How Natan Sharansky Encouraged and Inspired Alexei Navalny

Feb. 20 2024

On Friday, Russian authorities announced that the dissident leader Alexei Navalny died in a Siberian prison camp at the age of forty-seven. While in solitary confinement, Navalny read Natan Sharansky’s memoir Fear No Evil, which recounts the years he spent in prison for the crime of wanting to leave the USSR for Israel. The two men then carried out a brief correspondence in April 2023, which has been published in English translation in the Free Press.

Navalny’s first letter concludes with the phrase, l’Shanah ha-ba’ah bi-Yrushalayim (Next year in Jerusalem) which, he says, he “copied for myself from the book.” Sharansky wrote in his response:

By the way, I write to you the day before Passover—the celebration of the liberation of the Jews from Egyptian slavery 3,500 years ago. That is the start of our freedom and our history as a people. On this evening, Jews from around the world sit at the holiday table and read the words: “Today we are slaves—tomorrow, free people. Today we are here—next year, in Jerusalem.”

On this day I am sitting at the celebratory meal wearing a kippah, which was made 40 years ago, out of my footcloth, by my cellmate—a Ukrainian inmate in the Chistopol prison. That’s how twisted everything in this world is! I wish to you, Alexei, and to all of Russia, an Exodus as soon as possible.

Hugs,

Natan Sharansky

To this, Navalny wrote, “And after all, where else to spend Holy Week, if not in SHIZO,” referring to the “punishment cell” with which both men were all too familiar.

Read more at Free Press

More about: Natan Sharansky, Passover, Russia, Soviet Union

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula