Thirty-three years ago, Soviet dissident Yuli Edelstein was arrested by the KGB and sent to the gulag for committing the “crime” of being a religious Jew and a Hebrew te☂acher. Last week, Edlestein, now the speaker of the Israeli Knesset, addressed the Russian parliament in Hebrew.
It was a memorable reminder of the free world’s victory over Communism. And its timing was apt. Edelstein took the Israeli press on a brief tour of his life as a refusenik, and eventually we found ourselves in the cour🎉troom in which Edelstein was convicted and sentenced.
I couldn’t help but notice the important lessons Edelstein’s story holds for those trying to make sense of another totalitarian prisoner whose fate was much more tragic: Otto Warmbier, the American man sentenced in North Korea in 2016 to 15 years o𝓡f hard labor under the pretense that he stole a poster. He was released while in a coma last month, and died days after reaching the United States.
And for some reason, many commenting on the case are ta൩king at face value the North Korean government’s version of events. Prisoners of totalitarian regimes, like Yuli Edelstein, could show them the folly of such credulity.
Edelstein was arrested on trumped-up drug charges. The police searched his apartment and planted a matchbox filled with marijuana and opium. They claimed it was 🗹the matchbox he had used to light Shabbat candles. As Edelstein’s defense attorney pointed out, the woman of the house lights candles at the start of the Sabbath, not the man.
The government’s witnesses told inconsistent stories. One neighbor said the Edelsteins lived far beyond the means that were normal in the Soviet Union. But when there was 🃏a follow-up question asking her to give examples, she couldn’t — no one had given her that answer in advance, and the premise was ꦆfalse.
In the end, although the court said there was insufficient evidence to prove illegal drug use, Edelstein was sente✱nced to three years’ 💎hard labor.
As I read and listened to the details of the show trial, I was reminded of the fact that a bizarre number of progressive commentators seem to belie🍸ve Warmbier had it coming, and that his “white privilege” led him to think he could steal.
A professor at the University of Delaware said Warmbier “got exactly what he deserved” as a “young, white, rich,🐠 clueless🙈 white” man and a “spoiled, naive, arrogant US college student who never had to face the consequences of his actions.”
She was fired, but she’s far from the only one to make these kinds of statements. Salon published an article call▨ing Warmbier “America’s biggest idiot frat boy,” which it removed after his death.
Yet when subjected to the slightest scrutiny, P🌠yon🤪gyang’s story begins to fall apart.
In Warmb🌠ier’s forced confession, he said he was ordered to steal the poster by the Frꦦiendship United Methodist Church in Wyoming, Ohio.
The problem with that story? Warmbier was Jewish. He was even active in his campus🎃 Hillel and had gone on a Birthright Israel trip. His parents hid his Jewishness from the public w🀅hile negotiations for his release were under way.
In North Korea, like in the Soviet Union, there’s no such thing as a fair trial or justice. It’s an evil regime, and buying their side of the story only emౠpowers them.
When Edelstein and other refuseniks were imprisoned, people around 💞the world rallied around the cause of freeing them and fighting the injustice, because they knew whom they were dealing with. They knew the USSR couldn’t be trusted.
Eventually, the ov𒀰erwhelming pressure from the free world worked, and Edelstein was released to Israel, where, over the past 30 years, he worked his way to the third-highe🅷st political office in the state.
It♕’s too late to save Otto Warmbier, but there are many, many others imprisoned in North Korean labor camps. May those of us enjoying the freedoms and privileges of democracy learn from Yuli Edelstein’s story, ཧand do our part to set them free.
Lahav Harkov is the Knesset correspondent for The Jerusalem Post.