Natan Sharansky and the silence of critics

Before Natan Sharansky’s lecture last Tuesday evening, May 5, I expected the worst. (Read my story here.)

This was U.C. Berkeley after all, the Bay Area’s happiest of happy hunting grounds for anti-Israel cranks. And Sharansky – the one-time imprisoned Refusenik  --  is today a proud Israeli and in-your-face Zionist.

Can you spell “campus disturbance?”

But it was not to be. In fact, Sharansky’s lecture was relatively dry and low-key, if brilliant and incisive; the audience quiet and respectful. The only hint of dissension came during the welcoming remarks from John Moghtader of Tikvah, a pro-Israel student group. He threw a few rhetorical darts at Jimmy Carter and the authors of “The Israel Lobby,” drawing one or two sotto voce hisses.

As Sharansky spoke of his human rights convictions, of his incarceration in a Soviet gulag for defending those convictions, I could not imagine any anti-Israel protester daring to shout him down. For Sharansky poses problems to the simplistic anti-Israel crowd out there.

He speaks up for prisoners of conscience wherever they may languish. In fact, he made special mention of Arab political prisoners, most of whom have little chance of liberation, and his empathy with their plight.
Moreover, he gives the lie to International A.N.S.W.E.R. and other viciously anti-Israel organizations by providing a living example of the complexities of truth.

For example, as much as Israel’s detractors excoriated the Bush administration for taking a one-dimensional view of the Middle East, so, too, does the pro-Palestinian crowd take a laughably un-nuanced view: Israel bad; Palestinians, good.

Sharansky is a hawk by most surface measures of Israeli politics. But his personal history –– and his devotion to freedom and meaningful self-identity –– make it impossible to define him in some easy Twitterized way.

It would shut up even the most caustic Israel-hating heckler.

I was glad nobody made a scene at his lecture. Not only do Sharansky and Israel deserve a fair hearing anyway, especially on a college campus, Sharansky in particular commands a measure of respect even Israel haters should acknowledge.

Not that they would.

-- dan pine

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