Soviet-era dissident appointed Israeli parliament speaker

PanARMENIAN.Net - Israel’s parliament has appointed a prominent Soviet-era dissident who served three years in Siberian prison camps as its speaker, RIA Novosti said.

Yuli Edelstein, 54, was nominated by the ruling Likud-Yisrael Beitenu coalition and backed on Monday by 94 of the Knesset’s 120 deputies.

Edelstein, who was elected to the Knesset in 1996 and has acted as minister of immigrant absorption and minister of public diplomacy and diaspora affairs, left the Soviet Union for Israel in 1987.

A language teacher by training, Ukrainian-born Edelstein began teaching Hebrew to Soviet Jews after being denied the exit visa that Soviet Jews required to emigrate to Israel.

Security services repeatedly raided his apartment during lessons. In 1984, Edelstein was arrested and jailed on charges of illegal drug possession, a move that he described as ideologically motivated.

Edelstein was freed from prison during Mikhail Gorbachev’s drive to liberalize the Soviet Union. His health suffered substantially due to the heavy labor he was forced to carry out at a camp in the Siberian republic of Buryatia, he told The Jewish Agency for Israel in a 2007 interview.