The Hypocrisy of Natan Sharansky

Here is a good article on human rights advocate and hero-turned-human rights violator Natan Sharansky.

Of course most Americans don't remember Sharansky's history as a "refusenik" or "prisoner of conscience." They probably don't even remember the Soviet "gulags." What they do know about Sharansky is that he has become the "darling" of the Bush Administration. It has been reported that it was a long conversation Sharansky had with Vice President Cheney that led to the Administration's decision to isolate, ignore, and seek the removal of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. And, more recently, it was after a long meeting in the White House between President Bush and Sharanksy that the President emerged to praise his book The Case for Democracy. President Bush said, "I felt like his book just confirmed what I believe. He writes a heck of a lot better than I could write, and he's certainly got more credibility than I have..."

"Ay," to borrow from Shakespeare, "there's the rub." The point is, does Sharansky have credibility? The recent above-mentioned criticisms from the right and left appear to agree that because of his silence in the face of Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights and denial of democratic rights to this occupied people, he is not credible.

Now there is an important lesson here, not only for Americans and Israelis, but for Arabs as well. For our commitment to human rights to be consistent and not hypocritical, it must be absolute. We, too, must measure human rights by one yardstick.