Since March, the U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich has been imprisoned in Russia on trumped-up charges of espionage. He is currently being held in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison, whose previous inmates include Natan Sharansky, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Raoul Wallenberg. Kennedy Lee calls on Americans to make a greater effort to procure Gershkovich’s release, and turns to the mass mobilization of Jewish public opinion in the U.S. in support of Soviet refuseniks for guidance:

Today, the movement to free Soviet Jewry is remembered the world over as one of the most successful campaigns for human rights in history. In fact, Gershkovich’s own parents, Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, were two of the beneficiaries of the movement for Soviet Jewry, and moved to the United States when Soviet authorities finally relented and allowed Jews to emigrate en masse.

The movement for Soviet Jewry not only provided Jews and their allies in the cause of human dignity with a sense of common purpose; it also became the first mass, sustained campaign to expose the moral hollowness of Soviet ideology. The movement unmasked human-rights abuses and the disregard for the dignity of the individual so prevalent under Communist totalitarianism. In particular, the leadership and moral clarity of Natan Sharansky, a political prisoner of conscience and crucial figure within the movement, inspired those of his generation and freedom-seeking peoples for decades to come.

Lessons from the movement for Soviet Jewry are applicable today. The images of Evan Gershkovich standing prisoner in the Russian defendant’s cage should unite and inspire world Jewry and human-rights advocates once again. It is time for a new movement to form that is no less coordinated, no less unrelenting in its pursuit of justice. In that effort, we should welcome any and all allies, as the United States Congress and President Reagan did in the 1980s, who view Moscow’s crimes in Ukraine and at home as an affront to human dignity.

Alas, the organization founded in 1978 to shine such a light on Soviet crimes, Helsinki Watch—now Human Rights Watch—is at present more concerned with the imagined sins of the Jewish state.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.