Natan Sharansky, the famed refusenik and international campaigner against antisemitism, on Wednesday said that the Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 was a wakeup call for Israelis about threats to the Jewish state.
“We forgot that we should not take the existence of the State of Israel for granted,” Sharansky said. “We believed that antisemitism is something Jews of the diaspora keep suffering — of course we have to help them — but it’s not something about Israel. And definitely pogroms, it’s not part of our history. So we had to learn, and now we are learning how to live again. It’s not the end of history … we have to go through our wars and our battles again.”
“We forgot that we should not take the existence of the State of Israel for granted,” Sharansky said. “We believed that antisemitism is something Jews of the diaspora keep suffering — of course we have to help them — but it’s not something about Israel. And definitely pogroms, it’s not part of our history. So we had to learn, and now we are learning how to live again. It’s not the end of history … we have to go through our wars and our battles again.”
