“When there is nothing to die for, there is nothing to live for … and that’s why I think that nationalism is a very good word when it goes together with freedom and human rights. The moment you separate them, you’re getting awful dictatorship or empty, shallow, decadent life.”
I sit down with former Soviet political prisoner Natan Sharansky. He is what they call a “refusenik”—a Jew who was once forbidden from emigrating to Israel from the Soviet Union.
“This connection between the desire of people to belong and the desire of people to be free, in Israel is much more full—much more deep—than in any other parts of the world,” says Sharansky….