Natan Sharansky

would tell them very simply do not be under the illusion that a signed agreement with a fanatic Islamist jihadist terrorist ideological regime or leadership whether that might be Iran or Hamas or Hezbollah today or the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas who may not be religiously Islamist but are certainly as ideologically committed to Israel's destruction and against any legitimacy that Israel is offered or receives.

And it includes the Qatar and the Turkey and the other regimes who are very, very hostile, not just to Israel, but to the West and to the free world, not to suffer any illusion that a signed agreement will have any lasting impact and rather to do what Andriy Sakharov and Natan Sharansky and the leaders of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union advocated in the 1970s, which was actually implemented in the 1980s, late 70s early 80s where they said the only way to enable the people of under a dictatorial regime to rise up against their dictatorial leaders is to show them that they have support from the rest of the world to throw off the yoke of the tyranny back then of the soviet union or today of the iranians and one of the main ways to do that is to leverage whatever leverage we have back then it was wheat sales it was most favored nation status that was offered by the united states to uh to the soviet union it was an insistence by the united states that the soviet union open up their society with opposition newspapers being allowed to publish for instance and open up their societies to more freedom of movement and freedom of uh of uh organization and um and people coming together in small groups, freedom of assembly, these ideas have to be promoted by Western powers.

And therefore, if I was sitting today with President Trump or Marco Rubio or Stephen Witkoff and Jared Kushner leading the negotiations about Gaza or with Iran, If I was sitting with the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom or others, France and others, I would say two very important things.

Number one, learn your history.

The other thing just I'll throw in that's been resonant with me.

When I was in Israel, I went to Israel to perform at hostage square after October 7th, and I met with Natan Sharansky.

And he said something to me that's really stuck with me.

You know, he said this was in 2024.

And that's reminding me on something different.

I have a very close friend of mine called Natan Sharansky.

Natan Sharansky used to be the Minister of Interior under the Sharon administration when Sharon declared about his withdrawal plan in the Gaza Strip.

In that day, Natan Sharansky wrote a letter of five pages and sent it to Sharon.

To summarize the letter, Natan Sharansky demanded a strong economy in the Gaza Strip before you are withdrawing from Gaza.

A strong economy.

This is what the Palestinians really need right now in the Gaza Strip.

Unfortunately, the plan of Natan Sharansky has been rejected immediately by Ariel Sharon.

How do we encourage them? How does that happen?

Natan Sharansky, the Soviet refusenik dissident leader, who unfortunately has become a major right-winger, major political right-winger, has some really useful advice on this.

He says every totalitarian society, I would say every illiberal society, has three kinds of people.

There are the true believers, there are the dissidents, and there are the doublethinkers.

All of a sudden, they say, "We don't belong here." The money was elsewhere, and that's where they went.

Nathan Sharansky often mentioned that from a certain point, he started to feel being different from the others in Russia.

During the Dymshits-Kuznetsov hijacking of, uh, affair trial in December 1970, Elkhno openly stated that he had apparently nurtured for quite a while, quote, "It became unbearable for me to live in a country I don't regard as my own." End quote.

The, uh, the hijacking was an attempt to, um, um, get to Israel, making a big deal about this, um, hijacking a plane under the, um, guise of going to a wedding, which is pretty, you know, um, dramatic given the fact that they still were a, a privileged group.