Sharansky Trying to Stall Gaza Pullout Indefinitely

Last week Israeli Cabinet Minister Natan Sharansky left the government because he believed the coming pullout from the Gaza Strip should be linked to human rights reforms within the Palestinian Authority. His gripe with Sharon's plans to abandon Jewish settlements appears to have nothing to do with free roaming Palestinian terrorists, nor does he want to use the prospect of a pullout from the territory as a leveraging tool to continue to demand a halt to any and all terrorist activities in the territories, no matter how far removed the from the official Paletstinian leadership those attacks may be.

Sharansky's demands would seem to be consistent with is personal experience, his dedication to human rights: he spent a decade in a Soviet prison for his activities as a Jewish, pro-Israel activist. That makes it easy to believe that he is purely looking out for the rights of the common Palestinian.

But Sharansky is a much more complicated character. His zionism is pro-settlement, he believes that the land of Israel includes all of the occupied territories and any retreat from those territories is a betrayal of heavenly mandate. He has consistently sided with Israel's right wing in demanding the growth of the settlements, not their dismantling. So, when the human rights activist claims that he is looking after the the rights of the Palestinian on the street, he's really using their plight as a way to stall the withdrawl. And, because there is no way to neatly quantify an improvement in Palestinian human rights, making Sharansky's demands conveniently open ended, such a postponement could be indefinite.

By his way of thinking, the Palestinians would clean up their act, and then at some hypothetical date the pullout plans could be taken off the shelf, and the whole pullout process restarted. But, considering the difficulties involved in getting Sharon's plan into motion, that day would likely be very far off. Sharansky is betting on that.

Klebnikov deserved better from colleagues

Last night I watched the "48 Hours" news program on Paul Klebnikov, the editor of Forbes Russia who was murdered outside his Moscow office last July 9. It's terrible what happened to him, and it makes me afraid for any journalist who works in Russia and who dares to speak out, tries to pry into the truth behind the business, often dirty, of that country's new oligarchs. I am a journalist and I have the utmost respect for Klebnikov in his integrity and his pursuit of the truth, even though it appears, at least from the angle portrayed by 48 Hours, that Klebnikov might have been a little naive. Not in his fight to reveal the dirty truths that certain of his subjects concealed, but maybe he didn't fully realize just how ruthless the people he was writing about could be, maybe he didn't fully comprehend that they would indeed kill him for the things he wrote.

Whether he was truly this naive I really don't know, I'm just going on what one of his closest professional colleagues, a Russian version of Oprah, said duing the show. The guy had integrity, and he surely made a difference in life, yet it has taken his death to bring widespread international attention to the dangerous situation journalists live in Russia. Maybe the attention to his murder will result in an avalanche of investigation, followed by reform. Or maybe the hope of reform, which is what Klebnikov fought for, really is just plain naive. I hope not.

However moved by the tale of Klebnikov's dedication to Russia, I was offended by the way 48 Hours presented the story. The show treated Klebnikov's death a "mystery" (indeed the angle of the show was "unsolved mystery"). The guy lived a full, rich, productive life, touched many lives, and CBS turns him into the subject of a murder mystery, as if its viewership must be entertained and nothing more; a respectful review of Klebnikov's life and telling of the events surrounding his death aren't enough, CBS had to work his tale into a pulp murder mystery. Makes me question the integrity of those journalists who covered his story, and of the editors who decided to cheapen the life and death of a fallen comrade.