Occasionally you recognise that you are in the presence of human greatness. I had that experience this week in Jerusalem when I went to interview Natan Sharansky.
Sharansky was one of the most famous dissidents and refuseniks of the Soviet Union.
Refuseniks were Russian Jews who wanted to live as Jews and migrate to Israel. They were prevented from doing either of these things by the harsh, totalitarian Soviet system.
Sharansky spent nearly 10 years in Soviet prisons and labour camps, frequently on hunger strike, always defiant, insanely brave. Many people across the world campaigned for the refuseniks' freedom and, of course, Americans were critical. But Australians also played a distinguished role in this campaign, especially Bob Hawke and Jewish leader Isi Leibler.
Then, on one incredible day in 1986, Sharansky went from a KGB prison in the morning to a plane to Germany in the afternoon, then on another plane to Jerusalem in the evening.
"I went straight from hell to paradise," he recalls. "The rulers of Iran can only imagine such a journey. I went from hatred to love, from the darkness of prison to the bright sun. Of course, if you go straight to heaven, you can only go down from there. I still live in paradise, but paradise needs a few repairs."
One million Soviet Jews came to Israel and for a time Sharansky was their political champion. But he was not really designed for party politics. He served in four governments and resigned twice. He was happy to see his immigrants' party disappear after it had helped speed the integration of the Russians into Israeli society.
He seems a man very much at ease in his own skin. He smiles frequently. A satirical cartoon of himself adorns one wall, across from a picture of another great Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov. I seek enlightenment from Sharansky on two questions: why does Israel get such a bad press in the West, far worse than it deserves, and can democracy work in Arab societies? Sharansky agrees that Israel consistently gets a far worse press than it deserves. He accepts that there are many reasons for this, from the power, money and influence that flow from Arab oil to the recrudescent anti-Semitism of recent years.
But he also nominates, especially in the case of European hostility to Israel, a particular ideological factor.
He says: "Israel is at the centre of the struggle between the totalitarian and the ideological, between the fundamentalist and the unfaithful. It is an assertive nation-state at a time when the leading ideology in Europe is post-nationalism and multiculturalism, especially in respect of the EU, and building post-state institutions. So the Europeans see Israel as nationalist and the last outpost of colonialism.
"But Europe now is in a much more difficult situation ideologically than Israel. They tried to build their new society only on human rights. They believe the nation-state has human rights but no commitment to identity. They find a minority (part of the Muslim population) which has a strong identity and no commitment to human rights.
"Europeans find themselves helpless in the face of this and I believe that Europe will have to go back to national identity.
"Democracy must have a connection with identity. There must be a national, democratic state. Israel can only survive in this region as a democratic, Jewish state. This is anathema to Europe."
The same syndrome of disdain for religion and civic-national identity informs much European hostility to the US as well, Sharansky believes. Because the French Revolution was against religion, Europeans have mistakenly come to the view that religion is the enemy of democracy. But the US and Israel were both founded with strong religious identities and have become thriving democracies.
"America is a country tolerant to both faith and identity," Sharansky says. "Muslims come to America and accept the rules of democracy. They come to Europe and don't accept the rules of democracy because it was never demanded of them."
Sharansky wrote a justly famous book making the case for the universality of democracy. How does this apply to the Arab world, I ask, where there is not one example of a functioning democracy. In response, Sharansky makes a partial defence of Islam. A tendency to totalitarianism is present in every religion, he says. This does not equate contemporary Islam with every other religion but simply shows the potential for people to get past this temptation. Many Muslims live in modern societies and participate fruitfully in democratic politics.
He knows many democratic dissidents in societies such as Egypt and Lebanon. But Sharansky makes a powerful, practical point.
Dissidents in the Soviet Union knew they had the backing of Western opinion. But the West does not support Arab dissidents for fear of destabilising Arab regimes. It is as if the West had shunned Poland's Lech Walesa or Czechoslovakia's Vaclav Havel because they endangered national rulers in eastern Europe who were less hostile to Western interests than the rulers in Moscow.
Further, the presence of dissidents depends on the severity of the repression. Mahatma Gandhi would have had no followers under Hitler. He would have been dead from day one.
Sharansky is no utopian. He understands the difficulty of democracy, that no solution is easy. Nonetheless, he is undeterred and unfailingly cheerful: "If I can be optimistic in a KGB prison camp, I can be optimistic here in Israel."
