Natan Sharansky

Re "Palestinians Do Not Need Another Tyrant," Commentary, Dec. 8: Natan Sharansky says, "The Oslo process failed because the democratic world, including Israel, believed that peace could be made with a dictator." This is untrue. Although Israel wanted peace, it failed because it wanted land even more. William G. Garrett Harrow, Britain Sharansky, in his analysis of the prospects for Mideast peace, puts an emphasis on democracy for the Palestinians as a key element in the struggle.

Re "The dissident choice," Opinion, Nov. 24 Natan Sharansky says that George W. Bush "routinely met with democratic dissidents in the Oval Office," "to press regimes to become more open and free," but "was not effective enough to advance this goal." With all that Sharansky endured, I am shocked by his naivete. Bush has stated that democracy is his foreign policy. But words are cheap, and the main action he took was to help his friends in big oil, and the military-industrial complex, by invading Iraq to secure its oil reserves.

Natan Sharansky, the onetime symbol of oppressed Soviet Jewry, quit his Cabinet post Monday to protest Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer. Sharansky, whose views on promoting democracy have won praise from President Bush, said Israel should relinquish Gaza only if the Palestinian government first carries out a wide range of reforms.

A flurry of phone calls among old spies and diplomats passed along the news that Wolfgang Vogel, the shadowy East German lawyer who negotiated spy swaps between East and West during the Cold War, had died Aug. 21 at the age of 82. Vogel's first swap was the 1962 exchange of Rudolf Abel, a KGB colonel imprisoned in the United States, for Francis Gary Powers, the American U-2 pilot who had been shot down over Russia in 1960. His last, in 1986, involved the release of Anatoly Shcharansky, the prominent Soviet dissident who emigrated to Israel and (after changing his name to Natan Sharansky)

Natan Sharansky was stepping down from the podium at a housing rally to make his way through a ramshackle camp of homeless squatters near the prime minister's office when an Israeli woman shorter and stouter than he cut the famous Russian dissident off at the pass. "Since you came from Russia, you have gotten a house, a car, everything you wanted," said Amalia Fatkash, jabbing her cigarette in Sharansky's face.

British publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell launched an Israeli Russian-language weekly newspaper, Vremya, produced by Soviet Jewish emigres. Maxwell said he hopes eventually to circulate the newspaper in Moscow. The Vremya staff, which has been publishing a daily Russian-language page in the Hebrew newspaper Maariv, is made up of Russian Jews who emigrated to Israel. Natan Sharansky, the celebrated former dissident, is chairman of the editorial board.

The ailing mother-in-law of former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky was secretly flown from Moscow to Jerusalem in a humanitarian mission approved by the Soviet government, a U.S. physician said. Svetlana Stiglitz, 62, left Moscow on a stretcher Sunday night and arrived at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem on Monday, Dr. Michael Baden said. Baden said she was met in London by her son-in-law. Baden said Stiglitz "had broken her hip, which was untreated, and had numerous bedsores. She was very depressed and dehydrated."

Western countries adopt a double standard when they cheer token political changes in the Soviet Union but reject similar moves in South Africa, former Soviet prisoner Natan Sharansky said today. Peering through the bars of a mock jail cell across the street from the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, Sharansky also repeated charges that the release today from prison of dissident Hebrew teacher Josef Begun and other dissidents earlier are merely "cosmetic gestures" by Soviet leader Mikhail S.

Re "Failing a terror test," Opinion, Sept. 12 Natan Sharansky claims that Hezbollah receives $100 million a year from Iran and is therefore a proxy for that state. Israel receives billions of dollars from the United States every year. Does that make Israel a proxy for the U.S.? If so, we should apologize to the people of Lebanon -- and bring our own proxy to heel. SAREE MAKDISI Los Angeles

Back in Russia for the first time since he was expelled 11 years ago, Natan Sharansky bowed his head Tuesday before the grave of a human rights champion and said a prayer in Hebrew. Sharansky, a former Soviet political prisoner, came to pay his respects to his friend Andrei D. Sakharov, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against the totalitarian system. Now Israel's trade minister, Sharansky returned for an official visit to the capital he had not seen since his arrest two decades ago.

Re "Failing a terror test," Opinion, Sept. 12 Natan Sharansky claims that Hezbollah receives $100 million a year from Iran and is therefore a proxy for that state. Israel receives billions of dollars from the United States every year. Does that make Israel a proxy for the U.S.? If so, we should apologize to the people of Lebanon -- and bring our own proxy to heel. SAREE MAKDISI Los Angeles

Woody Allen (liberal) and Natan Sharansky (conservative) are celebrity Jewish intellectuals who offer radically different worldviews for your contemplation. Allen's is more popular with intellectuals worldwide. Sharansky's whole life says that Allen is wrong. Allen recently explained his view of history to the German magazine Der Spiegel. And Sharansky was interviewed by Jay Nordlinger of the National Review.

Natan Sharansky, the onetime symbol of oppressed Soviet Jewry, quit his Cabinet post Monday to protest Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer. Sharansky, whose views on promoting democracy have won praise from President Bush, said Israel should relinquish Gaza only if the Palestinian government first carries out a wide range of reforms.

Re "Palestinians Do Not Need Another Tyrant," Commentary, Dec. 8: Natan Sharansky says, "The Oslo process failed because the democratic world, including Israel, believed that peace could be made with a dictator." This is untrue. Although Israel wanted peace, it failed because it wanted land even more. William G. Garrett Harrow, Britain Sharansky, in his analysis of the prospects for Mideast peace, puts an emphasis on democracy for the Palestinians as a key element in the struggle.

To Natan Sharansky, the Soviet prisoner turned Israeli minister of trade, it seems that life in the gulag was simpler than life in the government. At the beginning of his nine-year imprisonment, he took the uncompromising stand that he could not cooperate with his KGB keepers. Instead, he played a kind of mental chess game with them, trying to elicit information without giving up anything of his own.

If forgiveness is the ultimate triumph of the human spirit, a tiny man with a giant will reached that pinnacle of victory Thursday on a snow-covered stack of cinder blocks outside the notorious Lefortovo Prison. Human rights champion Natan Sharansky paid a healing visit to the scene of his Soviet-era torment, the feared yellow brick prison in eastern Moscow that was for decades the icon of totalitarian repression.

A brick was thrown through the rear window of a car that has been used by Natan Sharansky, former Soviet refusenik and a major force in organizing Sunday's mass rally on behalf of Soviet Jewry. Sharansky told friends that the incident reminded him of Soviet KGB harassment tactics in Moscow. No one was injured in the incident, which occurred late Friday or early Saturday on a street in residential northwest Washington, where Sharansky was staying with friends.

Re "The dissident choice," Opinion, Nov. 24 Natan Sharansky says that George W. Bush "routinely met with democratic dissidents in the Oval Office," "to press regimes to become more open and free," but "was not effective enough to advance this goal." With all that Sharansky endured, I am shocked by his naivete. Bush has stated that democracy is his foreign policy. But words are cheap, and the main action he took was to help his friends in big oil, and the military-industrial complex, by invading Iraq to secure its oil reserves.

Back in Russia for the first time since he was expelled 11 years ago, Natan Sharansky bowed his head Tuesday before the grave of a human rights champion and said a prayer in Hebrew. Sharansky, a former Soviet political prisoner, came to pay his respects to his friend Andrei D. Sakharov, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against the totalitarian system. Now Israel's trade minister, Sharansky returned for an official visit to the capital he had not seen since his arrest two decades ago.

I read your May 31 editorial regarding the Israeli elections. You have a negative opinion that incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will slow the peace process. Yes, it will be peace with more security. Last week four soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in southern Lebanon. Israel is first and foremost a Jewish state. The people of Israel voted as a democracy, which is reflected in the new makeup of the Knesset. The religious parties now have 25 seats. The Russian immigrants led by Natan Sharansky have seven seats.