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Natan Sharansky
Natan Sharansky, February 2016
Date of birth	(1948-01-20) 20 January 1948 (age 71)
Place of birth	Stalino, Soviet Union (now Donetsk, Ukraine)
Knessets	14, 15, 16, 17
Faction represented in Knesset
1996–2003	Yisrael BaAliyah
2006	Likud
Ministerial roles
1996–1999	Minister of Industry and Trade
1999–2000	Minister of Internal Affairs
2001–2003	Deputy Prime Minister
2001–2003	Minister of Housing & Construction
2003–2005	Minister of Jerusalem Affairs
Born	Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky

Natan Sharansky (Hebrew: .mw-parser-output .script-hebrew,.mw-parser-output .script-Hebrfont-size:1.15em;font-family:"Ezra SIL","Ezra SIL SR","Keter Aram Tsova","Taamey Ashkenaz","Taamey David CLM","Taamey Frank CLM","Frank Ruehl CLM","Keter YG","Shofar","David CLM","Hadasim CLM","Simple CLM","Nachlieli","SBL BibLit","SBL Hebrew",Cardo,Alef,"Noto Serif Hebrew","Noto Sans Hebrew","David Libre",David,"Times New Roman",Gisha,Arial,FreeSerif,FreeSansנתן שרנסקי, Russian: Ната́н Щара́нский, Ukrainian: Натан Щаранський; born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky (Russian: Анато́лий Бори́сович Щара́нский, Ukrainian: Анатолій Борисович Щаранський) on 20 January 1948) is an Israeli politician, human rights activist and author who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He served as Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018.^[1]

Biography

Sharansky was born in Donetsk (then called Stalino), Soviet Union on 20 January 1948 to a Jewish family. He graduated with a degree in applied mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. As a child, he was a chess prodigy. He performed in simultaneous and blindfold displays, usually against adults. At the age of 15, he won the championship in his native Donetsk.^[2] When incarcerated in solitary confinement, he claims to have maintained his sanity by playing chess against himself in his mind. Sharansky beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a simultaneous exhibition in Israel in 1996.^[2]

He took his current Hebrew name in 1986, when he was freed from Soviet incarceration as part of a prisoner exchange and received an Israeli passport with his new name.^[3][4]

Natan Sharansky is married to Avital Sharansky and has two daughters, Rachel and Hannah.^[4] In the Soviet Union, his application to marry Avital was denied by the authorities. They were married in a friend's apartment, in a ceremony not recognized by the government, as the USSR only recognized civil marriage and not religious marriage.^[5]

Activism

Sharansky was denied an exit visa to Israel in 1973. The reason given for denial of the visa was that he had been given access, at some point in his career, to information vital to Soviet national security and could not now be allowed to leave. After becoming a refusenik, Sharansky became a human rights activist, working as a translator for dissident and nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, and spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Group and a leader for the rights of refuseniks.

Arrest and imprisonment

On 15 March 1977 Sharansky was arrested on multiple charges including high treason and spying for Americans. The accusation stipulated that he passed to the West lists of over 1,300 refuseniks, many of whom were denied exit visas because of their knowledge of state secrets, which resulted in a publication by Robert C. Toth, "Russ Indirectly Reveal 'State Secrets': Clues in Denials of Jewish Visas".^[6][7] High treason carried the death penalty. The following year, in 1978, he was sentenced to 13 years of forced labor.

Sharansky spent time in the Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, followed by Vladimir and Chistopol prisons, where for part of the time he was placed in solitary confinement. His health deteriorated, to the point of endangering his life. Later he was detained in Perm 35, a post-Stalin-Gulag-type so-called "strict regimen colony" in Perm Oblast.^[8] He kept himself sane during solitary confinement by playing chess with himself, in his head.^[9]

Sharansky appeared in a March 1990 edition of National Geographic magazine. The article, "Last Days of the Gulag" by Mike Edwards, profiles through photographs and text one of the few remaining Soviet prison labor camps. The article featured a photo of Natan Sharansky and his wife Avital in their home in Israel viewing photos of the same Gulag where he had been imprisoned, but as it appeared in 1990. Sharansky remarked in the article that after viewing images of the prisoner's faces he could discern that the protocol of oppression was still at work. The author also showed Sharansky a photo of the cold isolation cell where he had himself been confined. Sharansky commented with irony that conditions had improved slightly—the stark cell now featured a thin bench bolted to the middle of the floor. He said that if that bench had existed when he was there he could have utilized it to sleep, albeit uncomfortably.

Release from detention

Sharansky's wife Avital at the Sharansky tribunal in Amsterdam, 12 May 1980

As a result of an international campaign led by his wife, Avital Sharansky (including assistance from East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, New York Congressman Benjamin Gilman and Rabbi Ronald Greenwald), Sharansky was released on 11 February 1986 as part of a larger exchange of detainees. He was the first political prisoner released by Mikhail Gorbachev due to intense political pressure from Ronald Reagan.^{[citation needed]}

Sharansky and three low-level Western spies (Czech citizen Jaroslav Javorský and West German citizens Wolf-Georg Frohn and Dietrich Nistroy) were exchanged for Czech spies Karl Koecher and Hana Koecher held in the United States, Soviet spy Yevgeni Zemlyakov, Polish spy Marian Zacharski and East German spy Detlef Scharfenorth (the latter three held in West Germany). The men were released in two stages, with Sharansky freed first then whisked away, accompanied by the United States Ambassador to West Germany, Richard R. Burt.^[10] The exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge between East and West Berlin, which had been used before for this purpose.^[11][12]

Aftermath

Sharansky immediately immigrated to Israel, adopting the Hebrew name Natan and eventually simplifying his surname to Sharansky. His wife had become religiously observant during his detention, but he did not follow her on this path.

Due to his age and poor health, he was exempted from the standard mandatory three years' military service, but had to undergo three weeks of military training and do a stint in the Civil Guard.^[13]

In 1988, he wrote Fear No Evil, his memoirs of his time as a prisoner, and founded the Zionist Forum, an organization of Soviet immigrant Jewish activists dedicated to helping new Israelis and educating the public about integration issues, known in Israel as klita (lit. "absorption"). Sharansky also served as a contributing editor to The Jerusalem Report and as a Board member of Peace Watch.

Freedom fighter awards

• In 1986, the United States Congress granted him the Congressional Gold Medal.^[14]


• In 1987, the Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America granted Sharansky the Henrietta Szold Award, given by Ruth Popkin.^[15]


• In 2006, US President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.^[16]


• On 17 September 2008, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation awarded Sharansky its 2008 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award.^[17]

Israeli political career

Sharansky and Ronald Reagan, December 1986

In 1995, Sharansky and Yoel Edelstein founded the Yisrael BaAliyah party (a play of words, since "aliya" means both Jewish emigration to Israel, and "rise", thus the party name means "(People of) Israel immigrating (to the State of Israel)", as well as "Israel on the rise"), promoting the absorption of the Soviet Jews into Israeli society. The party won seven Knesset seats in 1996.^[18] It won 6 seats in the Israeli legislative election, 1999, gaining two ministerial posts, but left the government on 11 July 2000 in response to suggestions that Prime Minister Ehud Barak's negotiations with the Palestinians would result in a division of Jerusalem. After Ariel Sharon won a special election for Prime Minister in 2001, the party joined his new government, and was again given two ministerial posts.^[19]

In the January 2003 elections, the party was reduced to just two seats. Sharansky resigned from the Knesset, and was replaced by Edelstein. However, he remained party chairman, and decided to merge it into Likud (which had won the election with 38 seats). The merger went through on 10 March 2003,^[20] and Sharansky was appointed Minister of Jerusalem Affairs.

From March 2003 – May 2005, he was Israel's Minister without Portfolio, responsible for Jerusalem, social and Jewish diaspora affairs. Under this position Sharansky chaired a secret committee that approved the confiscation of East Jerusalem property of West Bank Palestinians. This decision was reversed after an outcry from the Israeli left and the international community.^[21]

Previously he served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, Minister of Housing and Construction since March 2001, Interior Minister of Israel (July 1999 – resigned in July 2000), Minister of Industry and Trade (1996–1999).

He resigned from the cabinet in April 2005 to protest plans to withdraw Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.

He was re-elected to the Knesset in March 2006 as a member of the Likud Party. On 20 November 2006, he resigned from the Knesset.

NGO work and other activities

His resignation was meant to allow him to form the right-leaning Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies. The funding came from American billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Since 2007, Sharansky has been Chairman of the Board of Beit Hatefutsot, the Jewish diaspora museum.^[22]

In June 2009, Sharansky was elected to the Chair of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel by the Jewish Agency Board of Governors.^[23] In September 2009 Sharansky secured $6 million from the Genesis Philanthropy Group for educational activities in the former Soviet Union.^[24]

He is a Founding Member of One Jerusalem.

Media recognition and awards

In 1997, Sharansky was the focus of a 2.5-hour-long episode of Chaim SheKa'ele ("What A Life"), the Israeli version of This Is Your Life. The episode focused mainly on his experiences as a Soviet dissident, and featured many of his family and acquaintances.^[25] In 2005, Sharansky participated in They Chose Freedom, a four-part television documentary on the history of the Soviet dissident movement, and in 2008 he was featured in Laura Bialis' documentary Refusenik. In 2014, he took part in Natella Boltyanskaya's documentary Parallels, Events, People. He was number eleven on the list of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2005 in the "Scientists and thinkers" category.^[26]

Published works

Sharansky is the author of three books. The first is the autobiographical Fear No Evil, which dealt with his trial and imprisonment.

His second book, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror was co-written with Ron Dermer. George W. Bush offered praise for the book:

If you want a glimpse of how I think about foreign policy, read Natan Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy. ... For government, particularly – for opinion makers, I would put it on your recommended reading list. It's short and it's good. This guy is a heroic figure, as you know. It's a great book.^[27][28]

His book Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, is a defense of the value of national and religious identity in building democracy.^[29]

Political views

Sharansky and Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, 19 September 2000

Sharansky has argued that there can never be peace between Israel and the Palestinians until there is "the building of real democratic institutions in the fledgling Palestinian society, no matter how tempting a 'solution' without them may be."^[30] In a Haaretz interview, he maintained the following:

Jews came here 3,000 years ago and this is the cradle of Jewish civilization. Jews are the only people in history who kept their loyalty to their identity and their land throughout the 2,000 years of exile, and no doubt that they have the right to have their place among nations—not only historically but also geographically. As to the Palestinians, who are the descendants of those Arabs who migrated in the last 200 years, they have the right, if they want, to have their own state ... but not at the expense of the state of Israel.^[3]

In the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2011, he told Moment Magazine, "To sign an agreement you must have a partner who is dependent on the well-being of his people, which is what democracy means."^[31]

See also

• Town square test


• New anti-Semitism

References

Bibliography

• 
  "Ceasing a life of double thinking". Jewish Quarterly. 33 (3): 15–17. January 1986. doi:10.1080/0449010X.1986.10703688 (inactive 2019-02-14).
  


• 
  Shcharansky, Anatoly; Bonner, Yelena; Alexeyeva, Ludmilla (26 June 1986). "The tenth year of the Watch". The New York Review of Books.
  


• 
  "As I see Gorbachev". Commentary. 85 (3): 29–34. 1 March 1988.
  


• 
  "Life in the 'small zone': Sentenced to a labor camp, a Soviet poet tries to stay internally free". Chicago Tribune. 20 November 1988.
  


• 
  Shcharansky, Anatoly (Spring 1990). "The legacy of Andrei Sakharov". Journal of Democracy. 1 (2): 35–40. doi:10.1353/jod.1990.0035.
  


• 
  "Temple mount is more important than peace". Haaretz. 16 October 2003.
  


• 
  "On hating the Jews. The inextricable link between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism". The Wall Street Journal. 17 November 2003.
  


• 
  "3D test of anti-semitism: demonization, double standards, delegitimization". Jewish Political Studies Review (16): 3–4. Fall 2004.
  


• 
  "Peace will only come after freedom and democracy". Middle East Quarterly. 12 (1): 79–83. Winter 2005.
  


• 
  Eid, Bassem; Sharansky, Natan (11 February 2008). "Bush's Mideast U-Turn". The Wall Street Journal.
  


• 
  "The dissident choice". The Los Angeles Times. 24 November 2008.
  


• 
  "How the U.N. perpetuates the 'refugee' problem. Nowhere on earth do terrorists get so much help from the Free World". The Wall Street Journal. 6 January 2009.
  


• 
  "Students and Housewives vs. Evil Empire. My KGB interrogators scoffed at it, but the movement to free Soviet Jewry helped end the Cold War". The Wall Street Journal. 5 December 2012.
  


• 
  "Is Rouhani the new Gorbachev? How to test a supposed reformer: stand firm on sanctions, wait for proof". The Wall Street Journal. 17 November 2013.
  


• 
  "Marshaling the web to fight tyrants. Western leaders often disappoint dissidents, but now regular citizens world-wide can help out". The Wall Street Journal. 16 July 2014.
  


• 
  Sharansky, Natan; Keyes, David (6 February 2015). "Trust the dissidents, not the diplomats". The Washington Post.
  


• 
  "Breaking the silence is no human rights organization – and I should know". Haaretz. 31 January 2016.
  


• 
  Fear No Evil: The Classic Memoir of One Man's Triumph over a Police State, Public Affairs: 1998.
  ISBN 1-891620-02-9.


• 
  The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, Public Affairs: 2004.
  ISBN 1-58648-261-0.


• 
  Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, Public Affairs: 2008.
  ISBN 1-58648-513-X.

Further reading

• 
  Anatoly and Avital Shcharansky: the journey home. Harcourt. 1988. ISBN 978-0151066704.
  


• 
  "APS joins in appeals for Orlov and Shcharansky". Physics Today. 38 (1): 117. January 1985. Bibcode:1985PhT....38Q.117.. doi:10.1063/1.2813731.
  


• 
  "MPs seek to see Shcharanskii". Nature. 273 (5663): 485. 15 June 1978. Bibcode:1978Natur.273R.485.. doi:10.1038/273485c0.
  


• 
  "Shcharanskii trial stirs new anti-Soviet protests". Nature. 274 (5667): 107. 13 July 1978. Bibcode:1978Natur.274..107.. doi:10.1038/274107a0.
  


• 
  New York Media, LLC (6 October 1986). "Shcharansky urges sanctions". New York. 19 (39): 13.
  


• 
  Glazov, Jamie (17 December 2004). "The case for democracy: Sharansky's interview". FrontPage Magazine. Archived from the original on 31 May 2016. Retrieved 29 April 2016.
  


• 
  Hyman, Lloyd; Katz, Joseph; O'Connor, Timothy; Peshkin, Murray; Ringo, Roy (21 October 1977). "Concerning Y. Orlov and A. Sharansky". Science. 198 (4314): 253. Bibcode:1977Sci...198..253H. doi:10.1126/SCIENCE.198.4314.251. PMID 17770484.
  


• 
  Korey, William (1980). "American reaction to the Shcharansky case". American Jewish Year Book. 80: 118–129. JSTOR 23603826.
  


• 
  Minker, Jack (September 1978). "Opinion paper: science, Shcharansky, and the Soviets". Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 29 (5): 219–224. doi:10.1002/asi.4630290503.
  


• 
  Rich, Vera (12 January 1978). "Shcharanskii may soon be brought to trial-without a lawyer". Nature. 271 (5641): 104–105. Bibcode:1978Natur.271..104R. doi:10.1038/271104a0.
  


• 
  Rich, Vera (6 July 1978). "Shcharanskii trial delayed again, others exiled". Nature. 274 (5666): 6. Bibcode:1978Natur.274....6R. doi:10.1038/274006b0.
  


• 
  Rich, Vera (20 February 1986). "Shcharanskii release triggers hopes". Nature. 319 (6055): 611. Bibcode:1986Natur.319..611R. doi:10.1038/319611b0.
  


• 
  Shlapentokh, Dmitry (August 2005). "President Bush, Shcharansky and the tradition of Russian dissent". Contemporary Review. 287 (1675): 71–81.
  


• 
  Turnberg, Leslie (7 January 1984). "Anatoly Shcharansky". The Lancet. 323 (8367): 50. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(84)90214-9.
  


• 
  Van Den Berg, Ger; Simons, William (1981). "The Soviet Union and human rights legislation: the Shcharansky case". California Western International Law Journal. 11 (3): 479, 493.
  

External links

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Wikiquote has quotations related to: Natan Sharansky

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Natan Sharansky.

• 
  Natan Sharansky on the Knesset website


• 
  Appearances on C-SPAN
  


• 
  "Natan Sharansky". Archived from the original on 10 October 2010. Retrieved 2004-07-14.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link) Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs


• 
  Natan Sharansky Jewish Virtual Library


• The View from the Gulag. An interview with Natan Sharansky


• Sharansky's Final Statement in the Soviet Court, 14 July 1978


• Autobiographical article about his time in the GULAG Solitary Lessons October 2008.


• Natan Sharansky short speech on The Strength of a United Jewish People
  


• 
  Mr. Sharansky, ease my doubts, by Martin Kramer
  


• 
  Natan Sharansky Right Web Profile


• 
  Natan Sharansky Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies
  


• 
  Is This the Deal We Were Hoping For? February 2009.


• 
  "Defining Identity" on YouTube interview by Leon Charney on The Leon Charney Report