Natan Sharansky is an Israeli politician, human rights activist and author who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He served as Chairman of Jewish Agency from 2009 to 2018. In 1986, the United States Congress granted him the Congressional Gold Medal and in 2006, US President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
