Professor Henry Srebrnik

Professor Henry Srebrnik

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Brazil’s Unsteady Democracy

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Sydney, N.S.] Cape Breton Post

Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, is on trial in the country’s Supreme Court, accused of masterminding a plot to stage a coup after he lost the 2022 presidential elections to leftist candidate Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva.

It marks the first time in Brazilian history that a former head of state is being tried for attempting to overthrow the government. His supporters also stormed Brazil’s Congress building and Presidential offices in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023.

Federal police earlier this year released two reports that detailed the accusations, including that he personally edited a decree for a national state of emergency designed to prevent the election’s winner from taking office. He abandoned the plan after leaders of Brazil’s military refused to take part. If convicted, he could face up to 12 years in prison. 

Bolsonaro has already been barred from running for office until 2030, but he retains continued political influence and popularity. He is hoping that Congress will overturn his election ban. He called the ruling “a rape of democracy” and said he was trying to find a way to run in next year’s presidential election.

Two Supreme Court justices he nominated will lead the electoral court before the election. Those judges have told him, he has said, “that my ineligibility is absurd.” In March, thousands of his followers rallied at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach to protest the charges. Other supporters came together at a public demonstration in Sao Paulo in late June as well, to oppose his ongoing trial.

Meanwhile, the election’s victor, President “Lula,” as he is known, doesn’t feel Bolsonaro’s arrest has proved that Brazil’s future as a democracy is assured. In an interview with Jon Lee Anderson, published in the New Yorker magazine May 8, he feared that “the entire post-Second World War order, created largely through the intervention of the United States, seemed on the verge of collapse.”

Part of the problem is economic. “Democracy starts to fall when it no longer meets the people’s interests. Since 1980, the working people in countries that built welfare states have only lost, while income concentration has increased. So what response can we give to Brazilian society?”

This is not only a Brazilian issue. “Last year, the world spent $2.4 trillion on weapons, while seven hundred and thirty million people go to sleep every night not knowing if they’ll have breakfast when they wake up,” he said. “That should be humanity’s main concern.”

In November, Brazil will host the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as COP30, in the city of Belém, a location, at the edge of the Amazon rainforest, chosen to bring attention to the crisis of deforestation. Yet it is hard to imagine that it will bring radical change.

The Amazon is now close to a tipping point beyond which it may not generate enough rainfall to sustain its own ecosystem, as well as agriculture, hydropower, water supply, and industries that have fueled Brazil’s growth.

Lula has himself lost popularity. Last month Brazil’s Congress nullified a presidential decree for the first time in decades, rejecting a move by Lula’s government to hike a financial transactions tax. Lula’s allies had only 98 votes against 383 in the lower house to keep the tax increase on some transactions, including foreign exchange and credit cards. The Senate also defeated the move. It was the first time lawmakers overturned a presidential decree in Brazil since 1992, in a rebuke of Lula one year ahead of the country’s next presidential election campaign, and it signaled flagging support for his left-of-center administration.

Thomas Traumann, an independent political consultant, said the decision by lawmakers indicates Lula does “not have a stable majority in Congress. If this was a parliamentary system, it would have been the end of this government,” he asserted.

Recent polls show Lula losing to most potential candidates in next year’s election. Assuming Bolsonaro remains ineligible, the most likely winner would be the current governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcisio Gomes de Freitas, who served as the minister of infrastructure for Bolsonaro.

He defeated Fernando Haddad, a professor of political science who is a member of Lula’s Workers’ Party and the current finance minister, for governor of the state. Haddad also lost the 2018 presidential election to Bolsonaro. This doesn’t auger well for him, should he replace Lula as the party’s candidate.

 

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Israel Was Damaged in its Victory Over Iran

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

The ceasefire between Iran and Israel, declared on June 24, signaled the conclusion of the most intense and severe phase to date in the ongoing confrontation between the Islamic Republic and the Jewish state.There is little doubt that Israel, supported by U.S. President Donald Trump, emerged victorious in its “Twelve Day War” over the Iranian theocracy, but it was at great cost.

Even if Iran retains a stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, which it had before the conflict and may have relocated to hidden sites, its nuclear program has been significantly set back. Although it is likely that the two enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow were not completely destroyed, they suffered substantial damage, and the elimination of more than ten senior nuclear scientists will either prevent or, at least, seriously hamper Iran’s ability to break out toward nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.

But how has this conflict, just paused rather than ended, affected Israel? After all, the war also highlighted grave problems in Israel’s defensive capability, especially given how small the nation is.

Since coming to power in 1979, the Iranian regime has sought Israel’s destruction as a matter of theological principle and a pillar of the Islamic Republic’s ideology. For decades the most powerful driver among Israel’s enemies has not been the Palestinians, but Iran, a country 75 times the size of Israel and more than 1,600 kilometres away.

Since Iran’s target is far away, it has for decades made use of skilful proxies -- the Assad regime in Syria, but also Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, who, as non-state actors, have worked to destabilise the region.

Despite that, there were no direct military confrontations between Iran and Israel until last year, when Iran twice launched missiles at Israel. They caused almost no damage -- but this time it’s been different. Throughout the recent fighting, Iranian authorities and media emphasized Israeli casualties and the scale of damage inflicted on Israel, in an effort to construct a narrative that the Islamic Republic is capable of withstanding prolonged confrontation with Israel and causing it serious harm in return.

During the current clash, Iran launched up to 1,000 ballistic missiles and drones at Israel. Despite Israel’s advanced air defence systems, it was not able to intercept them all. Some of what happened can be quantified: Of about 550 ballistic missiles fired at Israelis, 31 seem to have made it through the interceptors.

They hit important infrastructure, from the port of Haifa in the north down to Beersheba, in the Negev. Iran managed to strike Israel directly at some of its most sensitive and protected sites. Israelis fervently hoped it would end before the Iron Dome’s supply of interceptors ran out.

Iran targeted Tel Aviv and areas around it, damaging numerous apartment buildings. Many families with safe rooms spent most of the 12 days there, others would use public shelters whenever an alert was raised, and yet others headed to underground parking lots, knowing that anything above ground could be obliterated by a direct hit. One deadly missile strike destroyed an apartment building in Bat Yam, killing nine people.

Since 1948, Israel’s major cities have never faced the kind of threat experienced during this war: Over 2,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, with apartment buildings and office towers smashed, and multiple buildings reduced to rubble. As well, 29 Israeli civilians were killed and more than 3,000 injured. Some 13,000 people were left homeless, city streets were emptied, and economic activity ground to a halt.

The October 7, 2003 Hamas attack was largely perceived by Israelis as a singular catastrophe. The war with Iran, however, has chipped away at their long-held sense of security. Millions felt their sense of immunity gone. Press censorship magnified this fear: not publishing the locations of missile strikes led to a flood of rumours on social media.

One of the significant hits was the Soroka University Medical Centre, affiliated with the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba -- a strike that injured dozens. Among other targets in the Negev were the Israeli Military Intelligence School. All these and others took direct, destructive hits.

Tehran also hit the Gav-Yam Negev Advanced Technologies Park, which reportedly houses active military and cyber facilities. That blaze also reached a Microsoft office, while Israel Railways announced the temporary closure of the Beersheba North-University station due to damage sustained in the attack. Another major strike damaged the Bazan Oil Refinery in Haifa.

Especially shocking was the destruction of buildings at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, one of the world’s most prestigious research facilities. It consumed years of research in a moment -- a loss of potential cures and human innovation impossible to tally. A biochemistry professor calculated that 63 labs were gone, and that about 700 scientists and students saw their workspace, equipment, and research material destroyed in an instant.

Despite all this devastation, in bombing Iran’s nuclear sites President Trump fulfilled a decades-long Israeli aspiration. Yet the need for direct American involvement was a recognition of the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had started a conflict which Israel could not finish alone. Still, neither Israel nor the U.S. will permit Iran to have nuclear weapons. That remains the bottom line.

 

Wednesday, July 09, 2025

Antisemitism in the Medical Profession in Canada

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Winnipeg] Jewish Post

Antisemitism in Canada now flourishes even where few would expect to confront it. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, there has been a resurgence of antisemitism noticeable in the world of healthcare. 

When Israeli Gill Kazevman applied to medical school, and circulated his CV to physician mentors, their most consistent feedback was, “Do not mention anything relating to Israel,” he told National Post journalist Sharon Kirkey in an Aug. 10, 2024, story. As a student at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, “I began to see all kinds of caricatures against Jews. I saw faculty members, people in power, people that I’m supposed to rely on, post horrible things against Jews, against Israelis,” he added. The faculty created a Senior Advisor on Antisemitism, Dr. Ayelet Kuper, who in a report released in 2022, confirmed widespread anti-Jewish hatred.

The Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO) conducted a 2024 survey of 944 Jewish doctors and medical students from across Canada. Two thirds of respondents were “concerned that antisemitic bias from peers or educators will negatively affect their careers.” Dr. Lisa Salomon, JMAO’s president, reported that at the University of Toronto medical school only 11 Jewish students were completing their first year of medical school out of a class of 291. The medical school in 1974 saw 46 Jews in a class of 218.

Also in Toronto, Hillel Ontario called on Toronto Metropolitan University to investigate Dr. Maher El-Masri, who has served as the director of the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, because, the group contended, he has “repeatedly engaged with and spread extreme, antisemitic, and deeply polarizing content on his social media account.”

The National Post’s Ari Blaff in an article on June 12, 2025 quoted social media posts from an account Hillel claimed belongs to Dr. Maher El-Masri, who has been the director of the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing. One message concerned a post about Noa Marciano, an Israeli intelligence soldier abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, who later died in captivity. “This is what is so scary about people like her,” the TMU professor wrote. “They look so normal and innocent, but they hide monstrous killers in their sick, brainwashed minds.” Israel, he asserted a day after the Hillel notice, “is a baby killer state. It always has been.”

The Quebec Jewish Physicians Association (AMJQ) is fighting antisemitism in that province. Montreal cardiologist Dr. Lior Bibas, who also teaches at Université de Montréal, co-founded the group in the weeks following the October 7 terrorist attack. They feel young doctors have been bearing the brunt of anti-Israel sentiment since then. “We heard that trainees were having a hard time,” he told Joel Ceausu of the Canadian Jewish News Feb. 3. “We saw a worsening of the situation and were hearing stories of trainees removed from study groups, others put on the defensive about what’s happening,” and some saw relationships with residents deteriorating very quickly. 

Dr. Bibas thinks there are similarities with Ontario counterparts. “Trainees are getting the brunt of all this. Their entire training ecosystem — relationships with peers and physicians — has changed.” Whether anti-Zionist remarks, blaming Jews for Israel’s actions, or other behaviour, it can be debilitating in a grueling academic and career setting. The fear of retaliation is so strong, that some students were unwilling to report incidents, even anonymously.

Jewish physicians have now founded a national umbrella group, the Canadian Federation of Jewish Medical Associations (CFJMA), linking the provinces, and representing over 2,000 Jewish physicians and medical learners, advocating for their interests and promoting culturally safe care for Jewish patients. And “it’s really been nonstop, given that we have a lot of issues,” Dr. Bibas told me in a conversation June 17. “People have been feeling that there’s been a weaponization of health care against Israel.”

He stressed that health care should remain politically neutral – meetings are an inappropriate venue in which to talk about the war in Gaza, he stated, and “this will just lead to arguments.” Nor should doctors, nurses and hospital staff wear pins with Palestinian maps or flags. And no Jewish patient being wheeled into an operating room should see this “symbol of hate.” 

On Jan. 6, a group of Montreal-area medical professionals walked off the job to protest outside Radio-Canada offices, calling for an arms embargo, ceasefire and medical boycotts of Israel. Those who could not attend were encouraged to wear pins and keffiyehs to work. When asked if such a walkout should be sanctioned, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé’s office had no comment. Neither did the Collège des médecins (CDM) that governs professional responsibilities. The leadership of many institutions have remained passive.

B’nai Brith Canada recently exposed a group channel, hosted on the social media platform Discord, in which Quebec students engaged in antisemitic, racist, misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric. More than 1,400 applicants to Quebec medical schools, as well as currently enrolled medical school students, were in the group, which was ostensibly set up to support students preparing for admission to Quebec’s four medical programs. “I saw it, and it’s vile,” remarked Dr. Bibas, noting how brazenly some of the commentators expressed themselves, using Islamist rhetoric and Nazi-era imagery, such as referring to Anne Frank as “the rat in the attic.”

Doctors Against Racism and Antisemitism (DARA) said in a statement, “These messages are the direct result of the inaction and prolonged silence of medical school and university leaders across Canada since October 7, 2023, in the face of the meteoric rise of antisemitism in their institutions. Silence is no longer an option. Quebec’s medical schools and universities must act immediately. These candidates must not be admitted to medical school.” DARA member Dr. Philip Berger stated that “there’s been a free flow, really, an avalanche of anti-Israel propaganda, relentlessly sliding into Canadian medical faculties and on university campuses.”

In Winnipeg, a valedictory speech delivered to the 2024 class of medical school students graduating from the Max Rady College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba on May 16, 2024 set off a storm of controversy, as reported by Bernie Bellan in this newspaper. It involved a strongly worded criticism of Israel by Dr. Gem Newman. “I call on my fellow graduates to oppose injustice -and violence — individual and systemic” in Palestine, “where Israel’s deliberate targeting of hospitals and other civilian infrastructure has led to more than 35,000 deaths and widespread famine and disease.” The newspaper noted that “loud cheers erupted at that point from among the students.”

 The next day, the dean of the college, Dr. Peter Nickerson, issued a strongly worded criticism of Dr. Newman’s remarks. On Monday, May 20, Ernest Rady, who made a donation of $30 million to the University of Manitoba in 2016, and whose father, Max Rady, now has his name on the school, sent an email in response to Dr. Newman’s remarks.

“I write to you today because I was both hurt and appalled by the remarks the valedictorian, Gem Newman, gave at last week’s Max Rady College of Medicine convocation, and I was extremely disappointed in the University’s inadequate response. Newman’s speech not only dishonored the memory of my father, but also disrespected and disparaged Jewish people as a whole, including the Jewish students who were in attendance at that convocation.”

In subsequent weeks Jewish physicians in Manitoba organized themselves into a new group, “The Jewish Physicians of Manitoba.” As Dr. Michael Boroditsky, who was then President of Doctors Manitoba, noted, “Jewish physicians in cities across Canada and the U.S. have been forming formal associations in response to heightened antisemitism following the Hamas massacre of October 7.”

After October 7, Jewish students at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine reported exposure to repeated antisemitic posts by peers on social media, being subject to antisemitic presentations endorsed by faculty during mandatory classes, social exclusion and hateful targeting by university-funded student groups, and removal from learning environments or opportunities subsequent to antisemitic tirades made by faculty in public spaces. 

In addition to online vitriol, medical students have been subject to antisemitic actions coordinated by university-funded student groups with physician-faculty support under the guise of advocating against the actions of the Israeli government. All instances of discrimination, they stated in a brief, have been witnessed by and/or reported to senior leadership of the medical school without incurring condemnation of the discrimination.

In Vancouver, social media posts vilifying Israel and espousing Jew hatred were circulated by physicians at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of British Columbia, noted an article in the National Post of May 25, 2025. Allegations included Christ-killing, organ trafficking, and other nefarious conspiracies supposedly hatched by Jewish doctors. Some asserted that Jewish faculty should not be allowed to adjudicate resident matching because the examining doctors were Jewish and might be racist. 

In November of 2023, one-third of all UBC medical students signed a petition endorsing this call. Jewish learners who refused to sign were harassed by staff and students on social media. When challenged, the Dean of the medical faculty refused to recognize antisemitism as a problem at UBC or to meet with the representatives of almost 300 Jewish physicians who had signed a letter expressing concern about the tolerance of Jew hatred, and the danger of a toxic hyper-politicized academic environment. This led to the public resignation of Dr. Ted Rosenberg, a senior Jewish faculty member.

Here in the Maritimes, things seem less dire. I spoke to Dr. Ian Epstein, a faculty member in the Division of Digestive Care & Endoscopy at the Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine. He helps coordinate a group supporting Jewish and Israeli faculty, residents and medical students. 

“Our group is certainly aware of growing antisemitism. Many are hiding their Jewish identities. There have been instances resulting in Jewish and Israeli students being excluded and becoming isolated. It has been hard to have non-Jewish colleagues understand. That said our group has come together when needed, and we have not faced some of the same challenges as larger centres,” Dr. Epstein told me. Dalhousie has also taken a stand against academic boycotts of Israel, which some view as a form of antisemitism.  The University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown has just opened a new medical school. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen here.

Lior Bibas in Montreal indicated that his group is worried “not only as Jewish doctors and professionals, but for Jewish patients who are more than ever concerned with who they’re meeting.” Can we really conceive of a future where you’re not sure if “the doctor will hate you now?”