they can hate. And the more people suffer, the more they need the other: somebody who is responsible for their suffering.
I decided long ago not to try to fight for a world where antisemitism doesn’t exist. We have to fight for a world where antisemitism is not dangerous to us or anybody else.
It has been proved again and again that antisemitism is bad for everybody. It means the end of democracy, the end of free speech, the end of the rights of minorities. It means that society is going in a very dangerous direction.
You cannot create a new type of people, who are without fear and without envy. And, again, I will not try to create a world without antisemitism. I want to make sure that antisemitism is not something that can kill us or do harm to the rest of the world.
A personal question: How old were you when you first became aware of antisemitism? Five, six, seven?
I became aware at a very early age, because I lived in a world where there was nothing Jewish except from antisemitism. This prejudice was on the street, in the state — everywhere. So I grew up in it. To be a Jew was like being born with a disease, because there was nothing good in it. Only later did I discover there is a history, there is a people, there is a country behind you — and it can all be yours, if only you will decide. Then I became a proud Jew, and that gave me the strength to fight for human rights and freedom for everybody.
Your teacher and mentor Sakharov — was he aware of the predicament of the Jews? Did he sympathize with them?
He knew very well what it is to be Jewish. Most of his colleagues in physics, and in the nuclear laboratories, were Jewish, and they all suffered from antisemitism, and he knew it very well. As a very noble representative of the best of the Russian intelligentsia, he was fighting to defend them against this injustice. His feeling of solidarity with our struggle was absolute.
Andrei Sakharov was a great man. So is Natan Sharansky. I have loved him and admired him since the 1970s (both of them, actually). To speak with Sharansky is to have something authoritative — knowledge painfully and painstakingly gained and earned. Again, our latest podcast is here.