In democracy he trusts
S.F. native sees opening of Arab society as vital to Israel
by joe eskenazi
staff writer
Natan Sharansky and Aryeh Green bumped into each other at a virtually abandoned Israeli beachside hotel nearly 20 years ago.
The famed Russian dissident loved to swim in the ocean — but he was a weak swimmer. And Green, a San Francisco-born, U.C. Berkeley-educated Israeli, was a former lifeguard.
Fast-forwarding to the present, Sharansky is Israel’s minister for Jerusalem and diaspora affairs. And Green is one of his top advisers and a key figure in Sharansky’s Yisrael B’Aliya political party.
Green, who dropped in on his hometown last week for a series of speeches, finds himself straddling a number of competing beliefs. The kippah-wearing dual citizen and former rabbinical student describes himself as a “lifelong lefty.” And yet, his party caters largely to Russian emigres who, to put it extremely mildly, are not.
What’s more, he and his liberal Be
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