From Nelson Mandela to the October 7 Hamas massacre, Cotler has had a pivotal role in the greatest human rights fights of modern times
They also discussed Cotler’s past: his fight to free political prisoners including Nelson Mandela, Anatoly Sharansky and Vladimir Kara-Murza; lessons about Parliament he learned as John Turner’s speech writer in the late 1960s; and the story of his involvement as an emissary between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin that led to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, not to mention his marriage to Begin’s legislative assistant.
Here is their conversation, edited for clarity. Watch the full interview in the video above.
Q: There are very few extraordinary figures in Canadian public life, and Irwin Cotler is one of them — former justice minister of Canada, a relentless and unwavering advocate for human rights, and a staunch defender of the State of Israel. Can we turn to the disturbing news that emerged recently that you’ve been targeted by Iran in retribution for your fight against that oppressive regime? A year ago, you found out from the RCMP there was credible evidence of an imminent and lethal threat against you. Since then, you’ve had 24/7 protection. You’ve had overwhelming support from Canada and abroad. Is the threat still there and how does it affect your daily life?
A: Well, the threat is still there in the sense that I’m still the beneficiary of the 24/7 protection and I want to say that protection is exemplary. It began, as you said, in November 2023, when I first heard of the threat and was warned they had credible evidence of an imminent and lethal threat. I did not speak about it, including a month ago when I was supposed to attend the 60th anniversary of my law school graduating class. I was very much looking forward to it but was advised that day there was an imminent and lethal threat of an assassination within 48 hours, so I did not attend. Then the story broke in Canadian and international media. Both houses of Parliament adopted resolutions condemning Iran. But my situation remains the same as it was since November 2023.
I just go about my life as if there was no threat, because I think the intention of these threats is to silence, to intimidate, to harass. And if we indulge that, then threatening people like the Iranian regime (has done) will have succeeded. My main work, as I’ve always said, is on behalf of the Iranian people who are ongoing targets of the Iranian regime’s massive domestic repression. What we have here is a confluence of massive domestic repression and transnational repression and assassination. That’s also true amongst the other members of the Axis of Evil — Russia and China. They target those who support their domestic constituencies.
Q: Why do you think it has happened now? You’ve been an outspoken critic of Iran for many years. Has it got anything to do with the Revolutionary Guard Corps being designated a terror organization, which happened in Canada this year?
A: I think it has something to do with that. I first proposed that the IRGC be listed as a terrorist organization in 2008, and it took until June 2024 until it happened. I’ve also been advocating that the other G7 countries, apart from the U.S., do the same and recommended that the whole issue of transnational repression and assassination be put on the agenda at the next G7 meeting, as Canada’s hosting that meeting.
But I think it’s happened because transnational oppression and assassination has been escalating since 2020, in particular after October 7. If you recall, in the first Trump administration, then-national security adviser John Bolton and his secretary of state (Mike) Pompeo were both targeted for assassination. More recently, my colleague and friend Masih Alinejad, a leading Iranian dissident living in New York, who’s been a great leader in the women’s freedom movement for the people of Iran, has herself been the target of threatened abduction and assassination.
Since October 7, the targeting has manifested itself in various places in Europe, America, and the like. Recently, a rabbi was murdered in the UAE, where it is suspected that Iran hired local contractors or hired assassins to do it. So, we’re seeing this escalating, and I’m just one illustration of it.
Q: You’ve spoken about transnational repression for many years. Five years ago, you talked about a historical inflection moment characterized by a resurgent global authoritarianism. And then there was a Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights webinar that you spoke at, where you went further and talked about a concerted Axis of Evil represented by Russia, China, Iran and their proxies that is waxing as increasingly polarized democracies wane.
Are we in Canada and in the West awake to the notion that this threat is increasingly co-ordinated? Are we responding vigorously enough?
A: No, I don’t think we’re yet awake. I was hoping that the assassination attempt with regard to myself would be seen as a wake-up call for Canada and for the community of democracies, because we’re now at another historical inflection moment, and that is the concerted, intensifying Axis of Evil involving Russia, China, Iran, and their proxies.
The worst part about it is not only the internal polarization amongst the democracies, which prevents a concerted response, but the ongoing culture of impunity (among authoritarian regimes). For example, if you take Russia, the 21st century began with Putin’s Russia going into Chechnya, then invading Georgia, then seizing Crimea and so on. I guess Putin thought to himself: “Well, if I could do all these things and was able to do so without any accountability, why should anybody care if I go into Ukraine?”
That culture of impunity incentivized Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The Ukrainian people responded with great courage and continue to do so. That was a wake-up call from Ukraine for the community of democracies on how one has to respond. That’s why, in a recent meeting with the prime minister, I suggested to him that this intensified, concerted Axis of Evil and their proxies requires a mobilized community of democracies that takes action to combat this culture of impunity.
Q: And you specifically suggested a department be created as a specific response to transnational repression?
A: Yes, I suggested that there be an independent department or agency of government, because the constituents of transnational repression are not limited. We have here in Canada a foreign interference inquiry, but its mandate has been foreign interference during elections. That is important, but (it must be) expanded beyond that. Transnational repression is dealing with the confluence of transnational repression and domestic repression, of transnational misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, cybersecurity threats, of the extraterritorial targeting amongst the community of democracies. Take Canada, for example, targeting (has included) leaders of the Iranian diaspora, journalists, human rights defenders, dissidents. So what we have here is a critical mass of transnational repression and, more recently, assassination that can only be addressed with an independent department and agency, so that departments and agencies of government don’t operate in silos as they do now with justice, public safety, foreign global affairs. They need to work in concert. We also need a national reporting system where victims know where they can report and how to report. Government has to be mobilized for that purpose.
Q: Let’s turn to Israel. You’ve been at the forefront of defining what you have called a “new antisemitism,” where you say that much of what is purported to be criticism of Israel is tantamount to demonization. Yet there is internal criticism within Israel. Moshe Ya’alon, a former defence minister and chief of the Israeli Defense Forces, said earlier in December that Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the north of Gaza and he worries the country is losing its identity as a liberal democracy. The concern is that right wingers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition want to reduce the Gazan population to open land for settlement. So where does legitimate criticism of Israel end and demonization begin?
A: Well, criticism of Israel, like any other democracy, is legitimate. And, as you can see by the statement by Moshe Ya’alon, is alive and well within Israel itself. I, myself, was part of that criticism during the year prior to October 7, when the Netanyahu government initiated what they call the judicial reform proposal. I was harshly critical of that proposal because I felt that it was attacking some of the wellsprings of Israeli democracy.
The protests and the demonstrations prevailed and that proposal never was adopted. So I think within Israel you’ve got healthy criticism — that you can criticize and criticize harshly.
Where it crosses the line is (when) it engages in what my colleague, former political prisoner Natan Sharansky, has called the “three Ds” — delegitimization, demonization and double standards, where you single out the state of Israel for selective opprobrium and indictment within an ongoing demonizing, delegitimizing, dehumanizing framework.
Let me be very clear on this: Israel, like any other state, is responsible for any violations of human rights and humanitarian law. And Israel and the Jewish people do not deserve to have any privilege or preference because of the horrors of the Holocaust or other horrors of Jewish history. But the problem is not that Israel should seek to be above the law. The problem is that it’s systematically denied equality before the law in the international arena. Not that it must respect human rights, which it must, but that its rights deserve equal respect. Not that human rights standards should not be applied to Israel. They must be. That’s what equality before the law is all about. But these standards must be applied equally to all others.
What concerns me is that, on the one hand, (there is) the culture of impunity that has been enjoyed by the Axis of Evil and their major human rights violators, (while on the other) there is a singling out of a democracy, however imperfect, for selective opprobrium and indictment.
I can give many examples of the weaponization of international law and international institutions, but here’s just one: Every year, the UN General Assembly adopts some 15 to 18 resolutions in condemnation of Israel. And again, I’m saying there can be resolutions of condemnation, but there are only around five resolutions against the rest of the world combined. There are, for example, no resolutions against China. That’s what I mean about singling out a democracy for selective approval and indictment.
Q: I think I’m right in saying that when you were in government, you shifted Canada’s position on those votes.
A: Yes, it was in the government of Paul Martin where we began that shift, and that shift continued with the Harper government. And I think it’s important, not in terms of providing protection for Israel, but in terms of the UN being the institution we wish it to be.
I still remember when I was minister of justice and attorney general, the then-secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan, said to me: “A UN that does not put the combating of antisemitism at the forefront of its agenda is a United Nations that has betrayed its past and forfeited its future.” So that’s the lens under which I operate — equality before the law for all states within the UN, because I am a supporter of the UN and its founding ideals.
Q: Let’s stick with international law. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for (Benjamin) Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, saying the court has reasonable grounds to believe they bear criminal responsibility for war crimes. Canada’s foreign minister, Melanie Joly, has said that as a founding member of the ICC, Canada needs to apply international law to all parties at all times, the implication being that Canada would hand over Netanyahu if he came to this country.
Justin Trudeau featured you in a tweet, with a picture of the two of you meeting. He didn’t say that you endorsed the government’s position, but I think the implication was there. Yet you’ve been very critical of that decision, of the (ICC) prosecutor (Karim Khan), and I’m guessing of Canada’s response. Can you talk us through your views on this and what you told the prime minister?
A: Yes, I did meet with the prime minister, and I did bring up the question of the ICC warrants. I’ve been a longtime supporter of the creation of an international criminal court and even served as a special adviser to then-foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy on the road to adoption of the Rome treaty and the ICC statute. One of my first acts when I was elected to Parliament in November 1999 was to co-sponsor legislation for the domestication of the ICC statute, Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. We are supporters of the ICC and, yes, we want to support decisions of the ICC.
But the ICC has to comport itself with its own founding principles. In my view, the ICC and its process breached its own foundational principles, the first being the principle of complementarity. In a word, the ICC is a court of last resort. It is not supposed to substitute its judgment and jurisdiction where there exists an independent legal system, particularly within a democracy. As (special prosecutor) Karim Khan said of the Israeli system, it is a robust and independent judiciary that is willing and able to conduct that independent inquiry.
That brings me to the second principle that has been breached, and perhaps even more seriously, and that is a principle that, to Karim Khan’s credit, he espouses and acts upon, and that is the principle of co-operation. He will co-operate with a country where there may be arrest warrants issued. In that regard, I helped facilitate, at Karim Khan’s request, a meeting between him and the Israeli leadership. It was scheduled to take place on May 20, within the spirit of co-operation. Regrettably, at the last minute, Karim Khan cancelled that meeting as ICC staff were about to depart for Israel.
I happened to be in Israel at the time and recall it very well. Instead of participating in a cooperative framework and allowing for complementarity to be exercised, Karim Khan cancelled the trip and pre-emptively issued the arrest warrants.
One final point here, which has not been appreciated. The month before that, Karim Khan, in the spirit of co-operation, went to Venezuela and met with Venezuelan dictator (Nicolàs) Maduro. There are reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity are being committed in Venezuela … that Maduro, on the road to the election, effectively dismantled any opposition, any semblance of an independent judiciary, any semblance of a legal system of parliamentary opposition. And yet, here, Karim Khan, after he met with Maduro, decided not to institute arrest warrants.
When I discussed the question of Israel, he said to me: “Well, Irwin, no one is above the law.” And I said: “You’re right. I’m not saying that any Israeli official should be above the law. But they deserve equality before the law. To go ahead and institute arrest warrants pre-emptively, when Israel has, as you put it, ‘a robust independent legal system,’ and where the principle of co-operation, which you espouse to your credit, has been breached, what we have here is a denial of equality before law.”
So, yes, I’ve remained critical of the ICC’s decision and the actions taken by Karim Khan. I still hold him in high regard. I’ve mentioned to the Israeli leadership that they should establish an independent commission of inquiry into October 7. I still believe that should be done.
Q: Two quick questions to round that off. One, it seems that you don’t think Canada is obliged to abide by that decision? And two, if you recommended an independent state commission of inquiry to the Israeli government, what has been the response?
A: Number 1, I do not believe that Canada is obliged to implement the warrant for the reasons I mentioned. On the contrary, because we’re a supporter of the court and a founder of the court, we are obliged to protect the integrity of the court. Where there’s a breaching of its foundational principles, then we’re not obliged to go along and become a party to that.
(On Israel’s response to the inquiry recommendation) thus far, they have not taken it up. There have been investigations, hundreds of investigations with respect to alleged breaches of international human rights and humanitarian and criminal law by soldiers within the framework of Israel’s self-defence response to Hamas’s mass atrocities. But they have not yet initiated the two recommendations that I made — either an independent commission or an independent prosecutorial inquiry, which would focus in particular on leadership crimes allegedly committed by Netanyahu and Gallant.
Q: I know you’ve been an advocate for a two-state solution for many years, if not decades. Do you feel we’re further away from that solution than we’ve ever been?
A: Regrettably, I feel we are further away. I founded the Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East in 1970, and our foundational principle was ‘two states for two peoples,’ which, as I said, presupposes the mutual acknowledgment of each peoples’ right to self-determination and to statehood. Regrettably, we seem to be further away because at this point, with respect to the Palestinian people, you’ve had either Hamas governing Gaza or the Palestinian Authority, which has yet to condemn the mass atrocities of October 7, and which has as part of its policies, for example, a “pay for slay” (fund), which means that for every terrorist act that is committed by a Palestinian against an innocent Israeli civilian, that terrorist gets a pension if he survives his own terrorist attack or his family receives a pension if he’s killed in that terrorist attack. That’s an ongoing incentivization of terrorism.
Then we had the tipping point, the October 7 mass atrocities, the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.
What has resulted is that in Israel, even the peace camp is further away from ‘two states for two peoples.’ This right-wing Netanyahu government is further away from it. And the tragedy is those who were targeted in those mass atrocities, which were the peaceful kibbutzim neighbouring Gaza, were all the leaders of the peace movement.
I’ll give one example: Vivian Silver, a Canadian Israeli, a staunch supporter of peace with the Palestinians who used to bring Gazan Palestinians to Israel for health care and the like and known as a leader of the Women Wage Peace movement. She was horrifically murdered, and in fact targeted by people who knew of her great peaceful work. I knew Vivian Silver well. She was not only an old friend of mine, an old girlfriend of mine, I remember accompanying her when she first went to live in Israel back in 1974, Kibbutz Gezer at the time, and then Kibbutz Be’eri. This has left the Israeli people traumatized. They still live in the shadow and pain of October 7. And, regrettably, the Palestinian leadership has not ever recanted those mass atrocities or sought to hold anybody accountable for them. On the contrary, in the case of Hamas, they say they will commit them again and again.
Q: Let’s change gears and move to your own storied career. You were born in 1940, the son of a lawyer who told you in Hebrew: “Justice, justice shall you pursue. This is the equal of all the other commandments combined.” I’ve since read that you were inspired to follow the civil and human rights path after going to a baseball game in Montreal with your father and watching Jackie Robinson (the first African-American to play in the major leagues) when you were six. Is that true?
A: That’s true. My father was an avid baseball fan. He attended all the games he was able to at Delorimier Stadium at the time in Montreal. He took me there and actually introduced me to Jackie Robinson. There are moments in life that have a lifelong impact. I then followed Jackie Robinson and followed the Brooklyn Dodgers. But that was, if you will, a civil liberties moment for me. I suspect it was that, and my mother’s teaching that if you want to pursue justice, you have to feel the injustice about you and combat the injustice. Otherwise, the pursuit of justice will be just a matter of theory, a matter of abstraction.
As a result of the teachings of my parents and great teachers that I had in high school and university, I got involved in the two great human rights movements of the second half of the 20th century, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the struggle for human rights in the former Soviet Union, and also got involved with the two political prisoners who were the face of those struggles, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, who became our second honorary citizen, and Anatoly Sharansky in the former Soviet Union.
Q: You’ve represented many prisoners who were imprisoned because of their political beliefs. Sharansky, who was consigned to a Soviet gulag before his release in 1986, ended up becoming Israel’s deputy prime minister — you were instrumental in that process.
You’re still doing it. The last time I saw you was on Parliament Hill in October 2022, when you were campaigning for the release of Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, even though you were recovering from COVID, you had a blood clot, and you weren’t particularly well at the time. Is there a lesson to be learned from dealing with repressive regimes as you’ve done through the years?
A: I think the important lesson is to realize that the people who are putting not only their livelihoods, but their lives on the line, as it was for Mandela and those associated with him in South Africa, and Sharansky and those associated with him in the former Soviet Union, and the brave people of Iran, or Jimmy Lai (publisher of the pro-democracy Apple Daily) in Hong Kong — I’m part of his international legal team. I think we have a responsibility to side, support and engage with these heroic people because they’re really fighting for that which we aspire to and have been founded on. That is, they’re struggling for democracy. They’re struggling for freedom. They’re struggling for human rights. These are foundational values for all of us. But they’re putting their lives on the line for that. We here in the West can live in reasonable comfort and security, and I think the least we can do is to support them in their struggle. They’re the ones who’ve inspired me. When I was a graduate student at Yale Law School, I met with Martin Luther King Jr., and was actually present at the time of his heroic speech.
Vladimir Kara-Murza was charged and sentenced to 25 years in prison for doing nothing else but standing up for human rights of Russians and criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He’s the intellectual heir of Andrei Sakharov (Soviet physicist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate). He’s the human rights heir to Anatoly Sharansky, a great human rights figure. I’m delighted that the two Houses of the Canadian Parliament supported him in becoming our most recent honorary citizen. I’m awaiting the honorary citizenship ceremony in Parliament, which he is so deserving. He is perhaps the greatest heroic human rights figure that we have today.
Q: Back to your career — you mentioned Yale Law School. You also had early exposure to politics as John Turner’s speech writer when he was justice minister in the late 1960s. Did you think then you would pursue a career in politics?
A: No, I aspired then to be a law professor, which happily I became soon afterward. I worked with John Turner full-time for two years, 1968 to 1970, then part-time. The last two years — 1970 to 1972 — was while I began my career as a law professor. But I have to say that John Turner, of blessed memory, was really one of the great inspirations in my life, because he taught me, among other things, a lesson that I never forgot, which was that democracy doesn’t happen by accident. You have to nurture it. You have to protect it. You have to work for it. And he was a model, not just as a minister of justice and attorney general, but he was a minister of justice and attorney general who was engaged always in the parliamentary process, and doing exactly what he was seeking to teach me — namely, to promote and protect Parliament as the trustee of the people and to always ensure that we don’t put partisan politics above that trusteeship. That was something that I learned from him. And when I did become a member of Parliament, I tried to follow it.
Q: You weren’t a great partisan, and I say that as a compliment. You were elected in 1999, and became justice minister in 2003. Among other things, you listed Hezbollah as a terror organization, you crafted the Civil Marriage Act that legalized gay marriage, and you appointed two female judges to the Supreme Court. Do you have any regrets about your time in cabinet? Are there things that you didn’t get done that you wanted to?
A: I have no regrets about the time that I was there. I do have regrets that our mandate did not continue beyond February 2006. It was a short mandate under the leadership of Paul Martin. I still believe he was one of the greatest prime ministers that we never had the opportunity to fully experience. For example, a priority for Paul Martin was, and he said this at our first cabinet meeting, “We will be judged at the end of the day by what we do on behalf of the Indigenous people of Canada.” And so, as minister of justice and attorney general, I made the issue of Indigenous justice a priority on my agenda.
I did have the opportunity to appoint Harry LaForme as the first ever Indigenous justice of an appellate court in Canada to the Ontario Court of Appeal. I regretted that it took until 2004 before an Indigenous person could be named to an appellate court of appeal, and he’s been a great, great justice. I also had an opportunity to appoint the first Black person to an appellate court of appeal and to appoint two women to the Supreme Court, making it at that time the most gender-equal court in the world.
One of the most important things for a minister of justice and attorney general, the enduring legacy, is judicial appointments, because they live on long after those of us who have the temporary appointment of minister of justice and attorney general are no longer there. That, to me, was one of the most important and rewarding parts of my tenure as justice minister.
Q: One thing I regret you didn’t get done was that you introduced a motion in about 2011, the National Speak No Evil Day. You called for citizens and MPs to take part in one day free from unfair criticism, bigoted comments, cruel jokes or character assassination. Unfortunately, I think that would have shut down the House of Commons. I don’t think it came to a vote, did it?
A: The person who asked me to do that was my mother, of blessed memory. I never heard her say something bad about anybody in my life. She was the one who actually encouraged me to meet with Yasser Arafat (former president of the Palestinian National Authority), something that I was not disposed to do. I did it because she was of the belief that you never know what can come out of an encounter.
Speak No Evil was something that, perhaps if we had adopted it, we might have been able to pre-empt some of the polarizing toxic discourse that is more omnipresent in today’s Parliament than it ever was when I was a parliamentarian. Working across party lines for me was important because of that lesson from John Turner, that we are trustees of the people.
Q: One of the most prominent things you’ve done since politics was your involvement with the adoption of the Magnitsky Act, named after the tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who was found dead in a Moscow prison after uncovering a corruption ring in 2008. The legislation targets individuals deemed guilty of human rights abuses and closes down their access to the West’s financial system. It’s now been adopted in 35 countries. Has that had the impact that you hoped for, because you talk about regimes operating with impunity and this would seem to restrict that impunity somewhat?
A: I think it has had the desired effect. You know, there are limits to what these sanctions can do. But I was recently in discussions with (Magnitsky’s former employer) Bill Browder. We talked about the fact that 35 countries have adopted and there are more on the way. We are constantly presenting the Canadian government with lists of those who need to be sanctioned. For example, in 2018, we released a report with respect to Iran and identified 19 major architects of repression in Iran. We have managed to get many of them sanctioned. That has not ended that culture of impunity, but it has at least resulted in accountability. As Bill Browder intended, the whole thing was intended to provide justice for victims. It’s important for victims to see that a semblance of justice is being sought and being achieved, however imperfectly.
I remember when I first introduced Magnitsky sanctions legislation as an MP in 2011. I was there with Vladimir Kara-Murza and Boris Nemtsov, the great Russian opposition leader at the time, who was tragically assassinated outside the Kremlin in 2015. And I remember we were asked at a conference, “Isn’t the legislation anti-Russian?” Nemtsov and Kara-Murza said: “No, this is the most pro-Russian legislation you could adopt. This is legislation on behalf of the Russian people. This is holding the Russian violators accountable. This is giving the Russian people a voice. This is giving victims a measure of justice.” That’s something I never forgot. Boris Nemtsov paid the price for it and Vladimir Kara-Murza, who came to testify before our foreign affairs committee on the adoption of Magnitsky sanctions in 2015 and 2017, was poisoned after he returned to Russia. The architects of Magnitsky sanctions paid a great price. The least that we can do is do as much as we can to make those sanctions effective, in their scope, their scale and their impact.
Q: You’ve had a front-row seat as history has unfolded over the second half of the 20th century and the start of the 21st century. One story I read was that you acted as an emissary carrying a peace negotiation proposal from Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat to Israel’s prime minister Menachem Begin in the late ’70s. I believe that the wedding photo behind you from 1979 was taken on the same day that peace broke out between the two countries. How did that come about?
A: I used to live and work in the Arab countries for four months every summer in 1975, 1976 and 1977. People asked me: “Why are you going there?” And I said: “Because I want to work on peace between Israel and the Palestinians, between Israel and Arab states. And I have to have a better understanding, not just of their foreign policies, but their culture, and the psychology of the Egyptian people, the Jordanian people, the Palestinian people.”
I would spend four months every summer in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, in the Palestinian territories and end up in Israel. I began for a month each time in Egypt at the Institute of Political and Strategic Studies at Al-Ahram (Canadian University) and I got to know Boutros Boutros-Ghali (later secretary general of the UN), who was the head of the Institute in ’77.
I was back again in Cairo at the Institute when Boutros-Ghali became the foreign affairs minister in Egypt. He knew I went to the other Arab countries after Egypt, and that I would end up in Israel. He invited me to a meeting with Sadat, who asked me two questions. The first was: could he make peace with the newly elected Likud government? I said: “Yes, I believe you can. And they will carry the other parties.” He said: “Can I make peace with the newly elected prime minister Menachem Begin?” I said: “I don’t know Prime Minister Begin, but he is known to me as a parliamentarian, a democrat, and I believe he would want to make peace with the most significant and important Arab country, Egypt.” So he gave me a message to take to Begin, and said he wanted to have this message taken by somebody who the Israelis would trust and whom he trusted. I cut the rest of my trip short that summer, just went to Syria, then continued to Israel.
Fortuitously, on the day that I arrived in Israel, I met a friend of mine who invited me to a meeting of younger parliamentarians of the Israeli Parliament. Sitting there was my future wife-to-be (Ariela Ze’evi). We did not know each other, but that trip had a transformative impact on my life. I was asked by this friend of mine, Uri Gordon, to say a few words about Jewish communities in the U.S. and Canada, and my travels in the region. I got up and I spoke in Hebrew and my wife-to-be wrote a message to her friend saying: “This person must be a spy for the Arabs.” At that point in ‘77, Jews weren’t travelling freely in the Arab countries as I was.
She came up to me at the end of that lunch and started to ask me some questions. I realized she was suspicious of me, so I said something I hadn’t said over lunch: that when I was in Syria and I met with the Damascus Jewish community, that they drank a toast to the election of prime minister Menachem Begin and said: “With him will come our redemption.”
She said: “You have to meet with the prime minister of Israel. He needs to know this.” She said she would arrange it. She was then the parliamentary secretary of the Likud Party, one of Menachem Begin’s closest confidantes, so she arranged the meeting. I shared the message with Begin, the negotiations began, and the rest is history. We got married on March 25, 1979, because that was the day of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
Q: Incredible. It sounds like a movie script.
A: I have to say that Sadat was a great heroic leader. So was Menachem Begin. And one of the interesting things about Sadat is that his wife (human rights activist Jehan Sadat) very much wanted that peace. She was present at the meetings that I had. So, you see, spouses can help make history. I’ve seen that as well with the political prisoners that I’ve had the privilege to represent. It was because of their spouses, and their advocacy on the outside, that they ended up being released, whether it was Avital Sharansky, who became (Anatoly’s) voice and his identity while he was in the gulag for close to nine years, or more recently Evgenia Kara-Murza, who became Vladimir Kara-Murza’s voice, his vision. These very courageous spouses have really been at the forefront of human rights struggles.
Q: You told me some years ago that you believed in Martin Luther King’s aphorism that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends in the direction of justice. Given all that we have spoken about — the rise of a concerted Axis of Evil, transnational repression and assassination, growing antisemitism and polarization in modern democracies — do you still have faith that justice will prevail?
A: I still have that faith. I’m an optimistic person by nature. That also was bequeathed to me by my parents. And I think Martin Luther King paid the price, the greatest of prices, for his heroism. I think the arc of history bent toward justice in the United States, and did so because of people like Martin Luther King. What he epitomized was that we have to work to bend that arc toward justice. We have it in our hands to do so.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s aphorism is also part of the Jewish tradition and finds expression in another saying of the sage philosopher Maimonides, who said that we should each see the world as divided into half evil and half good. Therefore, any good deed by any one of us on any given day converts the cosmos from evil to good. Each one of us, by one good deed every day, can have a transformative impact on the pursuit of justice. That lesson was never lost on me. And I think the great heroic figures, the Vladimir Kara-Murzas, the Sharanskys, Nasrin Sotoudehs in Iran, Wang Quanzhangs in China, all of them have paid a price, but they have shown that they are bending their countries toward justice and we in the community of democracies have to join them.