Political positions of Ted Kennedy called Kennedy, "a great friend of Israel", and he continued by saying that Kennedy would be missed. Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, who was a prisoner of Zion in the Soviet Union, told "The Jerusalem Post", "When we were in prison - when I was in prison - Senator Kennedy was one of the most important contacts for our wives and families. He helped bring down the iron curtain and he helped Soviet Jews immigrate to Israel." "Kennedy was clearly a friend of Israel all the way, and in every place that he could help us he did," said Israeli
Natan Sharansky becoming a refusenik, Sharansky became a human rights activist, working as a translator for dissident and nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, and spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Group and a leader for the rights of refuseniks. On 15 March 1977 Sharansky was arrested on multiple charges including high treason and spying for Americans. The accusation stipulated that he passed to the West lists of over 1,300 "refuseniks", many of whom were denied exit visas because of their knowledge of state secrets, which resulted in a publication by Robert C. Toth, "Russ Indirectly Reveal 'State Secrets': Clues in Denials of Jewish Visas".