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Rabbi Joseph Polak, the director of Boston University Hillel (left), and Natan Sharansky. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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By David J. Craig
Peace will come to the Middle East only when Palestinians and other
Arab peoples live in a democracy, said renowned human rights activist
and Israeli cabinet minister Natan Sharansky in a September 16 lecture
in the BU School of Law auditorium. Moreover, Israel must take pains
to treat Palestinians humanely, even if that means endangering its own
soldiers.
“
I believe that peace is possible, and I believe a two-state solution
is possible,” said the former Soviet dissident, “but only
when Israel no longer is the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Among
the most significant obstacles to peace, he said, is the oppression of
the Palestinian people at the hands of Yasser Arafat, whom he described
as a dictator not “committed to peace.” Sharansky said that
like most political strongmen, Arafat controls his people by holding
up an enemy for them to hate. He uses every opportunity “to strengthen
the hatred of Palestinians” toward Jews, “because this hatred
he needs in order to survive.”
Israel, too, has inadvertently contributed
to the plight of the Palestinians, Sharansky said, by recognizing Arafat,
in the hope that his authoritarian
rule would be the best way to stop terrorist attacks against Israel.
In fact, terrorism will be eradicated only when Israel helps Palestinians
through the “difficult, dark, and long process” of achieving
democracy, because “commitment to peace goes together with commitment
to democracy.”
Sharansky, who is an Israeli minister without portfolio
responsible for Jerusalem and diaspora affairs, became an international
symbol of moral
courage in the 1970s for his human rights work in the Soviet Union on
behalf of Jews, like himself, seeking to immigrate to Israel. Convicted
in 1977 on trumped-up espionage charges, he spent nine years in Siberian
prisons and gulags. In 1986, under intense international pressure, the
Soviet Union released him. He immigrated to Israel, where he has continued
his human rights work and has held a series of prominent government positions.
His BU lecture was part of a weeklong tour of more than a dozen North American college campuses to promote human rights and combat anti-Semitism. Before the lecture, which was attended by about 400 people, he held a discussion at Hillel House with 50 BU students, including many members of Boston University Students for Israel.
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During his September 16 visit to BU, Natan Sharansky met at Hillel House with about 50 students, who asked him to discuss Yasser Arafat, media bias against Israel, the roots of suicide bombings, and other subjects. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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In his lecture, Sharansky said
that while Israel “cannot and should
not try to control the lives” of the roughly three million Palestinians
living in Israel’s occupied territories, it has the power to help
Palestinians “live better,” and therefore “hate us
less.” For instance, in one former position in the Israeli government,
Sharansky said, he made it a priority to enter joint ventures with Palestinian
leaders on industrial projects, and to fairly share the profits of such
ventures with them. “Personally, I would like to see the process
of integration of Israelis and Arabs [move] more quickly,” he said. “And
I can say that a lot more could be done . . . but I also know that Israel
is the only [Middle Eastern] country that is making big efforts to integrate
and to reach a real equality between Jews, Arabs, and all its other citizens.”
Sharansky
also argued that despite frequent charges of Israeli abuse of Palestinians,
the nation “displays more sensitivity to the value
of human life than any other democracy at war.” As an example,
he recalled, last year when the Israeli army rooted out terrorists from
the Jenin refugee camp in Gaza, it was through dangerous house-to-house
fighting rather than with stronger firepower that would have spared its
soldiers but caused heavy civilian casualties.
The family of one of the
23 Israeli soldiers killed at Jenin recently sued Israel, claiming, said
Sharansky, that “it is not the function
of the government to risk the lives of its own citizens in order to save
lives on the other side.” But he disagreed, arguing that Israel,
even when under attack by Palestinians, must remain true to Jewish values,
the most sacred being the sanctity of human life.
He also criticized as
cynical the popular outlook that an open form of government cannot take
hold in Arab culture. “They say . . . democracy
and the Arab world is like oil and water,” he said, pointing out
that many Western leaders offered the same cautions about Japan at the
end of World War II and about Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
But
the desire for basic human freedoms is universal, said Sharansky, who
demonstrated the point by describing the solidarity that formed between
him and his fellow political prisoners in Soviet jails. Although imprisoned
for different beliefs, the prisoners “all knew they were victims
of a violation of human rights. For all of them, human rights meant that
they could not speak their mind, they could not live in accordance with
their faith, they could not promote their beliefs by democratic means
. . .
“
Democracy is for everybody,” he said. “It is already proven
that Russians prefer to live without fear of going to prison for speaking
their minds. And I say the same is true about Arabs and the same is true
about Palestinians. That’s why I believe those who want real peace
in the Middle East have to struggle for the freedom of the Palestinians.”
19
September 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations