Nonna Gorilovskaya (Mother Jones): Interview With Natan Sharansky

[Jack Rabbit]

From Mother Jones
Posted Wednesday March 30

The Dissident: An Interview With Natan Sharansky
The Israeli minister talks about Arab dissidents, Israel’s human rights record, and the prospects for a democratic Middle East.
Interviewed By Nonna Gorilovskaya

Natan Sharansky is used to disagreeing with governments. After all, the former Soviet dissident spent 9 years in prison on charges of treason—a crime then punishable by death—for his human rights advocacy work. But things are quite different nowadays, and Sharansky's new book, The Case for Democracy, has found no less of an enthusiast than President George W. Bush. The book's premise is simple: the world is divided between "free" and "fear" societies, and free societies won’t be secure until fear societies become free. Because those who rule by fear will always need external enemies to keep their populations under control, Sharansky argues, promoting democracy is a matter of security, not just of lofty humanitarian motives.

On the day Sharansky and I met, March 14th, more than 800,000 Lebanese were rallying in Beirut, calling for Syrian withdrawal. Sharansky’s eyes grew with excitement as he cited the Beirut demonstration—the largest in Lebanon's history—as proof that democracy was at last spreading throughout Israel’s neighborhood. Like Bush, he insists that democracy is for everyone. It is for the Russians. It is for the Arabs.

At home in Israel, where he is currently the Minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, Sharansky is no dove. He was a fierce critic of the Oslo Accords and scoffs at the unofficial Geneva Accord, arguing that they failed to link Israeli concessions with Palestinian ones, like democratization. As Housing Minister in Ariel Sharon’s first government, he oversaw the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In his present position, meanwhile, Sharansky has chaired a secret committee that approved the seizure of East Jerusalem property of West Bank Palestinians, a decision which was reversed after an outcry from the Israeli left and the international community.

But Sharansky doesn't get much love from the Israeli right, which has little patience for his talk about the virtues of Arab democracy. Neither, for that matter, does the Israeli left, which wants peace as soon as possible with whatever sort of Palestinian state is willing to strike a deal. Some lefties wonder if Sharansky is simply using the banner of human rights to insure the indefinite occupation of the territories. Meanwhile, both lefties and moderate right-wingers frowned on his vote against the Gaza disengagement plan.

It is interesting that if that characterization of Sharansky's distinction of free and fear societies is accurate, then one should expect Sharansky to classify Bush's America among the latter.

[pelsar]

1. Natan Sharansky

he is one of the few advocates of direct representation within democracy in israel..and in that respect america is a very strong model. That view explains very well his political views of within israel and without

and within that definition america remains a free society based on representation of the people. (and to say that those in america "live in fear" shows very little understanding of what real fear is like within the dictatorships of the world-its not even close)

[Jack Rabbit]

3. That deserves a response

(T)o say that those in america "live in fear" shows very little understanding of what real fear is like within the dictatorships of the world-its not even close.

That shows a very poor understanding of Bush's America. While the fear is not gripping here, it is here. Perhaps you haven't heard of our little color-coded terror alerts that always popped up on cue during bad news cycles. At no time were we given any specific threat; indeed, the authorities admitted there was nothing specific, just an increase in "chatter". At no time was there was a threat that warranted an increased state of alert. It was manipulation and fear mongering, plain and simple.

The fear induced is not universal and, as one can plainly see at DU, even mocked in some circles. However, the Bush junta is not a classical dictatorship. It doesn't need to fool all of the people all of the time, just enough to, if not win an election outright, at least be able to fix it with the realm of credibility. That it has done successfully.

While there is no government control of the media in America, the media is in fewer and more homogeneous hands and these just happen to be the same hands that have signed the checks that have foot the bill for the political careers of G. W. Bush and corporate whores like him. This has produced a compliant media that will not call Bush on his crimes or, if journalists are allowed to go through the motions of doing there jobs, give those crimes insufficient air time before dropping the story into the memory hole; in the case of print media, the story begins below the fold and is quickly moved to the back pages.

The case of the run up to the war on Iraq shows how dysfunctional American democratic institutions have become. The invasion, of course, was not part of any honest war on terror. Saddam was a paper tiger and there was good reason to know this. I have a beach front property by the Sea of Tranquility for anybody who believes that the intelligence community "just got it all wrong." The only problem for the public is that one had to go beyond the mainstream media to find this information. I found it in the foreign press, alternative media and what I call "fringe establishment" web sites such as The Nation and Mother Jones. Among the facts of which I was aware prior to the invasion because I went beyond the US mainstream media for information was that intelligece was being manipulated for political purposes.

Unfortunately, anyone who got his news from CNN and The New York Times was as likely to be as misinformed as one who watched an unabashed propaganda outlet like FoxNews 24/7. Bush and his aides pushed the idea that Saddam was coming to get us with nukes and the mainstream media did not contradict these claims, which were not mistakes based on bad intelligence but deliberate lies.

Do you not think so? Even as late as April 2004, public opinion surveys showed that about three out of five Americans still believed that Saddam possessed WMDs or that he had ties to al Qaida; some even believed that WMDs had actually been found in Iraq or that there was proof that Saddam had a hand in planning the September 11 attacks. By the election, this number was reduced, but still very high. And lo and behold, guess what? Most people who had such misconceptions about the invasion voted for Bush; not only that, but most people who voted for Bush had these misconceptions.

If that isn't a correlation between fear and ignorance on the one hand and Bush voting on the other, I don't know what is. This was made possible by the Bushies' willingness to tell brazen lies in order to keep Americans in fear and the mainstream media's unwillingness to effectively counter these lies with facts.

This is not the classic totalitarian model of a controlled press disseminating government propaganda, but the effect is the same.

So, please, Mr. Pelsar, please do not try to tell me how good we Americans have it and what a free society this is. I live here and I know better. Our dysfunctional democratic institutions are as bad as totalitarian ones. America in 2005 is a nation far more afraid than it is free.

[pelsar]

5. jack rabbit

yes you live there and in that respect I grant you superior knowledge....yet i wonder....your saying:

"America in 2005 is a nation more afraid than it is free"...yet bush was elected by the majority for a second term. This is not the voters declaring the past presidency a failure, quite the contrary they said- "more of the same"...keep going on your path etc.

and yes i understand your claim that most of those voters had the wrong information, misled etc...but that doesnt change the fact that they believed in what they were voting for, and hence they do not fear the present presidency or govt.

btw i asked some of my family members in the states (one is the "classic liberal college professor)....though they noted the change in the atmosphere amongst their more liberal friends, who are "afraid" in the "wider sense (not on a personal day to day thing) but no more than that. Those on the right, were brimming with confidence (ex econ professor....)Though the more liberal elements of my family may disagree with many of the present policies, they also noted that a quick look at american history shows political swings, showing no permanent damage to the instuition.

As far as the media goes...check in to the right wing sites..boy do they complain about the media, just as much as i read here, besided the internet has shown incredible power within that aspect and the new generations will be using it for info just as much as they (we) are reading the papers, watch ABC etc. so again whatever your comlaints about MSM, its only temporary do to a changing landscape.

gut feeling?...you've blown things way out of proportion as someone who has been living within a democracy while in a war zone at the sametime for quite a while.....we are stopped by our police at will for ID checks, our bags are searched at will, detentions for "reasons of national security" are easy to come by, security units can crash into my house on the slightest pretext....yet with all of that (and more) i do not fear that our institutions of democracy are permanently damaged (just some of our politicians).

perhaps i have a little more faith in the instutions, the senate, house of reps than you do. I also believe that the FBI, CIA, NSA etc are made up of people who are both democrates and republicans who also are part of the govt, and through its laws/reg and checks and balances and preserve the core of the instutions. But most important...all those politicians are "temps"....they have to return to get re-elected and that is the trump card. When that doesnt exist then, your cry of dictatorship will have some substance to it, until then, its just a cry of fear.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. What checks and balances?

That's one of the things that Bush is doing away with here.

Bush is a threat to democratic institutions. His "re"-election was close and owes itself at the very least to methods employed in Florida and Ohio by crooked elections officials that border on fraud and included voter intimidation. And then there's the usual stuff of which re-elections like his are made.

I don't give a damn what the right wing websites say about the media. Calling it "liberal" when it is in fact groveling in front of their boy is part of their game. And it you think it is legitimate for them to complain, then you probably have must not believe that there is any cause to assert that who voted for Bush were ignorant and misled. Yet, the plain fact is that they are ignorant and were misled. It is a simple case of the mainstream media not performing the function assigned to it in a democratic state: providing the public with facts so that they can make informed decisions as citizens.

American democracy is broken. It is no longer a suitable model for others. I only wish I were exaggerating.

[pelsar]

7. ignorent?

no i disagree that all of those who voted for bush were misled...I know some very intelligent people who have both degrees from the world reknown universities as well as being widely travelled. They understanding of both the coporate world as well as the non corporate world is based on their experiences as well as research in the work....and they simply agree with Bushs view of the world.....whereas the "farmer" from iowa may not have a clear cut understanding of the issues and voted for bush out of ignorence, that can hardly be said of the many college educated bunch who did research the issues and decided that bush is the "one". Your blanket generalization of so many millions of americans as ignorent and mislet is an illusion. Simply because they disagree with you your claiming their ignorent and misled.....thats the kind of arguement we always find here within the P/I conflict-blanket generalizations involving whole peoples. I doesnt work within the middle east conflict nor does it work involving the Bush electorate.

in fact i could easily argue the other way..taking examples from DU of people who have no idea what the issues are that voted for kerry-thats the other 50%-groupthink goes both ways in elections.

do you know american history?....the changes and upheavels its gone through?...broken? its not even close to the civil war- that was a period when america just about "broke itself"..more dead and killed by their own "brother" than any other conflict in american history (that being the most obvious example)

republicans "owning the house and senate"...so? its happened before, and with democrates as well-its simply part of the nations celebration of democracy.

your bottom line that american democracy is broken....I doubt very much your afraid for being arrested for screaming bush is evil/nazi/election thief/etc. And when theres a new national election in 4 years?.....and when senators/reps on local and national levels go back to their communities to get re-elected or not and when new faces appear with new energy and new ideas-thats far from being broken...thats the natural process of a democratic nation. I understand that you may not like it, but claiming that the multitude of jounalists, professors, students, lawyers, farmers as being ALL misled and ignorent is the stuff that belongs in the same section as the "fake moon landing" in the library. There are those who simply agree with bush within some major issues (NY ex mayor koch being one of the more famous examples) and not out of ignorence but out of belief.

[Jack Rabbit]

8. I didn't say 'all' Bush voters were ignorant, I said 'most'; I stand on it

From CommonDreams
Dated October 22, 2004

Three of Four Bush Supporters Still Believe in Iraqi WMD, al Qaeda Ties
By Jim Lobe

Three out of four self-described supporters of President George W. Bush still believe that pre-war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programs to produce them and that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein provided “substantial support” to al Qaeda, according to a new survey released here Thursday.

Moreover, as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago, before the publication of a series of well-publicized official government reports that debunked both notions.

Those are among the most striking findings of the survey, which was conducted in mid-October by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm.

The survey, which polled the views of nearly 900 randomly chosen respondents equally divided between Bush supporters and those intending to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, found a yawning gap in the world views, particularly as regards pre-war Iraq, between the two groups . . . .

The survey found that 72 percent of Bush supporters believe either that Iraq had actual WMD (47 percent) or a major program for producing them (25 percent), despite the widespread media coverage in early October of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA’s) “Duelfer Report,” the final word on the subject by the one billion dollar, 15-month investigation by the Iraq Survey Group . . . .

Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters said they believed that Iraq was providing “substantial” support to Al Qaeda, with 20 percent asserting that Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Sixty-three percent of Bush supporters even believed that the clear evidence of such support has actually been found, and 60 percent believe that “most experts” have reached the same conclusion . . . .

Kull added that this “cognitive dissonance” could also help explain other remarkable findings in the survey, particularly with respect to Bush supporters’ misperceptions about the president’s own positions.

In particular, majorities or Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that he supports multilateral approaches to various international issues, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) (69 percent), the land mine treaty (72 percent), and the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming (51 percent).

In August, two thirds of Bush supporters also said they believed that Bush supported the International Criminal Court (ICC), although in the latest poll, that figure dropped to a 53 percent majority, even though Bush explicitly denounced the ICC in the most widely watched nationally televised debate of the campaign in late September.

In all of these cases, majorities of Bush supporters said they favored the positions that they imputed, incorrectly, to Bush.

Large majorities of Kerry supporters, on the other hand, showed they knew both their candidate’s and Bush’s positions on the same issues.

Bush supporters were also found to hold misperceptions regarding international support for the president and his policies.

Read more.

Consider the points you made in your previous post refuted.

Most people who voted for Bush had major misconceptions about the war in Iraq. That is a stubborn, empirical fact that you cannot get around with anecdotal evidence about people you know.

Now, I have stated that voter ignorance was a major factor in Mr. Bush's presumed victory last November. There is my evidence. I rest my case.

I further postulate that the reason for such widespread ignorance is poor coverage by the mainstream media. There are also some studies to support this contention. For example, here is report of one correlating support for the invasion with similar misconceptions as those that led some poor souls to vote for Bush.

One more time: it is the function of a free and independent press to provide the public with facts in order for the citizens to make informed decisions. Clearly, too many citizens are not being properly informed; moreover, those who were misinformed preferred Bush over Kerry. I've presented the reports; you may dispute them if you wish. Perhaps you have some data of your own.

Nevertheless, this data supports the case I have made that there is a correlation between voting for Bush and voter ignorance; that the root of this ignorance is insufficient coverage in the mainstream media. Therefore, the press is not fulfilling its obligation to provide the public with facts, causing citizens to make decisions based on misinformation.

This is not a suitable model for a democratic society. This is a picture of a society with democratic institutions that have grown dysfunctional.

[pelsar]

9. need a comparison...

information is relative-ignorence is always present....what were the beliefs in past presidential elections?

media coverage? i've came across a report from colombia university stating that most news items were negative in terms of bush...so there is not clear cut black and whtie issue here about MSM being in his pocket.

as far as info goes..the funny thing about those reports about the public being "misinformed" ..is that is that they all came from the news on TV/radio/print. So part of the problem you seem to have skipped over is that the info was out, it was delivered (thats how we are aware of it). Its not up to the media to force feed us. Whether some choose to listen or not is something else, part of a free society, but the information about those polls was actually quite wide spread. I must have heard it a "million times." and thats over here in israel. Not to mention the lack of finding any WMD...must have heard that everyday for the first year of the iraqi war....what more could the media have done, outside of hiring planes with banners to fly around americans cities?-some people simply chose not to listn or believe-their choice.

but the part of electing candidates on "multiple issues or single ones or more on "personal preferences(honest eyes)" is probably more to the point. I can recall voting for candidates where I did not know what they stood for on various issues (do you know your senators, local and state stands? how about your rep? how about the judges you may or may not have voted for?)...For me, when i voted....I knew one or two stands on some of the issues but not much detail. and that was enough. Hence i too would have "flunked" the knowledge test on various candidates.

my main contention here is that you have 'gone overboard" by ignoring just how common voter ignorence is, fraud accusations are etc. Whether true or not, it simply doesnt show any breakdown of the democratic process, in fact a look at the US history shows that, in fact, what you are claiming is as old as america is...so the process whereas its hardly perfect-its resiliant.


remember JFK? Nixon?...you want to complain about voters and the process-that election beats the bush/kerry one by a long shot, and yet america survived it

how about The U.S. presidential election of 1876 - talk about fraud...beats the "pants off of 2004. Everything is relative.....like I mentioned, 2004 voting put into perspective of the US history isnt even going to register.

[pelsar]

10. one more note...

i just reread your post and this struck me:
"This is not a suitable model for a democratic society. This is a picture of a society with democratic institutions that have grown dysfunctional."

they have "grown dysfunctional".. that means they once were and always were....gotta challange for you. Tell me when they were funtional in your view and why..and I'll take up the challange and explain why they werent functional previous to that period...using your criteria.

what will be easy to show, using your own criteria that there were times in the US administrations that were and werent dysfuntional.....but that would back up my contention that this present period is actually nothing special

[Jack Rabbit]

11. Response

As I have been saying, The problem is the failure of the US mainstream media to inform the public. The information which I gathered to protest the war ahead of it came from sources outside the US mainstream media: the foreign press (particularly the BBC and the Guardian Unlimited); alternative media (such as Pacifica Radio, which I often take with a grain of salt); a category I call fringe establishment, which is still practicing conventional journalism but gathering the facts that they don't (publications such as The Nation, Mother Jones and The Progressive, websites such as Salon.com and online digests of liberal/progressive opinion such as CommonDreams and TomPaine.

As already noted, it was from the Guardian that I learned that an office in the Pentagon was manipulating intelligence for political purposes; after the invasion, this story was picked up and elaborated upon by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. It was from Pacifica Radio and Salon.com that I heard and read about Scott Ritter's critique of the Bush administration's assessment of Saddam's WMD capabilities; it was from the US mainstream media that I learned that Mohammad Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, but it was from the BBC that I learned that reports of this meeting had been debunked.

Most Americans get their news from television. Apart from FoxNews, which presents a special problem, I would consider the major air networks and cable news channels (i.e., CNN) to be mainstream media. If one was watching television during the run up to the war, one heard reports of US intelligence saying Saddam had WMDs (no qualifications), Donald Rumsfeld saying the weapons were near Tikrit and Baghdad, Colin Powell stating Saddam had stockpiled 500 tons of chemical agents, Dick Cheney warning of Saddam's "reconstituted" nuclear program and Condi Rice mongering fear saying "we didn't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." All of this information was false, but the US mainstream media let it pass unchallenged; yet, if one looked elsewhere, one knew that there was credible evidence that contradicted the administration's case for war.

Americans were not being informed by the mainstream media. Period. It isn't a question of the mainstream media not being able to force feed any particular citizen (I agree that it absurd to say that it could do any such thing), it is a question of the mainstream media not feeding the public anything but garbage.

Even where some mainstream media outlets came to oppose the war, they did so only after helping to spread the disinformation that supported it and burying or suppressing information that challenged that it. On the eve of the invasion, The New York Times ran an editorial opposing war, yet for months the Times ran Judith Miller's accounts of Saddam's weapons capabilities. For this, Ms. Miller should have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

* * *

It is true that I believe that we've had stronger democratic institutions than we have now. The mainstream media did credit to itself in the mid-1970s in its coverage of the Watergate scandal. Edward R. Murrow's heroic challenge to Senator McCarthy in the early fiftiesis another case in point. There were no embedded reporters in Vietnam and facts contradicting the official line of first the Johnson and later the Nixon administration came through. As a result of this adequate information, the American public was able to make informed choices and send to Congress a sufficient number of representatives to pass the War Powers Act, cut off funding for the Vietnam War and investigate Nixon's abuses of power, leading to his resignation when impeachment and removal became certain.

In post 7, you suggest the fact that Congress is now controlled by the GOP is what I mean by the elimination of checks and balances. Where did I say that? That's not what I mean at all. Mr. Bush is using the September 11 attacks as a pretext to concentrate powers in the executive branch in a way that is unprecedented. He asserts the right to label any individual he chooses an "enemy combatant" and throw that person into the slammer without recourse. He has asserted that no other branch of government has the right to challenge his decision. That is what I mean by checks and balances being eliminated. Bush is asserting for himself the prerogative to exercise the very kind of abusive, arbitrary government power that the Bill of Rights was designed to stop, and then says there is no one who can say he doesn't have that power.

Your contention that it's never really worked as well as I believe it has is a non sequitur. My contention is that American democratic institutions have grown dysfunctional and are not now a suitable model for a democratic society. If I'm wrong and you're right about America really never having much more democratic than a banana republic, then what does that mean? It would mean that this has never been a suitable model for a democratic society and that Sharansky is just plain wrong in holding up America, past or present, as an example of a free society.

A world view based on a dichotomy of free v. fear societies is one that is entirely too simplistic. Not having read Sharansky's book, I can't say for certain that this is his thesis; whether it is or not, it is a thesis best abandoned. Such a Manichean view of human society is a poor basis for discussion.

The fact is that there are many variations of societies. It is the Hegelian problem of quantity passing into quality: for example, how much hair (quantity) must one lose before he is bald (quality)? Somewhere between the ideal of a free and democratic society and twentieth century totalitarianism are also many variations. I maintain that in recent years America has moved away from the former toward the latter, and that it has reached a point under Bush that it can no longer be held as a good example of a free society.

[pelsar]

12. rabbit.....relative...

dont start about bananna republics cause "we take the cake on that one"....my main contention is that in any society as in relationships as in life, there are constant changes. At times the presidency will be stronger, others the congress, as you mentioned it was the press that got the US out of nam, probably more than anything, that influenced the people and consequently the congress.

Actually I believe bush is quite sincere in his modification of the "powers that be" I dont believe he is doing it as an "excuse" to creat a dictatorship(as i have read elsewhere). But all that is not the point.

My point is that "the sky is not falling". True there have been changes, but then there have always been changes, in fact woe to the society that refusese to change. Obviously you dont agree with the latest (an understatement?) but I believe more faith is required in the american system.

just a few points from my point of view:
The mainstream media is a corporate business, but as you've read they are not the only one in town, and the new generation with the internet is now giving them a real run for their money...that means from the 70's to the 2000 a span of 30 years they have gone from aggresive reporting to being a "lapdog"..but it appears that that too is about to change.....

your fear of bushes new powers i believe leave out the pressure from the american people. Yes there is power with them, and a strong sense of individualism, that balances the govt attempts to run their lives. Of course its a constant balance and battle, but that is the natural state of things. Most of america believes the present war is such that they are accepting of the changes, again its a matter of faith, but i believe when its over the laws will be rescinded, as there will be new faces in the govt and different values.


the ideal model, as i see a liberal society simply cannot exist, as people are involved with their own personal views and agendas, hence no democratic society can really live up to its name. In fact probably the most ideal society in terms of democratic/liberalism was the israeli kibbutzim-yet they too have had their failures. The american govt, far more complex than any kibbutz cannot possibly live up to the ideals...

bottom line? be pissed, angry and fight, but have a little more faith, the american people, may be a "simple" people in character, but in the end I believe they prefer to keep the govt with limited powers, the powers will swing back to congress once again.....but again those swings are both natural and good.


(btw i never read sharanskys book-i had enough when i read his platform during the last election-when i was weighing the idea of representative democracy vs his other platforms)

[Jack Rabbit]

13. That's getting a little closer to agreement

It doesn't matter whether Bush is trying to create a dictatorship or not. His actions have the effect of undermining American democratic institutions. That's bad enough.

We can only hope that the American people will become wise to the sinsester ways of the Bush administration. As you say (and as I well know), there are alternatives to the mainstream media; I have spent three and a half years on DU urging people to turn off their television sets, put down their newspapers and get their news from the Net. Unfortunately, as of now about three out of four Americans get their news from television at a time when network news is dedicated to misinforming the public.

[pelsar]

14. almost agree?

sheeet..takes all the fun out of the is place.....wheres djnn....shes a lot more fun

[Englander]

2. The full title of Sharansky's book...

"The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror",says it all,really.

The list of books at the American Amazon,that people who bought Sharansky's book also fell for,are a Chamber of Horrors;Newt Gingrich,Swift Boat Veterans,Dore Gold, &tc...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1586482610/103-7183148-9907848

Here's Uri Avnery's take on Sharansky;

"12.3.05

Bush’s Guru

....... Throughout the years, Sharansky – in line with many “Russian” immigrants – was drifting to the extreme right. Already as Housing Minister, he had systematically enlarged the settlements on expropriated Arab land in the West Bank, trampling on the human and national rights of the Palestinians. Now he belongs to the Likud “rebels”, the group of extreme right-wingers who are trying to undermine Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement” plan and prevent the dismantling of settlements.

For years now, he has peddled the idea that peace with the Arabs is impossible until they become democratic. In Israel, this was dismissed as just another propaganda gimmick serving the Israeli government’s opposition to any peace that would mean an end to the occupation. Since Sharansky is totally ignorant of Arab affairs and has probably never had a serious conversation with an Arab, it is hard for Israelis to take him seriously. As far as I know, nobody does, not even among Rightists.

His highly unoriginal contention that “democracies do not make war against other democracies” is a perfect alibi for the United States to attack Iraq, Syria and Iran, which are, after all, no democracies (while dictatorships like Pakistan and Turkmenistan remain good friends).

The idea that the teachings of this particular political philosopher are the guiding star of the mightiest leader in the world, the commander of the biggest military machine in history, is rather frightening. "

http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article347.html

[pelsar]

4. Englander-just to make it clear...

hmm...i am a sharansky fan when it comes to his declaration for direct representation within the govt by the people. I find coalition politics to be somewhat of a bad joke.....

most of the rest of his politics (as well as much of the "immigrant russian subculture) i disagree with (to put it mildly)