When It's Anti-Semitism and Not Helpful Criticism

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Natan Sharansky

Natan Sharansky was in prison in Russia  in 1980 while I was studying Hebrew in Haifa at an Ulpan for 10 months.  Our teacher was communicating with him, trying to help him learn, she told us.  I thought it was hard enough in a class with her great teaching let along learning on the sly in a Russian prison for trying to learn it in the first place.

Born in 1948, like Israel, he was a Russian Refusenik; a computer scientist by profession, and a very short man.  I saw him when he spoke in Portland, Oregon several years ago at one of our synagogues.  He had been refused permission to emigrate in 1973 to Israel.  Can you imagine having to ask permission from your government?

He then became prominent in the Jewish emigration movement in the USSR, leading to his arrest in 1977..  He was kept in solitary confinement for 18 months.  The world had heard about it and was interested, but not sure if CNN was or not.  He had a great defense, but it was Russia, and so he was sentenced in 1978 to 13 more years of prison of which he served 9.
                                                                           

Sharansky was released and phoned President Ronald Reagan and thanked him for his
part in getting him out of prison in Russia.  
His wife, "Avital Sharansky was born Natalya Shteiglitz/Steiglitz in 1950, in the Ukraine, part of the Pale of Settlement created by Catherine II who wouldn't
allow Jews into Russia but kept them in her Pale.  It was like a prison.
They weren't allowed to leave.
  

  He was finally released in 1986, the year after I had left Israel and had returned to the USA.  He took my place and went immediately to Israel where he was reunited with his wife, Natalya (Avital) who had led a worldwide campaign for his release.
                                                                             
In Israel Natan took a leading role in working for the welfare and rights of the new immigrants from the Soviet Union.  My husband and I had made aliyah in 1980, and were teachers bound to teach in Israel.  First we had to take a 10 month class there first to prepare us, though we were professional teachers already.  We studied Hebrew and had to take a 3 hour test.
                                                                       

From a home in Oregon to an apartment in Safed, we flew over
with our German shepherd.  I taught right across the street of David Eleazar
in the junior high.  It got cold here in the winter.  

Dan and I were spoiled Americans and found life much different, so being an actor from Florida, Danny wrote a skit about it and we played as a 3-some with a friend in several hotels about our introduction to Israel.  It was pretty funny, sort of like a Laugh-In skit.  We could return to the States and did, but the Russians couldn't.  So they did need some special privileges and got them, even when we were there.  I saw that later, Natan was still in the government in a higher position.  Good for him.

Why was it that an educated friend of mine, commenting about Israel, said that he hated Natan Sharansky?  I don't think he even knew who he was or what had happened to him.  But sure enough, mention a Jewish name and he's a hated person.  People.  They really need to dig down and find out why they hate so much and especially the Jews.
                                                   

Natan's memoirs, FEAR NO EVIL, appeared in 1988.  It's about triumps over a Police State-Russia.

Scholars and students of anti-Semitism struggled to distinguish between legitimate criticism of policies of the Israeli government and anti-Semitism. In 2004 then Israeli cabinet minister and one-time Soviet human rights activist Natan Sharansky suggested three markers to delineate the boundary between legitimate criticism and anti-Semitism. Under his 3D scheme, when one of these elements was detectable, the line had been crossed: 
1. double standards (judging Israel by one standard and all other countries by another),

2.  delegitimization (the conclusion that Israel had no right to exist), or 

3. demonization (regarding the Israeli state not merely as wrongheaded or mistaken but as a demonic force in the contemporary world).

These 3 facts are used constantly by anti-Semites; in the UN, by the Palestinians, wherever they are.  Just recently, "A gunman opened fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue on a Saturday(Shabbat) , leaving 11 people dead in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and six others injured.
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"The Anti-Defamation League logged a 57 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in 2017, compared to the previous year — including bomb threats, assaults, vandalism, and anti-Semitic posters and literature found on college campuses.

A spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League said that before Saturday’s shooting, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in recent United States history was in 1985, when a man killed a family of four in Seattle. He had mistakenly thought they were Jewish." 

Resource;  https://www.britannica.com/topic/anti-Semitism/Nazi-anti-Semitism-and-the-Holocaust
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia-Sharansky
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/natan-anatoly-sharansky
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/us/anti-semitism-attacks.html