ELIE WIESEL z'l by Natan Sharansky

Perhaps better than anyone else of our age, Elie Wiesel grasped the terrible power of silence. He understood that the failure to speak out, about both the horrors of the past and the evils of the present, is one of the most effective ways there is to perpetuate suffering and empower those who inflict it.

Wiesel therefore made it his life’s mission to ensure that silence would not prevail. First, he took the courageous and painful step of recounting the Holocaust, bringing it to public attention in a way that no one else before him had done. His harrowing chronicle “Night,” originally titled “And the World Remained Silent,” forced readers to confront that most awful of human events — to remember it, to talk about it, to make it part of their daily lives. Then, as if that weren’t enough, he turned his attention to the present, giving voice to the millions of Jews living behind the Iron Curtain. Although he is rightly hailed for the first of these two achievements, it was the second, he told me on several occasions, for which he most hoped to be remembered.

Wiesel first traveled to the Soviet Union in 1965 as a journalist from Haaretz, on a mission to meet with Jews there, and was shocked by what he saw. Those with whom he spoke were too afraid to recount Soviet persecution, terrified of reprisals from the regime, but their eyes implored him to tell the world about their plight. The book that resulted, “The Jews of Silence,” was an impassioned plea to Jews around the world to shed their indifference and speak out for those who could not. “For the second time in a single generation, we are committing the error of silence,” Wiesel warned — a phenomenon even more troubling to him than the voiceless suffering of Soviet Jews themselves.

This was a watershed moment in Soviet Jewry’s struggle. While the major American Jewish organizations felt a responsibility to stick to quiet diplomacy, wary of ruffling Soviet feathers and alienating non-Jews in the United States, Wiesel’s book became the banner of activists, students and others who would not stay quiet. He had realized that the Soviet regime wanted above all for its subjects to feel cut off from one another and abandoned by the world. Indeed, I can attest that even 15 years later, Soviet authorities were still doing their utmost to convince us — both those of us in prison and those outside — that we were alone, that no one would save us and that the only way to survive was to accept their dictates.

Wiesel was thus uniquely perceptive in realizing that without this power to generate fear and isolation, the entire Soviet system could fall apart, and he was prophetic in calling on the rest of the world to remind Soviet Jews that they were not alone. The history of the Soviet Union would likely be very different had the struggle for Soviet Jewry not come to encompass the kind of outspoken, grass-roots activism that Wiesel encouraged in his book. Without public campaigns and the awareness they generated, there could be no quiet diplomacy to secure results. Every achievement in the struggle for Soviet Jewry over the succeeding 25 years — from making the first holes in the Iron Curtain, to securing the release of political prisoners and human rights activists, to ultimately making it possible for millions of Soviet Jews to emigrate — resulted from this mixture of activism and diplomacy, neither of which could succeed without the other.

Over the years, of course, Wiesel became an important part of establishment Jewish life. Every Jewish organization sought to co-opt him, to invite him to speak or to support their causes. Yet he remained deeply connected to the dozens of refusenik families whom he had effectively adopted as his own. From 1965 on, he once said, not a single day went by when he was not preoccupied with the fate of Soviet Jews, many of whom he regarded as family.

And he was true to this approach to the very end, to the last battle in our struggle: the March for Soviet Jewry in Washington in December 1987. Elie and I had first discussed the idea of a march more than a year earlier, in mid-1986. Yet six months after our initial conversation, I found myself lamenting to him that the Jewish establishment was too resistant to the idea, afraid of the logistical difficulties involved and of being painted as enemies of a newly born detente. Elie replied that we should not expect establishment organizations to take the lead and should instead mobilize students, who would pressure them from below to get on board. So I traveled to about 50 U.S. universities in the months leading up to the march, galvanizing activists who were eager to participate. And sure enough, just as he predicted, all of the major Jewish organizations eventually united behind the idea.

As we were all marching together, establishment leaders justifiably congratulated themselves for this great achievement. Elie looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Yes, they did it.” Rather than splitting hairs about who had been more influential, he credited the power of the Jewish world as a whole. We had been right to act as we did, to make noise and push for change through our own resolute campaign, but we needed the establishment to see our efforts through. Elie understood exceptionally well how to unite these two forces for the common good.

Elie Wiesel’s humanism, his active concern for the voiceless, hardly stopped with his fellow Jews. He spoke out against massacres in Bosnia, Cambodia and Sudan, against apartheid in South Africa, and against the burning of black churches in the United States. He became, as others have said, the conscience of the world. Yet he never gave up or sacrificed even a bit of his concern for the Jewish people. He did not feel he had to give up his Jewish loyalty or national pride to be a better spokesman for others. To the contrary: It was the tragedy of his people that generated his concern for the world — a world he felt God had abandoned — and it was his belief in universal ideas that helped him to ultimately reconcile with his Jewish God.

May his memory be a blessing.

Higher Standard or Double Standard? Don’t set a double standard for Israel on norms of war. by Anatoly Sharansky

The pictures of destruction and mourning in Gaza that have filled media around the world for the past several weeks have been very painful and sad to view. One would be hard-pressed to find an Israeli who does not sympathize with the suffering of Gaza’s victims.

Yet there are also few Israelis who feel we are responsible for this suffering. For us, the tragedy of Gaza is inseparable from the tragedy of the entire Middle East. Over the past three years, in countries around our tiny state, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed in the most horrific ways. This wave of terror recognizes no official borders. The only border at which the savagery stops is Israel’s.

Hamas and Hezbollah are doing their best to change this. So what protects us? The United Nations or human rights groups? No. Only the military power of the Israel Defense Forces. In response to our enemies’ relentless campaigns, the army is constantly developing new ways to defend us. One new weapon, Iron Dome, has in the past few weeks protected civilians from almost 3,000 missiles.

But while Israelis have developed missile shields to protect children, Hamas has been using children as shields to protect missiles. This perverse strategy is the brainchild of a society that hails death. For Hamas, using living shields serves the double function of increasing the number of martyrs and galvanizing a free world that values life to pressure Israel to stop fighting.

The sad irony, then, is that while the world can do so little to stop the terror in Syria or Sudan, it can do a lot to press Israel to stop defending itself. We ask ourselves, is this hypocrisy? Is this a betrayal by the free world whose values we are defending? And in response, Israel hears from the international community, “Of course you are judged differently. You insist that you are part of the free world, so we hold you to a higher standard than neighboring countries, where wanton destruction of human life is the norm.”

I strongly agree with this argument.

Israel, like any other free country, should be held to a higher moral standard than its unfree neighbors. As the war against terror becomes increasingly global, it is imperative that all free countries develop and uphold common norms in our military conduct against armies of terror. Israel, with its decades-long experience, can contribute much to this effort.

For example, 12 years ago, during the Second Intifada, I was a member of the Israeli security cabinet when the army first decided to use aviation to target terrorist leaders. In nearly every cabinet meeting, Israel’s attorney general insisted that our targets must be chosen not on the basis of crimes already committed, but solely in light of proof that they were planning new terrorist acts. In other words, no matter how much death and destruction someone had caused, a targeted killing could be justified only by documented intentions to carry out another attack. A serious case had to be prepared for each assassination attempt, and therefore the number of such operations could be counted on one hand. Now that targeted killings are practically the norm – when the United States uses drones for this purpose all over the world – I would hope others are as scrupulous as Israel has been.

Around the same time, we in the cabinet also discussed the importance of using weapons that minimize civilian deaths, even if this meant decreasing an operation’s chance of success. Many operations were modified or canceled because of this. Today, Israel goes even further. Before the IDF bombs an area in Gaza, residents are alerted by radio, e-mail, phone and text message telling them to leave. The Israeli army also uses small warning missiles to let civilians – that a real missile will soon be fired. Do other free countries go to similar lengths?

In 1999, when NATO launched its offensive against the criminal Milosevic regime in Yugoslavia, hundreds of civilians were killed in the bombings. Many more civilians were killed when U.S. warplanes hunted down Saddam Hussein’s family and supporters, and later al-Qaeda terrorists. They were killed in cafes, cinemas and even a wedding procession.

Let me be clear. I believe that it was the free world’s obligation to fight against the Milosevic regime, which carried out ethnic cleansing in the heart of Europe. I believe it is the obligation of the United States and free countries to lead an uncompromising struggle against terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. But the obligation of the IDF to protect Israeli citizens from thousands of missiles and from underground terrorist infiltrations is just as sacred. In view of the developing global war between the free world and terror, it is time that leading military experts from Israel, the United States, Britain and other countries, along with international lawyers and politicians, compare their experiences and agree about the standards according to which the free world can defend itself.

But once these standards are accepted, they should be applied to every free country. Otherwise, stop calling it a higher standard and call it by its real name: a double standard.

This op-ed originally appeared in the Washington Post.

Sharansky: In Prison, I thought about Yoni Jewish Agency head says he had Prime Minister's heroic brother in mind, when held in Soviet jail.

At a Memorial Day ceremony in Latrun Sunday evening, Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky told Masa program youths that the thought of the Prime Minister's heroic brother Yoni helped him through the most difficult moments, when he was held in Soviet jail.

"All those years that I was in prison, whenever I was told that I can be sentenced to death, I thought about Yoni Netanyahu. He was 29 when he fell and I was 29 when I was arrested. If he did it, I also have to do it.

"And each time when I heard the engine of the airplane in Siberian [skies], I thought about Israeli airplanes. And I remembered about Entebbe. And I knew that a day will come when an Israeli airplane will come to take me out of prison. And this day came.

Sharansky and Kirk

A Moment of Moral Clarity By NATAN SHARANSKY

How many protesters must a regime murder before it is no longer fit for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council? How many thousands of dissidents must it jail? How many acts of international terrorism must it instigate?

The line is invisible — but Syria, having too openly crossed it, has now been forced to vacate its candidacy in the May 20 elections to the council.

It is good that Syria has been removed, just as it is good that Libya has been suspended from membership.

But what was Muammar el-Qaddafi’s blood-soaked regime doing on a human-rights body in the first place? What separates it and Syria from Cuba, China and the other dictatorships that make up the council majority and brazenly sit in judgment on the human-rights record of others? Why has the free world remained largely silent? In the run-up to the elections, such questions are more urgent than ever.

Something very important and very dramatic is happening in the Arab-Muslim Middle East. The peoples of the region are deciding to stop living in fear, and are risking life and limb to rid themselves of one seemingly immovable autocracy after another.

In so doing, they are simultaneously repudiating the unspoken agreements that the West has reached over the years with their dictators, agreements that bartered the people’s freedom for a facade of stability.

But while masses of people in the Middle East are demonstrating in the streets for freedom, the free world itself, led by the United States, has responded in classic realpolitik fashion, calibrating its response to each regime’s perceived chances for survival.

This is understandable. After so many years of supporting Hosni Mubarak, it was difficult to acknowledge him for the corrupt dictator he always was. After convincing itself that Bashar al-Assad was a reformer, a White House wishing to engage the regime on “the day after” was incapable of saying what Syrians already knew: that he was a barbaric tyrant and murderer.

But silence and confusion have exacted a price. To the people in the streets, to the millions who have crossed their own line from fear to freedom, the signal has been sent that America is not with them, that the world’s beacon of freedom is indifferent to theirs.

In the face of regime turmoil, many have insisted that Washington must choose between the two stark alternatives of engagement and disengagement. This is a fallacy. Engaging with a dictatorial regime and engaging with its people are two different things, and the same goes for disengagement. The United States engaged with and subsidized the dictatorship in Cairo, and America is cordially hated by Egyptians; the United States and the mullahs in Tehran could not be more disengaged, and America is loved by the Iranians.

When Ronald Reagan pronounced the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” the partisans of Western engagement were horrified, but throughout that evil empire Reagan’s truth-telling brought courage to dissidents and a surge of hope to hundreds of millions desperate to escape the bonds of a fear-permeated society.

Reagan did not thereupon cease negotiating with the Kremlin. At the same time, however, his administration encouraged the struggle of ever-growing numbers of Soviet and East European dissidents — with results that, starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, shook the world.

There may be no evil “empire” in today’s Middle East, but there are more than enough evil regimes to go around. It is past time to start delegitimizing them. What, indeed, must a dictator do to lose the respect of the international community, or to trigger action against him?

It is not a matter of sending troops — another straw man. It is a matter of saying, not softly but loudly and in the clearest possible terms, that those who violate the human rights of their people cannot be our partners in building a world safe for human rights.

It may be necessary to deliberate the pros and cons of engaging with a dictatorial regime, but there is no need to deliberate engaging with its people.

To those millions crossing, or waiting to cross, the line into freedom, we can send a simple but thrilling message of support and solidarity: We are with you. No dictator is a legitimate representative of his people. “Human rights” are not a phrase to be cynically parroted by the world’s worst violators sitting on a grotesquely misnamed Human Rights Council, but a real and universal criterion of decency. We are with you.

At this moment of moral clarity, when the free world is being challenged to cease turning a blind eye to tyranny, surely it is not too much to affirm full-throatedly the aspirations of the Arab and Muslim peoples to live in freedom, to choose their own governments, to be protected in their right to dissent, and no longer to be ruled by guns.

At the very least, we, who would never choose differently for ourselves, owe this much to them, and to ourselves.

Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet political prisoner, is chairman of the Jewish Agency and the author, most recently, of “The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.”

Sharansky: Free world must help topple oppressive regimes Jewish Agency chairman tells House Committee of Foreign Affairs that dissidents need help 'to cross the fear barrier', adding that the West must stop accommodating dictators.

Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky said Wednesday that the "free world" must openly support dissidents fighting against oppressive regimes.

Testifying before the Congress House Committee of Foreign Affairs on his vision of the revolutions at the Arab world, Sharansky told Congressmen that the oppressive regimes “are doomed to fail”, but cited the “free world support” as critical to make people at these countries “to cross the fear barrier”.

The committee, meanwhile, complimented Sharansky his role in inspiring "hearts and minds” as a dissident in the former Soviet Union.

Sharansky told the committee that supporting a dissident revolution meant backing the protesters' right to expression.

“It’s very important to understand the mechanism, what is going on in these societies. There are people who are not satisfied but they are afraid to speak," Sharansky said. "And the dissidents know that the only power the dictator have is the power to keep people in fear."

"They might have different mentality and civilization”, Sharansky added. “But people went to the streets not because of the problems with the U,S, or Israel. They went to demonstrations because they didn’t want to live under dictatorship. They wanted to live without this constant self-censorship."

"From the point that people want to be able to say whatever they want without being punished – this is the common denominator for the Chinese and Libyans and others and those who say otherwise are simply racist.

"Most of the Egyptians maybe don’t like America, because America supported Mubarak. There are so many prejudices, not because the U.S. is ally of Israel, but because they suspect America will support any dictator."

Sharansky also criticized what he termed Western accommodation of oppressive dictators, and warned that such practice would only serve said leaders in regaining legitimacy.

“We were not helping Libyans by agreeing that their leader will be the head of the Human Rights Council," he said. You cannot trust leaders who don’t trust their people. If [Muammer] Gadhafi stays in power, and I can see this scenario, I am afraid that it’s not impossible that he’ll become 'legitimate' again in two months from now."

"You need your assistance to be linked to the wellness of the people in that country. The quicker the forces of the civil society will move, the broader the support of the free world will be – the bigger is the chance for positive outcome," he said.

"The moment when double-thinkers are crossing the barrier of fear to dissent – the question is whether these dissidents are getting the support of the free world, whether they are encouraged," Sharansky added.

"It’s time for the free world, for the Congress, to support openly these dissidents that are leading these cyber-revolutions. But if they see the leaders of the free world are ready to support them with word but not deed, there is a problem," he concluded.
 

‘Maybe this is the moment to put our trust in freedom'; A quarter-century after his release presaged the disintegration of the Soviet Union, an ‘even purer’ push for democracy is unfolding in our region, says Natan Sharansky.

It was precisely 25 years ago that Natan Sharansky, icon of the struggle to liberate Soviet Jewry, walked to freedom across Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge, that narrow tie between the Communist bloc and the West. Behind him, back behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet Union, he left a vast community of Jews who ached to follow in his footsteps.

But not for long. The crack from which Sharansky emerged grew swiftly into a chasm. Within less than six years, amid the dizzyingly rapid collapse of the Soviet empire, no fewer than 400,000 members of that community had been freed to emulate him in making new homes in Israel.

What makes this anniversary particularly poignant is that it coincides with another potentially defining moment in the struggle for democracy over totalitarianism – a moment when people across our region, some tentatively and others more confidently, are rising up against their autocratic leaders. They are demanding the same opportunities, the same stake in determining their own futures, the same guarantees of freedom from persecution for speaking their minds that even the mighty, grey, terrifying Soviet bureaucracy proved incapable of denying to its masses.

And for all that tiny Israel is understandably concerned at the direction the truly free peoples of the Middle East might ultimately choose to follow with respect to our unloved Jewish state, Sharansky is enthralled and enthused by what is unfolding.

Six years ago, he published a book – co-written with Ron Dermer, now a senior adviser to the prime minister – titled The Case for Democracy and insistently subtitled “The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.” But the skeptics and the self-proclaimed experts in this region always told Sharansky that, while he had evidently outwitted and outlasted the Communists, he really didn’t understand the ancient, bitter norms of the Middle East. In this part of the world, Israelis from Ariel Sharon on down would lecture him, bloody experience had long since demonstrated that nothing, actually, could overcome tyranny and terror.

Israel’s best hope, and that of the West, ran the thinking, rested in cultivating the more palatable tyrants. Arab democracy? How oxymoronic.

So this small, unstoppable man, who has somehow crammed long periods of dissidence, imprisonment, activism and politicking into his 63 years, is feeling a certain vindication on the 25th anniversary of his own liberation. Much more importantly, though, he recognizes the urgency and sensitivities of the hour. Huge public protest, the readiness to push for revolution, he says, is like water coming to the boil. Suddenly it rises up, overflowing with new capabilities. But slam the lid on, turn off the heat, and it falls back.

Iran saw a moment like this, less than two years ago, he recalls. The students, the unions, suddenly they scented weakness. Their frustrations with their Islamist rulers overflowed in the aftermath of the fraudulent presidential elections. They boiled.

But the West failed them. The West, and specifically, a new, untried president, hesitated. The moment was lost. The mullahs slammed the lid on.

This time, says Sharansky – in this fascinating conversation which took place at his chairman’s office in the Jewish Agency headquarters – Barack Obama is sending smarter signals. And Israel, he insists, must internalize how fortunate we are that the revolt is unfolding today in countries where the Islamists are not yet strong enough to sweep into power, in countries dependent on American aid, in countries where the West can yet seek to make its influence felt.

The unholy, unsustainable pact between the West and the dictators of the Middle East is being severed, as it should be, says Sharansky. It is being severed by the people. And their will must be done.

You crossed from East to West Berlin on February 11, 1986. I want to talk to you mostly about the parallels or differences in the processes that were unfolding then and now – with the Soviet Union beginning to collapse 25 years ago, and part of the Arab world in the grip of its peoples’ protests against dictatorial rule today. But let’s start with your memories of that unforgettable day.

It was one big ascent. It began the previous morning. I was taken from the KGB’s Lefortovo prison (where he had begun his imprisonment for the trumped-up crimes of treason and spying for the US nine years earlier, before being sent to the Siberian gulag). I was given all new clothes, for the first time in nine years.

I’d felt something was happening for the previous two months. They had been feeding me very differently. I had thought maybe the head of the KGB wanted to see me. But now they were taking away all my old clothes. Everything new was very big – not my size. I told them, “The pants are falling down. Give me a belt.” But I was in prison, so they wouldn’t give me a belt. They gave me some string.

They took me to the airport – after a fight for me to get back my book of Psalms – about half an hour from Moscow. A huge airplane. Me and four KGB guys.

But you didn’t know where you were going? 

They didn’t tell me. But I saw we were flying west. About three hours. And then they came to tell me, in very solemn voices, that “in accordance with the decision of the Supreme Soviet whatever, for behavior unworthy of a Soviet citizen,” I am deprived of Soviet citizenship and exiled from the Soviet Union. And then I made a speech, about how happy I was.

You made a speech to whom? 

To them. I tell them I want to make a statement. They say, “We don’t need your statements anymore. It’s enough.” But I thought it was a great moment, even though I was on the plane with only those four people. I’m really free. So I made a statement.

To the four KGB guys?! 

Yes. I tell them I’m very happy that after 13 years, my request [to leave for Israel] has been accepted. And I add – it was important for me to say this – that I was never a spy. That I was fighting only for the right of Soviet Jews and others to be free. And that I hope the day will come when all people will become as free as I am today. And then I read my Psalms.

Then we landed. And I was disappointed to see signs everywhere – GDR, the German Democratic Republic. I had thought, oh, now I’ll see my wife. And then the American ambassador in East Berlin meets with me, and explains to me that tomorrow I’ll be exchanged, but that today I’m in the hands of the East German KGB, and so don’t make any trouble.

They take me to some KGB place in the forest to sleep that night. I don’t sleep for a minute. Then the next day they take me to the bridge. There, the American ambassador from West Berlin accompanies me. And there’s a white line across the center of the Glienicke Bridge. I ask him, “Where exactly is the border?” He says, “This line is the border.”

It was so clear. This line is the West. Freedom! So I jump. And that string breaks. And I, at the last moment, catch my pants. So when I’m asked, “What was your first thought on entering the West?” I have to answer, “That I was going to lose my pants.”

They take me straight to a car. They call the State Department to tell them that I’m free. I ask to send my regards to the president [Ronald Reagan].

They take me to a military base, and prepare to fly me to Frankfurt where a plane is waiting to fly me to Israel. We sit on the plane for 20 minutes. Then we hear that the brakes are broken, and we have to switch planes. I can’t believe it. We’re not in a Soviet airplane! This is the first American plane in my life, and the brakes don’t work. So we change planes and fly to Frankfurt. And I see my wife, Avital, for the first time in 12 years. And then with my wife, in a much smaller airplane, I come to Israel. And all my world is with me, and we finish at the Kotel.

So it was like one big ascent – from Moscow, first airplane, second airplane, third airplane, straight to the Kotel. If there is someone who went from hell to paradise, then that’s how I feel. That was really a very powerful feeling, and it’s with me to this day. Of course, after that, the only way is down, so I’ve been going down for 25 years. And I’m still in paradise.

So out of the blue, you find yourself free and moving to Israel, and able to start life over, or a free life for the first time. How would you describe it? And did you have goals for yourself? Had you said to yourself, when I’m allowed to live freely, these are the things I want to achieve? 

Actually it was very smooth. I didn’t stop one life and start another. There was a big change in my life, when I switched from being a loyal Soviet citizen to becoming a dissident; from a double-thinker to a dissident. Physically there was a change, because you are becoming oppressed, searched, arrested and so on. But also psychologically, because I became a free person.

And that was at what age? 

At the age of 25, in 1973, and I was arrested four years after this. From then, it was all one struggle. And when I got out, as I said at the airport [in Israel], of course we had to continue our struggle, and not forget those who were still there.

I was a free person in prison and now I remained a free person in Israel, who suddenly had many more tools. So, you continue the struggle, at the same time while building our family, after 12 years. That was a challenge by itself.

Immediately, I spent a lot of time in America organizing that famous demonstration [to free Soviet Jewry in December 1987] in Washington. I had to spend three months to convince the [Jewish] establishment, and to go to different communities, to have this demonstration [to coincide with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit].

It helped that I didn’t feel as though I was in a different chapter, that my life was absolutely different. It was different. But it was like the next floor in the same building.

The initial challenge was to make sure that everybody else got out as well? 

In terms of the public challenge, yes, it was. In terms of my personal state of mind, you continue that struggle. You had this evil empire against you. You were in solitary confinement in this punishment cell. But you felt that in fact you were challenging the whole empire, and that the whole Jewish world was behind you.

Now I had moved from that cell to Israel, thank God, but it was the same confrontation. And it also involved a big debate with the establishment.There was a debate about whether there were hundreds of thousands of people who wanted to (leave the Soviet Union) or just two thousand. We were insisting that there were hundreds of thousands. The more the Iron Curtain fell down, the more it became clear that we were right. And that heightened the feeling of responsibility. You moved from one struggle, against the KGB, to this other struggle, for the others coming.

Your “big debate with the establishment”: Is that the American establishment, the Israeli, the Jewish Diaspora? 

Confrontation with the Israeli establishment started long before I came to Israel, because I was a friend of Andrei Sakharov (eminent Soviet physicist, then dissident and Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist) and because I was the spokesman of two movements at the same time – the dissident movement and the Zionist movement. I was seen to be endangering the idea that [it might be possible to] quietly take the Jews out without confrontation with the KGB. Of course, that was an idiotic idea.

[The Israeli establishment] also believed that mixing the dissident movement, the human rights movement, with the Zionist movement, was extremely dangerous. Some of them became very tough. They called my wife and said that I had crossed all the lines. That I would go to prison, and they would not defend me. They told her: Forget about him; we will find you another husband. These were some people from Lishkat Hakesher (the Israeli government’s liaison organization with Jews in the Soviet bloc), who were like commissars of Zionism.

In the first year after I was arrested, particularly, Avital (who had immigrated to Israel immediately after their wedding in 1974, when her exit visa was granted and his was not) had to fight in spite of the Israeli establishment, who tried to stop the public fight [on my behalf] because they were afraid of the trouble my dissent might cause.

That was one area of confrontation. Second was the fact that the Israeli establishment was very concerned that the Jews not go to any other place but Israel. They would have preferred that [Soviet Jewish emigration] be slower, but that they all go here. I was one of those respectable Zionists who didn’t agree with the Israeli demand.

As for the American Jewish establishment, they were afraid to be seen as troublemakers. They played a very important role. They were not bad guys. They were very good guys. But, for instance, they were fearful about this planned massive demonstration of hundreds and thousands of Jews to coincide with Gorbachev’s visit. I had said we should get 400,000 people to demonstrate so that the figure would be remembered: 400,000 Americans will come because there are 400,000 Russian Jews who want to leave.

They said: “Who said that there are 400,000 Jews?” They said: “We have a list of a few thousand refuseniks. We have to speak about them.

Second, they said, “You’re coming here and telling us about things that you don’t understand. Hundreds of thousands of American Jews will not come in winter to Washington.” And the specialists from the establishment counted: “17,000 – that’s the maximum figure that we can deliver. In winter, more people will not come. And you will make us look awful. Then you’ll just go back to Israel. But we will have to live with this: that we promised hundreds of thousands and didn’t deliver.”

Third, and most important, was their argument that “everyone is speaking about peace. Gorbachev finally is a good guy. There are such big hopes. He comes here to symbolize this new hope. And we Jews will be the ones to destroy all this.”

I realized that nothing major was going to happen [to heighten momentum for Soviet Jews to go free]. So I moved in August [to the US], ahead of Gorbachev’s visit in December. I visited 30 communities. Every community was so enthusiastic [about the planned demonstration]. In the end, as Avital had predicted, the establishment understood that, instead of resisting, it should go ahead with this. As Avital had told me, “they will eventually go with you, they will take credit, and then you’ll know that you have won.” And that’s exactly what happened. And that was wonderful. They all joined. They all led. On the 6th of December, 1987. There were 250,000 people, not 400,000...

But not 17,000 either.

No. And it was the same number as Martin Luther King brought [to his civil rights march in 1963]. All the Jews were very proud. And Reagan said to Gorbachev, “You see, my people will never permit me to have a friendship with you” [unless you let Soviet Jews go]. Next day, I came to Capitol Hill, and Jewish congressmen were coming up to me and saying “This was our best day. All our colleagues are coming up to us and saying we all have to learn from you, from the Jews.” So not only didn’t it cause trouble. To the contrary. And now we also know from Gorbachev’s people and others how important it was. He had to be pushed, and this was really the last straw.

And then a year after this, the big wave of aliya started. And 400,000 came to Israel in two years.

And in total, until today? 

More than one million.

And how many Jews are still in the Soviet Union? 

Approximately one million came to Israel, one million left for other countries, and 850,000 eligible under the Law of Return are left in the former Soviet Union.

And what’s the aliya rate now? 

About 7,000 a year coming here from the former Soviet Union.

And more going elsewhere? 

No. That wave is over. Germany is finished. Those who wanted to go to America, on the whole, have gone.

In terms of your continuing challenge, then, the Jews got out. And then stage two, integration. With a 25-year perspective, how has integration gone? 

Great. Of course, there are stories about unjust attitudes of society to new immigrants. It’s largely nonsense. There will always be some frictions. And of course there were many bureaucratic problems. There still are. Housing for the elderly. The problem of conversion. But that’s a problem of our society rather than of aliya, the question of what it means for the Jewish state to be connected to the Jews of the world.

If you look at the big picture, we had a 20 percent population influx. That’s like all of France moving to America. The integration is unbelievably successful. The average quality of life [of these immigrants] is not higher or lower than the average of all Israelis. Look at any hospital, at any university, at any hi-tech firm. It sometimes seems like they conquered the country.

There are two reasons for this. One, that our society is very open to the idea of aliya. For all the budget cuts over the years, there was never a question that if Jews had to be helped to be brought here, this would happen. And two, Israel society had also been very paternalistic toward new immigrants, but this aliya really changed this approach by taking its fate into its own hands. Even when the establishment said no to Russian theater, Russian theater appeared nonetheless, for example. And when it was realized that political tools were needed to get things done, we created our party (Yisrael B’Aliya, which operated from 1996 until it merged into the Likud in 2003). For the first time in history, new immigrants entered the Knesset and the government. And, most importantly, the municipalities, where absorption really took place. And so they became part of the decisionmaking process.

What of the country you left behind? Looking back from 2011, do you feel that the Soviet Union has democratized? Is the political climate there sliding back to totalitarianism? 

Russia is still very far from Western democracy. This is especially clear in the judicial system. The courts are not really independent. But those who say it’s the same kind of dictatorship as the Soviet Union, that’s ridiculous. That was a country that was ruled by the KGB. It had millions in the Gulag. There was an army of informers. Today, it’s a different reality.

What happened there, then, is very appropriate to what’s happening now, in our region. People in all cultures under dictatorship become double-thinkers. They live in fear. And they don’t want to live in fear. So when they have a choice to end that, they make that choice.

This double-think, this state of fear, and this desire to get out of fear, is exactly what we see today in the Middle East. All people want to be free, but in the Soviet Union there were also large numbers of nationalities and faiths which were almost erased and which people wanted to live under. What’s happening now in Tunisia, in Egypt, it’s a much more pure example.

In Tunisia, you don’t have any oppressed nationalities. And there was no strong struggle between fundamentalists and secularists. People didn’t take to the streets because of any of that. They simply felt that there was a chance, finally, not to have to live under dictatorship, and that’s what they wanted. And that in turn showed the double-thinkers of Egypt that maybe this was the moment for them, also, to go into the streets. Now, in Egypt, people will say that there are problems with the Copts, and everybody will say that there are problems with the Palestinians and the Israelis [that generate public protest]. But those who went on the demonstrations didn’t go out for the rights of the Coptic Church, and not because of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

What brought them to the streets was that they didn’t want to continue living in a fear society, a society in which people who stand up against Hosni Mubarak finish in prison. People like my friend [human rights activist] Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who said 10 years ago that Mubarak would put his son [Gamal] in power after him, went to prison, and would still be there were it not for intervention of [the West, and notably] president George W. Bush.

There are always very few dissidents. But the moment people stop feeling afraid, suddenly there are millions of them.

What brought them out to the streets was the desire not to have to live in a climate where what exactly prevailed? 

When you have a government which is unchanging, which is not very democratic, the people will have many complaints. And when they express those complaints [in such regimes], they get punished. That’s something that people don’t like. They have to live under self-control, careful about what they say because they will be punished.

In Egypt, five years ago, for example, the editor of a newspaper was simply dragged out of the city and left naked and told not to dare publish one more article against Mubarak. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, likewise, said on the record that elections would be irrelevant, that the next president would be Mubarak’s son. He was arrested the next day.

That’s what happens on the top. That means that, on the lower level, people must constantly control themselves – what they can and can’t say. It’s a very uncomfortable life. If you can get rid of it without risking your life, you try to do that.

And that’s what people in Egypt are doing now? 

Yes. And that’s my theory as expressed in my book The Case for Democracy: In every dictatorship, the longer it exists, the more true believers turn into double-thinkers. Then, in the final years of a dictatorship, practically everybody is a double-thinker.

That’s why I was saying, long ago, that Iran is absolutely ripe for social revolution. Iran is actually a unique example where within one generation, very quickly, almost all the true believers became double-thinkers.

There is a very critical moment, which is called revolution.When does it happen? When suddenly big masses of double-thinkers – not one, not two – go over to dissent. It’s like boiling water, when it reaches 100 degrees. Now, if that moment [is missed, and] it goes back, it will immediately disappear. That’s what happened in Iran [when the demonstrations erupted and then faded after the 2009 elections]. Some of the people – big student organizations, trade unions – felt that they could go to the barricades. And millions more were sitting and waiting, with all this Facebook and Internet. But then, at that moment, the leader of the free world indicated that for the US, engagement with the regime was more important than changing the regime. And immediately, it all collapsed.

At that critical moment, the president of the United States failed them? 

Oh yes. And that’s what I said to his closest advisers at the time – that I couldn’t understand how the president of the United States could make such a speech. By the way, his speech on the first anniversary of the revolution was great. But it was exactly one year late. Because now, to take these doublethinkers and turn them into dissidents again, well, it’s still there, but you need a more serious push.

The more cruel the dictatorship, the more difficult it is. In Tunisia, there was a moment when the dictatorship became very weak and the people felt very capable. That definitely impacted on Egypt. Dissent was big. Mubarak looked weak, because of his health and other factors. And they rushed out.

And now, more than two weeks later? Has the president of the United States got it right this time? 

Much better. Though it’s easy to be better than he was on Iran, which was terrible. I was in the United States in those first days of protest in Egypt, and [Vice President] Biden said, of course Mubarak is not a dictator. My God, I thought! Millions of people are going to the streets to say Mubarak is a dictator, and the leaders of America say he isn’t?! But the next day, I see something happened in the White House, and Hillary Clinton comes out with a better statement and President Obama says the right thing.

The “right thing” being that the people of Egypt must determine their own future? 

Yes. Now the critical step, which has not yet been made but which can be made, is the linkage. The free world is lucky here in two respects. First, that what happened in Egypt happened when the Muslim Brotherhood is not yet strong enough [to sweep into power]. The longer there is dictatorship, the longer the free world helps to destroy all democratic dissent, the stronger the Muslim Brotherhood becomes. In Prague, in 2007, (at a meeting of international dissidents that Sharansky organized), Saad Eddin Ibrahim asked president Bush, Why are you supporting Mubarak? Bush answered: Because otherwise there will be the Muslim Brotherhood. Saad Eddin Ibrahim said: That’s a mistake. That if you want the choice for Egyptians to be either Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood, it will ultimately be the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ten years ago, in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood would have had 10% support. Today they say they have 25 or 30%. Who knows what it will be in 10 years if things don’t change. People are unhappy. The only alternative to that unhappiness has been the Muslim Brotherhood. The free world has been helping to destroy any democratic alternative.

So it is good that this is all happening now in Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood is not strong enough.

And secondly, it is good that it is happening in an Egypt that gets the second biggest foreign aid package from the United States [after Israel]. America has a lot of leverage. A lot of linkage for any future Egyptian leader. Whoever will be the leader of Egypt, if he wants to solve problems, he will be very dependent on the free world. He will not go to Iran for help.

If the free world makes clear that our help is tied to democratic reforms, there is a chance finally to start building a drive forward. This [untenable] pact between the free world and a bunch of dictators ostensibly bringing us stability was not broken by the free world. It was broken by the people in the streets. We have to go with this. This is the chance. I hope America will take it.

We saw a White House that quickly, to the dismay of some in Israel, abandoned its ally Mubarak and has also encouraged the participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the transition process. Is America getting this right? 

America gets it right that Mubarak is a very problematic ally and in the long run cannot be any kind of ally. That’s true about all the dictators. At some moment, America will get it about Saudi Arabia. That was always the most difficult case, even among those [American presidents] who understood...

Like George Bush.

Bush went further with the freedom agenda than any other. It was great. He really, idealistically believed in this. The point on which he disagreed with me – although he told everyone to read my book – was over elections. [Contrary to what Bush believed], freedom and democracy doesn’t mean elections. Democracy is about free elections and free society. You must have free institutions.

He rushed into elections [for the Palestinian parliament in 2006]. He forced Israel to accept Hamas as part of the democratic process. Under all our agreements, we didn’t have to accept Hamas, because it denies our right to exist. And it was a clearly anti-democratic choice. He rushed to elections when the only choice for the Palestinians was between the torturing thugs of Yasser Arafat, who we empowered, and the terrorists from Hamas who were defending them. They voted for Hamas, an absolutely nondemocratic element. That was [Bush’s] mistake.

With the Obama administration – instead of taking a principled position and supporting any leadership which will support democratic reforms, and saying we will go together with you through these reforms and help – the danger is [over the readiness for] engaging: We will engage with whatever will come as a result. We’ll make them part of the process. That’s exactly how Hizbullah in Lebanon, step by step, became [ostensibly] legitimate partners.

On the day of the elections in the Palestinian Authority, I was at the White House, saying to them, this is your last opportunity. In 24 hours, the election results will be announced. You need to say that the results of the election have got nothing to do with democracy. Otherwise the whole world will say, well, this is Bush’s democracy: Hamas. And I was getting explanations: We’ll impose conditions; they will not be a majority in the government, this and that.

Elaborate please on why elections alone do not constitute democracy, on why you need free elections in a free society.

A free society means that there are institutions which guarantee to every individual the opportunity to choose between different ways of life, and that their lives will not be in danger, whatever they choose. In the Palestinian society, for instance, they had Israel’s occupation. After that, they had Yasser Arafat, who turned his Authority into a type of Mafia-run country where people were paying him patronage. I can tell you, as a former minister of industry and trade who tried to negotiate with Nabil Sha’ath on joint ventures to help their economy and create more jobs, that they were not interested in anything that would make their people more independent of them. They were interested only in how to establish more control. People were really fed up with this. That created a really nasty situation.

Then, there was a transition to Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) after Arafat died. And Bush asked me, is Abu Mazen a good guy or a bad guy? I told him, I can prove to you that he’s a bad guy, because I read his PhD (on the purported connections between the Nazis and Zionist leaders) in Russian. And I can prove to you that he’s a good guy in comparison with Arafat, because I saw them both at the negotiating table. But it doesn’t matter. He will now depend fully on your policy. The Palestinian Authority is fully dependent on the free world. America. Europe. If your policy is clear linkage to specific reforms, and you make plain that is there is no way Abu Mazen will get any legitimacy, or any recognition, or any support otherwise, he will go with it.

In fact, Bush did put these demands to Abu Mazen, but he never made the linkage explicit. He didn’t say: If you don’t do this, these are the consequences. And of course he didn’t have Europe behind him.

That meant the Palestinians moved almost immediately (to elections) from a situation in which they were still full of fear of the Arafat regime. In some Christian villages, Hamas was deemed to be a better protector, so the Christians suddenly became fundamentalists and voted for Hamas. That’s what you get when you have elections in a fear society. [The elections reflect only] the balance of fear. In that balance of fear, at that moment, Hamas got 51%. At some other moment, it would have got a different percent.

I wrote in my letter of resignation from Arik Sharon’s government [in April 2005] that Hamas would take over in Gaza [under his imminent disengagement plans]. That it would be bad for Jews, bad for Palestinians, good for Hamas. Instead of disengagement, I suggested making a transitional period, for three years of reforms, together with the Americans, maybe together with the Egyptians. See to it that, in these years, a fully independent economy would be established, normal education, dismantling of refugee camps and building good conditions for them, and of course cooperation to fight terror. Then, I suggested, after three or four years like this, hold elections. Those would be free elections. People would have different options and they would be protected, not afraid. And then you would have partners to negotiate peace. You would have people who, whether they hate you or not, whether they are anti-Semites or not, are elected because they are concerned about the well-being of their people.

Is any of that happening in the West Bank now with PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad? 

It’s not so much because of Fayyad, but because [Quartet envoy Tony] Blair finally got it and Europe got it a little. The so-called peace process is nonexistent and, I believe, never existed, because it was built from the very beginning on this idea of a strong dictator who will deliver peace to us. It was never a peace process. It was how to organize our settlement with dictators. But, because they are dictators, they will inevitably grow more and more hated by their people.

Yet that was the idea of peace which was supported by Europe, by America and by almost all Israelis. Bibi [Netanyahu] displayed more understanding of the limits of the “peace with dictators.” But Arik was saying, Good, Natan, that you convinced Bush of something that doesn’t exist. Your ideas [about the need for democracy] have nothing to do with the Middle East, so don’t interfere too much.

In the West Bank there are the first signs of a truly free economy. That’s good. There are no signs of improvement on the education system. There are signs of independence, of forces that are cooperating with us, on security. These are the beginnings. If this process, which must also include education, continues...

What’s needed on education? 

The official [PA] education is that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist. There is not one Palestinian leader who is ready to go to a refugee camp and say, “Guys, we are going to have our own state. But you’re not going back to Tel Aviv. Let’s start discussing other options.”

Remember, I don’t know which meeting it was – there were so many – when Olmert gives Abu Mazen generous proposals and asks him only to recognize us as a Jewish, democratic state? And Bush is absolutely sure that Abu Mazen will now say this, because he’s getting so much. And Abu Mazen says no. Bush was surprised. Olmert was surprised. They were so sure that this generous proposal would do it. But Abu Mazen said it would be “a betrayal of our people in the refugee camps” to recognize a Jewish, democratic state.

Of course, it’s not only a question of going to the refugee camps and saying it. You also have to start building normal lives for them. You can’t keep them in the refugee camps in order to use them as a weapon against us.

So there are the first sparks. But it’s a long process. That’s why all these declarations, that we can reach peace in one year, or half a year, or two years, mean nothing. That’s just going back to the same idea of engaging with somebody, finding somebody with whom we can sign an agreement.

The idea that Abu Mazen is fully dependent on the IDF, and the hope that somehow he’ll be so dependent, he’ll agree to sign an agreement.

Wrong, because...? 

What you need is to build peace from bottom-up. And bottom-up means democratic reforms. But I was always told, “Forget about it. It’s not for the Arab governments.”

And now? 

And now it’s coming from the other end. Not from the peace process at all. Here, people are coming and demanding to build from the bottom, without any connection [to the peace process]. This is a great chance.

So how now, in the Egyptian context, should the West be acting? What signals should be sent. You’re the leader of the free world, what do you do? 

If I was in the Senate, I would immediately pass a law maintaining US assistance to Egypt on condition that 20% of it goes to democratic reforms. What’s needed is real linkage.

The desire of the people has to be heard. It’s not up to us to decide whether it will be Omar Suleiman or Mohamed ElBaradei or someone else [who takes over]. Whoever it is, whoever is the leader, won’t want to depend on Iran, or even on Saudi Arabia so much. So they have to listen to the free world, and after all, Egypt is between the free world and Muslim fundamentalists.

And the entire free world has to say, “We are ready to help you, we are ready to support you, we are ready to be with you, but on condition that: first, there is no persecution for freedom of speech and for free press and so on; second, there is an independent economy; third, there is a tolerant, pluralistic education system where people can choose how they want to learn, what they want to learn; and, finally, that agreements that were signed with the neighbors about stability in the region have to be respected.

The entire free world should say that only those who accept these principles, and accept the principles of democratic change, should be permitted to participate and be empowered by the process. If the Muslim Brothers genuinely accept everything, then they can be part of it. But if, whatever they say, they continue in their mosques to speak about the war against Israel, or they declare that democracy will not determine what to do, then they cannot be a part of it. At this moment, it is still possible for the free world to do this.

So you think there is an extraordinary opportunity now, and that America has sent at least some of the right signals? 

Yes. I think there was no opportunity as long as there was a strong belief, almost a unanimous belief, among the leaders of the free world that only strong dictators in the Arab world can bring us stability, and that only strong dictators are our allies, and that this can continue more or less forever. There was no chance.

No chance of what? 

No chance of reform and also of a peace process. The moment this pact between democracies and dictators is broken, then there’s a chance for new concepts, for a new approach. It depends on us now. On the Arab side, they made their stand. The people made their stand, showing that “we’re here,” that “those who thought freedom is not for us, well, it is for us.” Now it is for the leaders of the free world to show that they really believe in this for them.

To set out the framework? 

As Obama said in his inauguration speech, a fist to dictators and an open hand to those who want reform.

(Obama declared, “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.) 

And what if, three steps ahead, Egypt, other Arab countries, the Palestinians, amazingly enough, with correct signals and assistance from the West, do go through this process? But that it then turns out that the will of the people, in a genuine, democratic society, is to wipe out the State of Israel? That that’s what the people want? 

We should never stop, not for a moment, relying on the strength of the IDF, but this is the only chance [for a true change]. For all the so-called peace process, we are more and more dependent on the IDF... on our capabilities in war. I don’t think that we have to weaken. But the only chance to create something whereby we’ll be less dependent on our military power is to give a chance to democratic reforms.

And I think it’ll succeed, because I think, in the end, the majority of Palestinians don’t want to continue living in refugee camps. They got closer to the ideas of the free world, a free economy, more education, than did many others, because of their proximity to Israel. But the fact is, they were never given the opportunity to choose. In 1993, we brought Arafat from Tunis, who said, “Now we’ll be a dictatorship.”

So Israel shouldn’t be panicking as it looks at the region now? We should be saying well done to the Arab masses for telling the West that they don’t want to live under dictatorship? 

This is the moment for those Israelis who believe that peace has to be built bottom-up. They have to prepare for that chance. Israelis like me, like [Minister Moshe] “Bogie” Ya’alon. There are not many. This is a great moment. Let’s try to use it.

For those who didn’t believe this, for those who believe that all these ideas of freedom, as Arik Sharon was telling me, have nothing to do with the Middle East, this is the moment to think again. Maybe something was wrong with this idea of keeping these people forever under a control, which was always working against us, because it was the Muslim Brotherhood who were coming after it, whether in Iran, the Palestinian Authority, in Egypt. We hoped to have great peace agreements with all these dictators, but then the dictators who have signed peace agreements will be replaced by Muslim Brothers. 

Maybe this is the moment to try to put our trust in freedom. After all, we’re not losing anything. The Muslim Brothers, they’ll come anyway [if things continue as they have been]. Here we have, maybe, the chance that they will not come.

Israel has to be concerned. I don’t want to dismiss all these feelings. All the recent changes have strengthened the fundamentalists...

In Lebanon, Iran, Gaza, Turkey.

We also have to be concerned because our best partners are becoming appeasers.

Elaborate, please.

Europe demands that we negotiate with Hamas. Then they demand that we accept a Lebanese government with 50% Hizbullah. Then it will be fully Hizbullah. And then US leaders can very well say, “Well, for us, engagement with the regime is more important than who is in this regime.”

So, yes, there are reasons for concern. We are a small country. We can be destroyed in one day if we lower our guard. But, on the other hand, while we continue to be on guard, let’s be glad that what’s happening now on the Arab street is happening before the Muslim Brothers control the entire Middle East, and that could be the direction. Let’s be glad that it is happening in countries which are still very dependent on the free world. And let’s try to see whether, finally, we can find new ways for a peace process, and not only a process that depends fully on one thing – on the strength of the IDF.

So now let’s bring this conversation all the way back to the beginning. Is what’s happening now in the Middle East something like what unfolded with the collapse of the Soviet Union? 

It’s not that simple. As I said, here it’s a more pure experiment in democracy. There, it wasn’t only an experiment in democracy. It was all these nations and faiths, and so the moment there was freedom, the people could go back to their nations and their faiths. It all fell apart. It fell apart very quickly. The world was astonished at how this communist empire fell apart.

Here, you have a much more pure experiment about the power of democracy. The subtitle of my book is “The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.” That’s what this is.

Here, the role of the free world is that there must be real cooperation with this desire of people not to live in fear. Whoever these people are. Even if they are anti-Semites and grew up in the traditional thinking of killing Jews. It’s not about us and them. It’s about them and their leaders.

At this moment, almost everything depends on the position the free world takes. The fact that some leaders of the free world, and some leading journalists, are coming to us and saying, “This is the time. This is the time to make concessions,” simply shows that they really don’t understand what’s going on. I mean, to whom to make concessions? The people in the streets of Egypt, or to dictators whose days are numbered? This is the moment, not to speak of concessions with Abu Mazen, but to start building bottom-up peace, and finally bring democracy to the Palestinians.

If the free world helps the people on the streets, and turns into the allies of these people instead of being the allies of the dictators, then there is a unique chance to build a new pact between the free world and the Arab world. And we, Israel, will be among the beneficiaries, simply because these people will then be dealing with their real problems.