Is Canada Really a Paragon of Democracy?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

One of the courses I've been teaching this term deals with the politics of post-Communist central and eastern Europe.

These countries emerged from 40 years of totalitarian rule after 1989 and had to craft new democratic constitutions from scratch.

They examined various models, including the American separation-of-powers presidential system; the British "Westminster" parliamentary variant; and the semi-presidential hybrid of Fifth Republic France, among others.

In the end, most adopted variations of either the parliamentary or semi-presidential version of government.

As for their electoral systems, most put into place either some type of proportional representation system, where the number of votes won by a party more or less equals the number of members they elect to an assembly; or a mixed-member-proportional system, one where some candidates are elected from geographic constituencies but where parties are also allocated seats based on their percentage of the overall total vote cast in the country.

Canadians often consider our country a paragon of democracy, a template that others might be wise to follow. But needless to say, none of these new democracies showed any interest in the following aspects of our system:

- A hereditary monarch who resides in a distant country (where she is a genuine head of state) and who only periodically visits one of her other realms, Canada.

- A 'stand-in' representative of this head of state, called a governor general, who is selected by the head of government of the day in a partisan manner, with little transparency or input by either the citizenry, the elected parliament, or even other members of the prime minister's ruling party.

- An upper house which, though technically mandated to represent the constituent parts of the federation, does no such thing, since its members are appointed by the central government along partisan lines, with little regard for the wishes of the citizenry or the elected assemblies of the provinces where vacancies occur.

As well, the numerical composition of this Senate makes no sense; some smaller entities (say, New Brunswick or Nova Scotia) have more members than far larger ones (like Alberta and British Columbia), based simply on their time of entry into Confederation.

- A lower house, though popularly elected, whose members need gain only a plurality of votes in their individual ridings, so that many who become members of this House of Commons, in our first-past-the-post system, win with as little as 30-35 per cent of the total vote.

Thus a party gaining about 40 per cent of the national vote may, in this winner-take-all system, capture a comfortable majority of the seats.

(The Liberals did so three times, in 1993, 1997, and 2000.)

By the same token, parties that may have polled as much as 10 per cent of the national vote may fail to gain even a single seat, leaving all of their supporters without any representation.

And given our strict party discipline and the adversarial style of politics which pits government against opposition, the party that wins a majority of seats then rules as though it has won a mandate from the entire country.

Of course all constitutions, no matter how perfectly written at the time they are promulgated, eventually need to reflect changes in the political culture of a country as the years go by.

So, as Nobel laureate Douglass North has observed, it is essential to have a way to modify political structures. The society that is willing to revise its rules through trial and error, he writes, "will be most likely to solve problems through time."

The new European democracies have taken this advice to heart; in the past two decades they have 'fine-tuned' their charters and constitutions. As political scientist Ray Taras has observed, none of them "is guilty of institutional ossification."

Yet Canada since 1982 has been saddled with a constitution that, in order to be amended, requires, when it involves the most fundamental issues of governance, unanimity on the part of Parliament and all of the provinces. (And, to make things even more complicated, a major jurisdiction, Quebec, has never even accepted the document.)

The two attempts made to amend the Constitution, the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, both ended in disaster. So since 1992, no one has dared to "open up the Constitution," lest the country head into a downward spiral of no return.

But can such a state of affairs last forever? Can a country adhere to a foundational document that is completely 'frozen'?

After all, as the eminent historian Michael Bliss remarked recently, Canada's political evolution "probably cannot be contained or controlled by old constitutional forms. The difficulties now swirling around the role of Canadian head of state are almost certain to increase until we summon the resolve to give the office the legitimacy that only comes with election."

Due to the H1N1 'swine flu' pandemic, we have all become familiar with the term 'underlying health condition'. People already weakened by other ailments may fall prey to a disease more readily than those in good health.

The same holds true for countries: those with 'underlying political conditions' may find it harder to surmount future crises than those whose institutions more adequately reflect the democratic will of the citizenry.

Wisely, none of the new democracies in Europe showed the slightest interest in following in our footsteps.

The Fall of East Germany: A Retrospective

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

For those of us of a certain age, the events of Nov. 9-10, 1989, in Germany had an air of unreality about them. People on the eastern side of the infamous Berlin Wall, dividing Communist East Berlin from the political ‘island’ of West Berlin, were simply walking through now open gates to freedom, 160 kilometres inside Communist territory.

The 45-kilometre wall, built in August 1961 and probably the most iconic symbol of the Cold War, included guard towers lining large concrete walls containing anti-vehicle trenches and other defences. Many East Germans who tried to escape were shot to death during those 28 years.

But on this day, no border guards prevented people from leaving East Berlin. What was going on?

Knowing their days in power were numbered, because Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had indicated he would not support repression in the Soviet bloc countries, East Germany’s Communist rulers had given permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points.

They were met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side. Soon enough the wall would itself be torn down.

These events were part of a larger crisis that overwhelmed the Soviet bloc that year. Throughout Communist eastern Europe, regimes began to disintegrate, one after another, falling like dominoes.

A year later, East Germany — officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR) — would disappear. Germany, the country that began the Second World War and then reaped the consequences of its crimes by being split between the Communist East and the democratic West, would again be united.

Following free elections in East Germany in March 1990, a unification treaty between the larger Federal Republic of Germany in the west and the GDR was negotiated and approved by large majorities in the legislative chambers of both countries.

On Oct. 3, 1990, East Germany joined the existing 11 federal states that comprised West Germany as five more states. Berlin was reunited as a city.

Today, the old Soviet experiment in the east is little more than a memory, recalled mainly outside Germany when films such as the 2003 comedy Good Bye, Lenin, or the more serious 2006 movie The Lives of Others, appear on our cinema screens.

When U.S. President Ronald Reagan, on a visit to West Berlin in June 1987, had called on the Communists to “tear down this wall,” few realized it would happen that quickly. But perhaps people should have been less surprised.

Let’s face it: the GDR was really a non-starter. The Soviets had imposed their brand of Communism on many nations in eastern Europe after 1945, but none of them were merely artificial entities, fragments of a larger country.

East Germany, though, was simply the part of Germany that had been allocated to the Russians as a Soviet Zone in 1945 by the Allied powers that defeated Hitler.

Speaking the same language as their fellow Germans and, in many cases, watching television from across the border, East Germans were aware of how hollow Communist propaganda was. And, as time went on, they became increasingly less prosperous than their fellow Germans on the other side.

This was a country whose population of 16 million was only kept in line through force. The dreaded secret police, known as the Stasi, kept such close watch on the citizenry that even husbands and wives spied on each other, and children informed on their parents.

Between 1950 and 1989, the Stasi employed a total of 274,000 persons. It was an Orwellian nightmare. Today, the former Stasi offices house the Stasi Museum.

But too much information about the world beyond its borders kept leaking in: the Iron Curtain had no roof and, as far as East Germany was concerned, the writing was indeed on the wall.

Its demise was indeed, to use a phrase coined by French philosopher Louis Althusser, “over-determined.”

The End of Communist Rule in Eastern Europe

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

It has now been two decades since the end of Communist rule in the Soviet bloc states of eastern Europe.

Soviet tanks had installed these regimes after the Second World War, had kept them in power, and in a number of cases - in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland in 1981- had actively intervened to save them from collapse.

Only when the Kremlin decided no longer to prop them up did they get swept away - and then quite rapidly.

Except for Romania, these countries did not move immediately from hardline Communist regimes to non-Communist ones: there was a "liberal Communist" interlude of reform which played an important role in bringing communism to an end.

By the mid-1980s it was clear that eastern European states were in deep trouble: stagnant growth, declining living standards, food shortages, growing discontent, foreign indebtedness, and a degraded and poisoned environment were the fruits of four decades of mismanagement.

But only when a new leader emerged in the Soviet Union could reformers make their move.

Committed to an end to the Soviet dominance of eastern Europe, Mikhail Gorbachev foreswore any interference in the internal affairs of other states. He met with nearly every Communist leader in eastern Europe before and during 1989 and indicated his support for change.

Aware of all the defects of Soviet-style socialism, the more liberal Communists now saw their chance. They thought the system could yet be reformed from within. Younger than the entrenched apparatchiks in power, they were willing to grant autonomy to non-Communist political movements and open a dialogue with them.

But this was not to be. Trying to liberalize communism proved to be an oxymoronic task: it was, as the dissident Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski concluded, like trying to "fry snowballs."

The pattern in eastern Europe in 1989-1990 more or less followed the same sequence, though details differed:

A group of liberal Communists, usually younger and farther down the party hierarchy, met to discuss ways to get rid of the conservative leadership still in command.

Anti-Communist dissidents then stepped forward, leading strikes and protests, which resulted in crackdowns and unrest. This was the signal for the liberal Communists to call for major reforms. Gorbachev sided with them.

The old conservative and Stalinist leaders were then pressured to resign or retire, sometimes even losing their party ranks.

"Round table" negotiations, designed to open the political process and bring into the political system opposition groups, were begun. Liberal Communists envisaged a mixed system with the Communist party continuing its "leading role" while sharing some power.

The liberal Communists, now in control, then held free elections. But newly formed non-Communist parties won these and the Communists lost power.

Non-Communist governments then emerged which dismantled, relatively peacefully, the whole apparatus of Communist rule. Only in Romania was there considerable bloodshed during this period. (Yugoslavia, which dissolved into civil war, was not a Soviet satellite.)

In trying to liberalize communism, the reformers had simply hastened its demise. As the French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville had observed long ago, "The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways."

Name Changes in Montreal Should Work Both Ways

Henry Srebrnik , [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

Québécois nationalists in Montreal have been into “name cleansing” for decades, trying to erase street and place names that are English, in particular those associated with the British conquest of New France.

Thus, Dorchester Boulevard, a main downtown artery, was renamed Boulevard René-Lévesque following the death of Quebec’s first Parti Québécois premier. Guy Carleton, First Baron Dorchester, had served as Governor of the Province of Quebec from 1768 to 1778.

More recently, one city councillor has been lobbying to get rid of Amherst Street because it was named after an English officer, Jeffery Amherst, who was commander-in-chief of the British army in North America at the time Quebec fell to the British. Amherst also held the position of military governor of Canada from 1760 to 1763.

Many years ago, Western Avenue became Boulevard de Maisonneuve, named after the founder of Montreal, Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve.

There was a failed attempt to change the name of another major street, Park Avenue (already called Avenue du Parc) to honour former Quebec premier Robert Bourassa.

Even innocuous names such as Maplewood Avenue have been erased – it is now Boulevard Édouard-Montpetit, named for an influential Quebec nationalist scholar.

But obviously these same “cleansers” have no problem with names that remind us of the legacy of antisemitism, in Quebec and elsewhere.

Montreal’s Snowdon district, for example, has an important thoroughfare named Isabella Avenue, named for Queen Isabella of Spain. Indeed, there is a monument dedicated to her in MacDonald Park, which fronts Isabella Avenue between Clanranald and Earnscliffe Avenues. Isabella’s memorial, placed there in 1958, can be found at the southeast corner of the park.

I lived on Coolbrook Avenue, which is nearby, until 1982, but for some reason never looked closely at the memorial. When I was in Montreal earlier this summer, however, I took note of it.

This is a completely inappropriate monument, particularly in a neighbourhood with many Jewish residents, as Isabella and her husband, King Ferdinand, in 1492 ordered the expulsion of all Jews in the country who refused to convert to Catholicism. Approximately 200,000 Jews left Spain.

Others converted, but often came under scrutiny by the Inquisition investigating relapsed conversos (the so-called Marranos). Many of these people were then burnt at the stake. As a result, no Jews lived in Spain until the 20th century.

Should Montreal really pay tribute to a monarch responsible for ethnic cleansing, torture, and murder? It’s long past time to remove this memorial stone and replace it with something more appropriate – perhaps in recognition of a Montreal Jewish figure from the past such as Reuben Brainin, H. M. Caiserman, Yehuda Kaufman, A.M. Klein, Ida Maze, or Yaacov Zipper?

And by the way, while we’re looking at some “name cleansing,” shouldn’t Montreal also rename the Metro station honoring the notorious antisemite Lionel Groulx? Thousands of people use this Metro transfer stop daily and probably assume this was a great man. They should be disabused of this idea.

In the 1930s, Abbé Groulx was an avowed admirer of fascist dictators António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal and Benito Mussolini of Italy. He asserted that Jews were a negative influence on French Canadian society. His impact on Quebec’s intellectual elite was immense and Quebec’s politicians in turn pressured Ottawa to deny Jews entry into Canada in the decade before the Holocaust.

It was because of people like Groulx, who created the cultural climate that kept Jewish refugees out of this country, that millions of Jews perished in Hitler’s death camps.

If Quebec is really trying to break with its “tarnished” past, then Groulx should go down the same memory hole as Amherst and Dorchester.

A Troubled America

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Earlier this summer, I travelled through eight American states, entering the United States at Detroit in Michigan and leaving at Calais, Maine.

The trip included longer stops in Columbus and Boston.

From what I observed, Americans seemed more politically polarized than ever. Many on the right of the political spectrum condemned everything President Barack Obama stood for, and indeed some questioned his very legitimacy as America’s chief executive.

The radio and television programs, and the newspaper columns, were full of anti-Obama tirades, attacking his efforts to bring some measure of sanity to the country’s private, expensive, and inadequate health-care system, one where insurance premiums have risen three times faster than wages in recent years.

Overhauling the $2.5 trillion U.S. health care system, by cutting costs and expanding coverage to the estimated 46 million Americans without health insurance, has been Obama’s top domestic initiative.

Yet the way some Republicans attacked the “socialist” attempts by “big government in Washington” to introduce a medical system that would serve the many millions of uninsured Americans, including not just the poor but those in the middle class who have recently lost their jobs, someone arriving from another planet would assume that the current federal government was a regime imposed by a foreign power, not one Americans had voted for just last November.

Backed by the private insurance companies, a massive propaganda campaign has been unleashed against Obama’s reform proposals. Boisterous “town hall” meetings held across the country over the summer turned into shouting matches. The onslaught of attacks have taken their toll on his popularity.

Opponents claimed that, with cost-conscious bureaucrats in control, medical treatments for the elderly would be curtailed by “death squads,” which would result in doctors “pulling the plug on grannny!” Some pro-life groups also objected to abortion becoming a publically-funded program. (Actually, under Obama’s plan, no federal dollars would be used to fund abortions.)

Clearly, this propaganda has been effective. Though the Democrats control both the presidency and both houses of Congress, they have been backpedaling in recent weeks.

Senate Democrats support some insurance reforms, such as protecting those with pre-existing medical conditions and preventing insurance companies from capping coverage. But many of their plans do not include the so-called “public option” – a government-run health insurance option to compete with private companies – that health care advocates insist is critical for reform to be effective.

In an address to Congress on Sept. 8, Obama tried to regain the initiative.“Our collective failure to meet this challenge – year after year, decade after decade – has led us to a breaking point,” he stated.

I have in the past criticized Canada’s own medical system, but compared to the situation in the U.S., it is something in which we can take pride.

Finally, there are extremists who deny Obama’s very right to sit in the White House. These “birthers,” as they call themselves, insist that Obama was born in Kenya, rather than in Hawaii, and is thus not even eligible to be president, since the U.S. Constitution requires that the occupant of the office be “a natural born citizen” of the United States.

Others conspiracy theorists assert that he is secretly a Muslim who has set out to ruin the country. (I heard this opinion expressed in a small town in Ohio.)

Much of this relates, of course, to the fact that Obama is an African American and hence, to such people, simply unacceptable as president.

The vicious tone of the backlash against the administration is troubling. It implies an ideological rejection of the democratic process through which Obama received a mandate to govern the country. These are clearly not easy times for Americans.

Are the Russians Still Defending the Pact that Led to the Second World War?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

We are now nearing the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War, which began when Germany attacked Poland on Sept. 1, 1939.

The invasion was preceded by the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, better known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed a week earlier, on Aug. 23.

The Russians are uncomfortable with this upcoming anniversary. President Dmitry Medvedev recently announced the setting up of a Historical Truth Commission to counter “the falsification of history.”

Natalia Narochnitskaya, a member of the new body, is angry that western media portray the pact as “the step that led to the Second World War, and that Germany and the Soviet Union were two equal, disgusting, totalitarian monsters.”

Earlier in the year, the Russians set off a firestorm, especially in Poland, by claiming that the war began because of Poland’s refusal to satisfy Germany’s “very modest” demands, which included building transport links across the Polish Corridor separating East Prussia from the rest of Germany, and assuming control of the self-governing port city of Danzig (now Gdansk), which had a German majority.

The statement came from Colonel Sergei Kovalev, a senior researcher at the defence ministry. He also called the pact “merely a time-buying mechanism.”

Having lost its empire – the non-Russian republics of the old Soviet Union plus the east European Communist states – Russia today is a touchy country. It worries about its status in the world.

After all, most of the old Soviet bloc countries, as well as the formerly Soviet Baltic republics, are today members of the European Union and NATO.

Even states such as Georgia, which fought a war with Russia last summer, and Ukraine, once part of the Soviet heartland, are now America’s friends.

Hence Russia’s desire to defend past decisions. But such rewriting of history will go nowhere, because the pact did in fact create the conditions for the “perfect storm” that precipitated the world’s largest conflict.

The pact contained a secret protocol dividing eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, including an agreement to partition Poland. So Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler invaded Poland a week later, triggering a British and French declaration of war against Germany on Sept. 3.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin then joined in the dismemberment of Poland, with Soviet troops occupying their portion of the country beginning on Sept. 17. On Sept. 21, the Soviets and Germans signed a formal agreement coordinating military movements in Poland, and Polish resistance ended soon afterwards.

Germany and the Soviet Union continued their acts of aggression in 1940-1941. During the period that the Nazis could count on Stalin as a de facto ally, Hitler conquered most of Europe, including Denmark, France, Norway, the Benelux countries, Greece and Yugoslavia; he also solidified his alliances with Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

Stalin, meanwhile, annexed the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in Romania; and fought a war with Finland, gaining Finnish Karelia.

So friendly had the Soviets become with Hitler that it carried into the realm of anti-Semitism. During this period, the Soviet League of the Militant Godless, a propaganda agency combating religion, paid especial attention to Judaism, almost in coordination with Nazi attacks on the “evils” of the Jewish faith.

Maybe it was more than just happenstance that it was on Aug. 21, 1940, almost on the first anniversary of the signing of the pact, that Stalin’s main rival, Leon Trotsky, who was Jewish, and had already been the object of anti-Semitic attacks, was murdered in Mexico by an agent of Moscow.

But all this currying favour with Hitler was for naught. On June 22, 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, conquered huge areas of the country, and took millions of Soviet soldiers prisoner. Much of the country was laid waste.

It would take four years until the Russians defeated the invaders. Such were the fruits of political Machiavellianism.

Less Bread, More Circuses for America

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

As Americans observed the 233rd birthday of the United States, the country seems to have become a three-ring circus. And I’m not even referring to the grotesqueries surrounding Michael Jackson’s death.

Since January, three state governors have provided grist for the mill of the tabloids and gossip-mongers.

Elvis look-alike Rod Blagojevich was impeached and removed as governor of Illinois last January after being charged with corruption. In Illinois, as in most other states, the governor appoints a replacement to serve out the term when a United States Senate seat becomes vacant, and Blagojevich was accused of trying to “sell” the one formerly occupied by newly-elected president Barack Obama.

This practice – seeking money in return for political favours -- is known in Illinois as “pay to play.” Blagojevich allegedly wanted promises of campaign funds in cash; a Cabinet post or ambassadorship for himself; and to have his wife placed on paid corporate boards where she might garner as much as $150,000 a year.

A federal grand jury in Illinois returned an indictment against Blagojevich on April 2. He still awaits trial.

In June, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford mysteriously disappeared for almost a week, leaving no way for anyone – including his wife and four sons -- to reach him.

At first, his staff maintained that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. However, a determined reporter from a South Carolina newspaper finally tracked him down – at the Atlanta airport, where he had landed on his way back from Argentina.

It turns out that he had been visiting a lover in Buenos Aires during the Father’s Day weekend. Caught in his lie, Sanford revealed that he had been having an extramarital affair with an Argentinian woman, María Belén Chapur.

The rambling news conference in which Sanford admitted to the long-distance involvement with the woman he described as his “soul mate” was nothing if not bizarre. In response to calls for his resignation, Sanford compared himself to the biblical King David, who also committed adultery. He has refused to leave office.

Now comes the even stranger saga of Sarah Palin, who just last year ran as the Republican vice-presidential candidate. On the eve of the Independence Day holiday weekend, she announced, to the surprise of nearly everyone in the state, that she will be resigning as governor of Alaska, just two years into her first term.

Speaking from the backyard of her Wasilla home, Palin asserted that she was acting in the best interests of her family, of Alaska, and of the entire United States.

This, from a politician whose overweening ambition knows no bounds: Sarah Palin probably couldn’t pass a high school history, geography, political science, or economics test, yet assumed she could become president of the United States.

Some analysts speculate that she -- or more likely, her husband Todd, who has been her adviser and éminence grise -- has been caught doing something illicit.

There are allegations of an embezzlement scandal related to the building of the Wasilla Sports Complex constructed during her tenure as mayor of the town. Was the cost of the sports complex inflated to provide free building materials and labor for the Palin home being built nearby?

Her lawyer has denied what he called “false and defamatory allegations” that her resignation stemmed from a criminal investigation.

Both Palin and Sanford are prominent in the evangelical “family values” wing of the Republican Party. Both were touted as potential Republican candidates for president in 2012. They can forget about that now.

Given the current economic recession, there’s less bread for Americans, but at least they do have circuses.

Ignatieff the Expatriate – or Aristocrat?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

A few weeks ago, the Conservatives launched television attack ads on Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, emphasizing that he worked outside of Canada as an academic and journalist for 34 years and only returned home because he wants to be prime minister.

Ignatieff responded with his own videotape, accusing Prime Minister Stephen Harper of smearing all “new Canadians born outside this country” and “Canadians who live and work overseas.”

About two million Canadians live and work outside the country at any given time. Millions more are recent immigrants and new citizens. Are they, he asks, less Canadian because of it? “I don’t think so but the Conservatives do.”

The Conservatives were quite successful in their personal attacks on Ignatieff’s predecessor, Stéphane Dion. But the current ads won’t work. Indeed, they may even help the Liberals.

A Harris/Decima poll released at the end of May found that 30 per cent of respondents reported a negative effect on their attitude toward Ignatieff as a result of the Conservative ads. But over half of the respondents said the ads had a negative effect on their feelings about Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Tories.

According to Harris/Decima Senior Vice-President Jeff Walker; “there is evidence that these ads are having a negative affect on Mr. Ignatieff, but an even greater negative affect on Prime Minister Harper.”

Here’s why Ignatieff is winning this battle. Canada’s sense of nationhood is more cosmopolitan than that of countries like the United States. There is little of the xenophobic nationalism one sometimes finds in older, more ethnically homogenous nation-states.

Immigrants by definition won’t be upset that Ignatieff worked abroad; many Québécois don’t care about Canada as such at all, and so won’t be outraged; and as for our intelligentsia, a considerable number would drool at the prospect of being in the “big time” in America or Britain.

If the Tories really want to go “populist,” they should probably more strongly emphasize Ignatieff’s aristocratic lineage: his paternal grandfather was Count Pavel Ignatiev, Minister of Education to Russian Tsar Nicholas II; his maternal great-grandfather, George Monro Grant, was the 19th century principal of Queen’s University. He is, at least by Canadian standards, a “blueblood.”

Also, more important than the issue of his having lived outside Canada is the fact that he was associated with “elite” institutions such as Harvard University and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

What if, for instance, during those 34 years he had merely taught at a state school in Little Rock, Ark., or was a broadcaster on some television station in the English midlands city of Leeds? That probably wouldn’t “offend” the people Stephen Harper is trying to reach.

So if the Conservatives want to play this game, they should drop the expatriate line of attack and paint Ignatieff as some kind of patrician. It’s a slim reed, but it’s all they’ve got right now.

A One-State Palestine or Two Nation-States?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Why is Israel the only country in the world which some people wish to dismantle?

They use the euphemism of a so-called “one-state” solution, by which they mean recreating a supposedly intact pre-1948 Palestine.

They consider the 1947 partition plan endorsed by the United Nations, which was meant to create Arab and Jewish states in the country, to have been an error.

But why does Palestine have to become a single jurisdiction again? Why would anyone prefer a state of two nations to two nation-states?

Palestine has never been a sovereign country. In fact, as part of the Ottoman Empire, it was little more than a geographical expression, hardly distinct from adjacent areas such as Syria and Lebanon. It became a British Mandate after the First World War.

There was nothing sacrosanct about Palestine’s old boundaries, which were only fixed by the League of Nations – and which initially included all of Jordan.

I can think of any number of borders between states that might be erased more easily than the one between Israel and the present Palestinian territories in Gaza and the West Bank.

In the Balkans, Albania and Kosovo are both ethnically Albanian and territorially contiguous. Moldova and Romania, both Romanian, are another example. These states exist as distinct entities due to the vagaries of history and imperial conquests.

Elsewhere in Europe, Belgium and Holland were once a single unit, as were Scandinavian cousins Norway and Sweden and Iberian neighbours Portugal and Spain. Why not undo their separations? And why, for that matter, might Austria not be reunited with Germany into “one state?”

In fact, with the exception of Quebec, Canada and the United States, now divided mainly by an artificial boundary at the 49th parallel, have much in common with each other as well, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously. The division is the result of the American Revolution. Why not reunify the old British North America?

All these countries and peoples get along with each other much better than do Israelis and Palestinians. They certainly haven’t fought wars against each other recently. They should be candidates for single statehood ahead of Arabs and Jews.

The 1947 United Nations partition resolution divided the Palestine Mandate into Arab and Jewish states, precisely because no other solution was practical. Unfortunately, no Palestinian Arab state emerged because those territories were annexed by Egypt and Jordan.

Like Palestine, colonial India was also partitioned in 1947, for the same reason (in this case, into Muslim and Hindu-majority areas) and now comprises three states: Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. Why do we not hear calls to reunite them as well?

The proponents of a bi-national Palestinian state want to pressure two peoples who don’t get along to inhabit one country — like forcing a bitterly divorced couple to once again live under one roof. Maybe we should call this the “Kafka solution.”

Will the Problem of Piracy Only Get Worse?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Pirate activity has escalated sharply in recent months off of the Horn of Africa, drawing increasingly assertive military operations by the American, Canadian, Dutch and French navies. It took an American naval vessel to rescue one American ship from Somali buccaneers in mid-April.

For some Americans, this brings back historical memories of the first wars ever fought by their navy, against the so-called Barbary pirates, in the early 19th century.

These pirates were based on the Barbary Coast of the Mediterranean, in north African ports such as Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis. The Barbary states were at the time governed by local Muslim rulers.

The pirates mostly commandeered European ships for ransom. Soon, ships belonging to the fledgling United States were also being captured.

The European states almost always agreed to pay money to secure peace and so, at first, did the U.S. But on Thomas Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, the new American navy decided to put a stop to these activities and by 1805 had defeated the pirates, ending the First Barbary War.

However, the U.S. navy was preoccupied with fighting Britain during the War of 1812, and the Barbary pirate states returned to their practice of attacking American merchant vessels.

At the conclusion of the war, America could once again deal with the problem. In 1815, a force of 10 ships was dispatched under the command of Commodores Stephen Decatur, Jr. and William Bainbridge, defeating the pirates once again in the Second Barbary War. This ended, once and for all, pirate attacks on American shipping in the Mediterranean.

Is history repeating itself, this time in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean?

The recent rescues by the western navies off Somalia are unlikely to end the problem of piracy. The pirates, some analysts predict, are likely to increase their use of violence, and that could push them into the arms of Somalia’s Islamist militias for support.

Hardline Islamists in the al-Shabaab insurgent group have been gaining power in Somalia, which has been without a functioning government for 18 years. By late 2008, it was estimated that the group controlled much of southern Somalia.

In February, al-Shabaab carried out a suicide car bomb attack against an African Union military base in Mogadishu, Somalia’s nominal capital.

They also claimed responsibility for an attack targeting U.S. Congressman Donald Payne of New Jersey, who was in the country for talks with Somalis regarding the problem of piracy. His plane was departing from Mogadishu when Somali fighters fired mortars at the airport.

It came one day after Captain Richard Phillips was rescued from Somali pirates by the USS Bainbridge – named for the very William Bainbridge who fought in the Barbary wars -- after their failed hijacking of the Maersk Alabama.

Fortunately, the self-proclaimed independent Republic of Somaliland, which broke away from Somalia when the country fell apart, is off limits to both pirates and terrorists. Its security forces have arrested pirates off its coast on the Gulf of Aden.

It’s a shame that the Hargeisa government has not been officially recognized by the international community.

Meanwhile, pirates have attacked more than 80 boats so far this year. In 2008, the ransoms paid to them to release captured ships totaled about $US50 million.

Unless more is done to pacify these waters, it is probably only a matter of time before there is a major disaster and loss of life.

Will Somali Piracy Spark Further Mideast Conflict?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

The Somali pirates are becoming increasingly bold. But some ships are beginning to return fire.

An Italian cruise liner with 1,500 on board fended off a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia at the end of April, when its Israeli private security forces exchanged fire with the bandits and drove them off.

Israelis possess advanced military and security skills. And they are right to be worried about what is going on in the Indian Ocean south of their country.

All Israeli shipping that leaves the port of Eilat, or that travels through the Suez Canal, must exit the Red Sea through the Bab al-Mandab, a strait located between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, and Djibouti and Eritrea, north of Somalia, on the Horn of Africa.

This narrow passageway connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. It lies just north of where the pirates operate.

Somalia, a country of about eight million people, has not had a functioning national government since warlords overthrew President Siad Barre in 1991. Much of the country is now run by an Islamist movement known as al-Shabaab.

Might the pirates become allied to the Islamists on the Somali mainland, who have also allowed Somalia to become a base for al-Qaeda? Washington thinks al-Qaeda recruits are training there for terror attacks. The country has become an African Afghanistan.

In the spring of 2007, fishing boats containing armed Al-Qaeda affiliates landed at the northern Somali port of Bargal and fought a battle with local police. A U.S. navy destroyer in the Red Sea fired several cruise missiles against them but their leaders escaped.

In the southern town of Baidoa, the Islamists have ordered women to wear full body veils and businesses to close for prayers. They have also attacked westerners trying to curb the problem of piracy.

Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for a mortar attack on an American Congressman in mid-April.

"We carried out mortar attacks against the enemy of Allah who arrived to spread democracy in Somalia," Sheikh Husein Ali Fidow declared in Mogadishu, according to a BBC report.

Just as worrisome, Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki has of late developed closer economic and trade ties with Iran, and military ties followed suit. The Iranians have reportedly established a naval base overlooking the Bab al-Mandab strait.

A link between pirates and Islamists is certainly not good news. The Middle East conflict might, in consequence, spread to the horn of Africa.

Anti-Zionist Israelis would turn Jewish state into another Diaspora

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

Many people today advocate policies that would eliminate the Jewish and Zionist nature of Israel by recreating a one-state Palestine, one in which Arabs would in fact probably constitute a majority. They label Israel an “apartheid” country, since it ostensibly “privileges” Jews.

You might be surprised to learn that there are even some Israeli intellectuals who support this option. They regard the entire 1947-1949 War of Independence as a conspiracy of the Zionist leadership, which intended right from the beginning to expel the Palestinians from the country to turn it into a Jewish state.

According to this view, explained Israeli journalist and former Knesset member Uri Avnery in an article published during Passover, “the soldiers of 1948 were war criminals who implemented a vicious policy, much as the pioneers of the preceding generation were land robbers, knights of ethnic cleansing by expulsion and expropriation.”

Avnery is a longtime political activist and founder of the left-wing Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc), which was a vigorous critic of the recent Gaza operation.

Uri Davis, born in Jerusalem, who describes himself as a “Palestinian Hebrew,” is another such anti-Zionist. He is an honorary research fellow at the University of Durham’s Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies in England.

Davis’s latest book to classify Israel as an apartheid state was published in 2004, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within, which describes what Davis refers to as war criminal policies against the Palestinian Arabs: mass deportation and ethnic cleansing in 1947-1949, followed by military government, prolonged curfews, roadblocks, and economic, social, cultural, civil and political strangulation. For him, Israel is a rogue state.

The book was, not surprisingly, praised by the late Palestinian academic Hisham Sharabi, the co-founder of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in Washington and the longtime editor of the influential Journal of Palestine Studies. Sharabi called it “a devastating critique of Israel’s internal Apartheid system and by extension the entire ideology of political Zionism.”

Another academic who subscribes to this perspective is Haifa-born Ilan Pappe. A professor of history, also at the University of Exeter, he previously taught at Haifa University from 1984 to 2007. In 2006 Pappe published The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which asserted that the Zionist leadership intentionally planned to evict the Arabs in the country during the War of Independence through terrorist attacks executed by the Haganah and the Irgun.

The premeditated expulsion of some 800,000 Palestinians in 1947-1949 was, he wrote, part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state.

Pappe supports academic, economic and political boycotts of Israel, and his work has been praised by anti-Zionists such as Palestinian scholar Walid Khalidi. Khalidi, who has taught at Harvard, Oxford, and Princeton, considered The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine to be “a dazzling feat of scholarly synthesis and Biblical moral clarity and humaneness.”

True, these writers represent only a small minority of Israelis, but their influence should not be discounted. The fact that they are Israeli Jews is, for opponents of Israel, a piece of good fortune. It provides cover for antisemites who can cite their books.

After all, if even Israelis acknowledge that the creation and very existence of the Jewish state is a crime, why can’t others? And do their proposed solutions not make the vision of a state where Arabs and Jews will live in harmony more than just a utopian fantasy?

But even if the destruction of the Jewish state would not lead to the eviction and mass murder of its Jewish population, it would still mean that, for Jews, the land of Israel itself will have become, politically, just another part of the Diaspora.

It would no longer be a Jewish state, but merely a place with a large Jewish population – like the pre-1914 Russian Pale of Settlement, or parts of, say, Los Angeles, New York or Toronto today.

Assuming this “post-Israel” remained a democracy (a dubious proposition), Jews could theoretically aspire to any political office – but only as individuals, even if their base of support happened to be fellow Jews.

After all, a Jew has been chancellor of Austria, premier of France, president of Guyana, and prime minister of New Zealand. Many Jews have been elected to the US Congress, the Canadian House of Commons, and other parliaments.

But no one would mistake those countries for a Jewish homeland or confuse Georgetown, Ottawa, Paris, Vienna, Washington or Wellington with Jerusalem.

Rush Limbaugh and the Party of “No”

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

While U.S. president Barack Obama is doing his best to turn the American economy around, all that his Republican opponents can come up with, in response to his various efforts, is to say “no.”

Most of them don’t like his proposed budget, are against his stimulus packages and financial bailouts, and find his attempts to reform education and health care too “socialistic.” Their mantra for what ails America is simple: just keep lowering taxes.

The Republicans, badly defeated in the presidential and congressional elections last November, seem bereft of leadership. They are such a rudderless ship that their unofficial spokesman has become, not an elected member of Congress, but a right-wing radio talk show host, a man full of sarcasm, bombast and bile.

Rush Limbaugh, a college dropout – he attended Southeast Missouri State University for two terms – in now the fount of wisdom for the Republicans. Even the chair of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, worships at his feet.

Limbaugh has been a nationally syndicated radio personality since 1988, and his millions of listeners, the so-called “dittoheads,” lap up his relentless ridicule of “liberals,” by which he means anyone to his left, including Republicans whom he finds too moderate.

In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this past February, Limbaugh stated that he wants Barack Obama “to fail.”

He had earlier explained on his radio program that he didn't want “absorption of as much of the private sector by the U.S. government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work.”

Though many Republicans find this embarrassing, they fear challenging the vitriolic radio showman. Steele, the nominal leader of the party, was forced to apologize after referring to Limbaugh’s show as “incendiary” and “ugly.”

One Republican state party chairman said of Limbaugh, “he is the leader of a niche of the Republican Party that simply opposes anything a Democrat ever comes up with.”

The Democrats, of course, are enjoying this. A mobile billboard paid for by the Democratic National Committee is traveling around in south Florida, where Limbaugh lives, declaring that “Americans Didn't Vote for a Rush to Failure.”

Observing all this (as I taught two courses in American politics this past academic year), it occurred to me that there is an old song that perfectly sums up Limbaugh’s politics. “Whatever it is, I’m Against It” was performed by Groucho Marx in the movie Horse Feathers, in 1932. This would be Rush Limbaugh’s version:

I don’t care what the Dems say,
It makes no difference anyway --
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I’m against it.

Obama’s proposition may be good
But let’s have one thing understood --
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
And even when he’s changed it or condensed it,
I’m against it.

I’m opposed to it --
On Republican principles I’m opposed to it!

Chorus: He’s opposed to it!
In fact, in word, in deed,
He’s opposed to it!

For months before his star was born,
I used to yell from night till morn,
Whatever he says, I’m against it!
And I’ve kept yelling since I commenced it,
I’m against it!

Maybe someone reading this article should send a copy to Rush. He’d probably love it.

The "New" Age of Piracy

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Much ink has been spilled over the last few weeks over piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, off the coast of Somalia. It took a U.S. naval vessel to rescue one American ship from Somali buccaneers.

That still hasn’t stopped other pirates from capturing ships and holding them for ransom. In a lawless place like Somalia, this is one of the few ways left to make money.

Elsewhere, in place such as Afghanistan, most profitable enterprises too, are based on criminality, especially the growing of poppy seeds for the production of heroin.

We call these places failed states. They have no functioning central governments, as in the case of Somalia, or else regimes that only survive because they are propped up by western troops, as in Afghanistan.

But actually, these are not so much failed states, as fake states. They only exist because imperial powers, back in the 19th and 20th centuries, drew up maps with boundaries, and gave such places names.

By the end of the Second World War, however, imperialism had come to be considered an unmitigated evil, and colonial powers withdrew from their Asian and African colonies and protectorates.

But the states they left behind were artificial and flimsy constructs.

The boundaries and names remained, but these entities have become increasingly meaningless to most of the populations that live in them.

They may have flags and UN seats, but in reality they are fake states.

Pre-imperial political formations, based around clans and tribes, have reasserted themselves in these places. Those are the true locus of identity and loyalty. The people we refer to as “warlords” are in most cases simply the leaders of such tribes or clans.

Western powers conquered some parts of the world for the profits they could bring to the home country – think India or French Indochina – or as areas of settlement – Australia or Canada.

But others, such as Somalia, Sudan or Zanzibar, were occupied to rid the globe of evils such as piracy, the rule of fanatics or tyrants, constant warfare between enemies, and the slave trade.

Much of what we today call “peacekeeping” was part of the task. This is the lesson we are learning all over again.

Who Are the Real Criminals?

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

A number of human rights organizations accused Israel of committing war crimes in its recent war against Hamas in Gaza.

A report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council made the same charge. (The Council includes such stalwarts of democracy as Angola, China, Cuba, Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.)

Similar allegations were made during Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in 2006, when battling the Hezbollah guerrillas. Israel denied this and after conducting its own investigation found the charges to be without merit.

But who has really been engaged in war crimes? We need look no further than Sudan. Its president, Omar al-Bashir, was indicted by the International Criminal Court in early March on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

He is accused by the court of orchestrating attacks that have involved killings, rapes and other atrocities against civilians. Hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered.

But for Israel’s opponents, including Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, crimes against humanity seem to be in the eye of the beholder. While all three have accused Israel of genocide, especially after the recent war in Gaza, they all jumped to Sudan’s defence. Sudan and its allies have called the whole campaign to stop the killings in Darfur a “Zionist plot.”

Of course, as the world discovered recently, Sudan has also been a pipeline for Iranian weapons bound for Hamas in Gaza. In March Iranian Defence Minister Mustafa Muhammad Najar visited Sudan and signed a series of military cooperation agreements. This followed a visit to Iran two months earlier by his Sudanese counterpart, Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein.

Meanwhile, Bashir seems to have taken a “victory lap” around the Arab world to mock the ICC indictment. Qatar’s leader gave him a red-carpet welcome as he arrived to attend an Arab League summit at the end of March, and Bashir took a prominent role at the two-day meeting. The Sudanese leader had earlier visited Eritrea, Egypt and Libya.

Even before the summit began, Amr Moussa, the general-secretary of the Arab League, said the member states would “continue our efforts to halt the implementation of the warrant.” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, opened the conference by asking all Arab leaders to reject the court’s action.

“What is happening now with regards to Sudan is a new chapter in the chapters that consider the Arabs weak and disrespect the sovereignty of their countries,” he declared.

“We must also take a decisive stance of solidarity alongside fraternal Sudan and President Omar al-Bashir,” added Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. And he’s the moderate!

Arab governments also promised to increase diplomatic visits to Sudan.

“What is required from all of us is to stand with our brothers in Sudan and its leadership in order to prevent dangers that affect our collective security,” stated Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem.

Ibrahim al-Faqir, the Sudanese ambassador to Qatar, told Al Jazeera: “We are very pleased at the Arab support.”

Following the summit, Bashir flew to Saudi Arabia for a short Islamic pilgrimage. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said that the ICC arrest warrant was a politicized decision that “will not lead to the stability of Sudan or solve the Darfur issue.”

So much for Arab states’ concerns regarding crimes against humanity. If it can’t be blamed on Israel, forget about it.

The Only Glimmer of Hope for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?sid=237212&sc=104

Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military response against Hamas in Gaza this past winter, has not been without controversy. Even many of Israel's friends have accused it of using excessive force and engaging in wanton killing in that operation.

A March 23 United Nations report said that a working group had verified reports of violations "too numerous to list." It cited "targeted and indiscriminate" attacks on hospitals and clinics, water treatment facilities, government buildings, and utilities.

"There are strong and credible reports of war crimes and other violations of international norms," it declared.

Physicians for Human Rights in a March 24 report also provided allegations that Israeli soldiers had acted in violation of international law and the Israeli army's own code of ethics.

And Human Rights Watch, in its March 25 review of the Gaza fighting, found instances in which white phosphorus rounds were used under circumstances that had no clear military rationale.

Their use has been criticized because the pieces fall randomly and can set fires, especially in urban settings such as Gaza. Human Rights Watch concluded that the Israeli army did not follow proper precautions for the shells' use.

Israelis themselves have questioned what went on. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that some soldiers who fought in Gaza stated that Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property.

An internal Israeli army probe is underway, but critics deem it inadequate. The Association for Rights in Israel, together with 10 other Israeli human rights groups, have called on Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to establish an independent investigative body to examine the military's actions during the Gaza campaign.

Of the people killed in the conflict, 1,440 were Palestinian, including 431 children and 114 women. Anywhere between one- and two-thirds of the casualties were civilians. (Since Hamas is not a regular uniformed army, the distinction between soldiers and non-combatants is a difficult one to make.)

Much of the blame for this should be placed at the feet of Hamas, which itself does not follow ethical standards or any normal military rules of engagement when fighting Israel.

Hamas intentionally utilized facilities such as universities as bases from which to attack Israeli troops, and used innocent Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Even so, I happen to think that those who claim Israel used "disproportionate" force and acted irresponsibly in Gaza are probably correct. But I draw different conclusions from these facts.

The enemies of Israel insist that the Gaza war demonstrated the aggressive nature of the country. But I'm more inclined to see this in the context of bullying or spousal abuse.

We've all read about wives, battered for years, who finally kill their husbands. Who would doubt that this is, to use the language of Israel's critics, "disproportionate?"

But these women finally take such extreme measures not because they are more powerful than their husbands but because they are in fact deathly afraid of them, and so want to put an end to the abuse once and for all.

They have been driven to distraction. The fault often lies with a justice system that does little to protect them from such assaults.

Children bullied in schoolyards, for the same reasons, sometimes end up turning on their tormentors. They finally snap - as did the Israelis when almost nobody in the world seemed to care that rockets from Gaza rained down day after day on border towns like Sderot.

Like the woman who has lost faith in restraining orders, or the student who is aware that his teachers' hands at school are tied by an uncaring bureaucracy, Israel knows that the polite expressions of concern in world capitals and the lip service paid to international law at the UN when diplomats affirm Israel's right to exist in security and peace do little to discourage foes like Hamas.

No one advocates war crimes by armies any more than one would justify murder, even against violent husbands or bullies. But we can recognize the circumstances that lead to such behaviour.

The increasing strength of militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, sponsored by an Iran that denies Israel's right to exist, make Israelis feel they are being pushed against a wall.

Being under constant siege by enemies who tell you every single day, that they intend to destroy you once they get the chance, can make anyone, to use modern slang, "lose it." And the result is something like Operation Cast Lead.

It's long past time for responsible parties such as the United States, Canada and the European Union to step in and separate the two sides by manning the borders that Gaza shares with Israel and Egypt. Only then, when neither is attacking the other, can there be even a glimmer of hope for an eventual peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Are Canadian Jews Savvy?

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

We Canadian Jews consider ourselves pretty savvy. Sometimes I wonder.

The philanthropists in our community have poured millions of dollars into funding facilities at universities across the country. Such institutions have, of course, happily taken our money – but what good has it done us?

These schools are rapidly being taken over by radical ‘anti-imperialists’ and ‘anti-Zionists.’ At one particularly notorious example, York University in Toronto, Jewish students have actually come to fear for their physical safety.

Israeli Apartheid Week is now a featured event at many campuses across the country. This tells us volumes about the cowardice of university administrators, who seem unable or unwilling to challenge such demonization of the Jewish state.

Maybe our donations should go only to Israel, or in this country, only to Jewish-controlled institutions such as Hebrew schools, synagogues and social organizations. Let the allies of Hamas and Hezbollah financially support York and any other institutions that condone such anti-Jewish behaviour.

Before the 1960s, Canada was basically a union of French Canadians and of people from the British Isles. Many were xenophobes, nativists and, yes, antisemites. The governments of the day made it next to impossible for Jews even to get into the country. Those who managed to immigrate faced economic and social barriers.

So in the 1960s, starting with our overwhelming support of Pierre Trudeau – elected in Canada’s then most Jewish riding, Mount Royal in Montreal – we were in the forefront, ideologically and politically, of creating a new, more liberal Canada.

We helped dismantle the old system, which was replaced by multiculturalism and by virtually open immigration from all over the world. The result?

There are now hundreds of thousands of people in the country, especially in the largest cities, who come from places where Jew-hatred is endemic and sometimes even official policy.

A goodly number of these immigrants apparently see no reason to change their opinions about us. Many of their children, now studying at York and other colleges and universities, are turning these institutions into political bases for antisemitism.

At least the earlier generations of Judaophobes didn’t run around calling us dogs and pigs, waving the flags of genocidal Middle Eastern groups who vow to exterminate us.

Be careful what you wish for. It may come back to bite you.

The Library of Unwritten Books

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?sid=217703&sc=104

Across Canada and the United States, including here at the University of Prince Edward Island, tenure-track positions - that is, full-time academic jobs with a guarantee of steady employment - are fast disappearing.

Increasingly often, professors who retire are being replaced by so-called sessionals, part-time instructors who are hired to teach a limited number of courses. Sessionals have no job security nor, for that matter, any particular loyalty to the institution. They are, as it were, here today, gone tomorrow.

Our own university is particularly 'fortunate' in this regard, because we have a mandatory retirement policy that requires professors to retire at age 65. So when a professor reaches that magic number, the administration can simply eliminate the position she held.

Sessionals, like itinerant labourers, often work at more than one university, in order to make ends meet, since they are paid a pittance per course. After all, that's the whole idea: to provide education on the cheap.

Needless to say, all of this is detrimental to the departments in which sessionals teach, and to the students they serve.

Sessionals are rarely available other than the few hours per week when they appear on campus, often in the evenings.

They teach only a few courses per year. And, because they barely know the students in their classes, they find it next to impossible to write persuasive letters of recommendation for students who wish to go on to graduate school or law school.

Indeed, often by the time students require these all-important recommendations, the sessional herself is unemployed.

Bad as this is for students, it's even worse for the sessionals. People who may have spent the better part of a decade earning their doctorate, end up either working at subsistence wages or leaving academia altogether.

Either way, one thing is certain: given that sessionals find it almost impossible to obtain grants, they will probably never do any further research in their chosen field, and we will never know what contributions these people may have made to our understanding of the world, be they in the humanities, sciences, or other disciplines.

I have a fantasy of creating a 'Library of Unwritten Books'. Here we would see all the books that were never written, by people who never got the chance to become full-time academics. I know a number of people, at this university and elsewhere, who were sessionals for a long time, until they "got lucky" and finally landed a job in their discipline.

They went on to write books that have made an impact, both within their specific fields of study, and in the wider world.

Had they not become tenure-track professors, their scholarship would no doubt be found only in my fictional library. We'll never know how many other volumes sit on the shelves in that imaginary building.

A Middle Eastern Apocalypse in the Offing?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Things have been going from bad to worse in the Middle East, as Israel and its neighbours feel ever more frustrated at their inability to craft a permanent peace – or even a tolerable level of co-existence – with each other.

Most worrisome, of course, is the growing power of Iran, a state that not only funds and arms groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, but is clearly working towards acquiring nuclear weapons.

The Iranian regime makes no bones about wanting to wipe Israel off the map, nor should we assume this is hyperbole. They mean what they say.

It is very likely that, should Israel determine that Iran has developed – and intends to use – such weapons against the Jewish state, Jerusalem will launch a pre-emptive strike against the Islamic Republic.

After all, even one or two nuclear missiles launched at Israel, a tiny country with most of its population centered in a narrow coastal strip around Tel Aviv, would destroy the state.

The one thing Israel’s leaders will do all they can to prevent, no matter what their politics, is the end of Jewish sovereignty in the land. They have all made this very clear in the country’s current election campaign.

However, even if Israel struck first, Iran might by then already have acquired second-strike capability, and still deliver a devastating blow.

It might mean the end of the Jewish state, but at that point, like the Biblical account of Samson bringing down the Philistines’ temple in Gaza, my guess is that Israel would launch what was left of its nuclear arsenal at all of the major capitals and holy sites in the region.

Such a massive conflagration might even extend eastwards, given the religious and cultural dimension, and bring in two other nuclear powers long as odds with each other, India and Pakistan.

This would truly be a modern Armageddon and we must do all we can to prevent such a cataclysm. But in the capitals of the world, people far wiser than I are perplexed and seem unable to stop this march towards catastrophe.

Where Do Israel, Jewish People Stand at This Moment? 

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

It’s always important to be realistic and not give in to wishful thinking when it comes to the security of Israel.

Though I don’t think of myself as an alarmist, I’m sorry to say that things do not look good right now.

We must take the long view and see trend lines in Israel’s strength vis-a-vis its foes.

Despite Israel’s military prowess, there has been a slow but steady shift in the balance of forces between Israel and its most implacable enemies. All we need to do is look at Gaza.

In 1956 and 1967, Israel swept through the small area with hardly any resistance, even though in both cases the Gaza battles were just part of much larger wars.

Even during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Israel suffered horrific initial losses, Gaza, as well as the border with Lebanon, remained quiet. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah had yet been created. Nor was Iran in the hands of a Shi’ite theocracy.

And between 1949 and 1991 – when Saddam Hussein lobbed Scud missiles at the country – Israel’s home front was safe from military attack.

Yet now, after three weeks of warfare in Gaza, Israel has been either unable to militarily vanquish Hamas, or else felt it simply couldn’t afford to do so, due to a combination of diplomatic pressure and effective Palestinian manipulation of world opinion. And this, even though Israel wasn’t involved in fighting anywhere else.

I don’t think that Israel gained much from this offensive, especially when judged against the condemnations of the operation, even by western countries. It’s little more than the status quo. I doubt that Egypt or even the US will be able to stop the smuggling of weapons into Gaza.

Something similar happened in the war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006. While Israel was unchallenged in the air, the ground war was inconclusive – and Hezbollah today has more rockets than it did back then.

It turns out the weapons suppliers – Iran and others – to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are doing a far more effective job, and providing more “bang for the buck,” than the old Communist bloc did when the Soviets were arming countries like Egypt and Syria.

Also, as one war follows another, there is another worrisome trend: more and more diaspora Jews, particularly younger people, in Canada and elsewhere, are signing anti-Israeli petitions and joining ‘anti-Zionist’ groups, with some even supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.

It’s easy for us to write them off as “self-hating Jews.” Some are. But for many others, it’s a version of the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, where people begin to identify with their tormentors – “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” – and hope to be spared.

Such Jews, usually fairly assimilated into the larger society and often with little schooling in Judaism or Jewish history, find intolerable the stress of iving and working amongst people who increasingly see Israel as an aggressor, rogue, or ‘apartheid’ state.

The relentless ideological attacks on the Jewish state – not to mention increasingly blatant antisemitic rhetoric – are taking their toll. No one wants to be ostracized by colleagues, fellow students, or co-workers.

To ease this psychological burden, such Jews are in effect ‘converting,’ to use religious terminology, from ‘Jewishness’ (except as a vestigial identity) to ‘cosmopolitan diaspora multiculturalism.’

None of this bodes well, either for Israel or for the rest of us.

The Hitler-Stalin Pact: Two Years of Infamy

Henry Srebrnik , [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

Welcome to 2009. This is a year in which Jews will remember many days of sadness, since it will be the 70th anniversary of, among other events, Hitler’s occupation of the remains of Czechoslovakia, on March 15, 1939; the British “White Paper,” which effectively ended Jewish immigration into the Palestine Mandate, issued on May 17; and, of course, the German invasion of Poland, on Sept. 1.

We’ve all heard, on old newsreels, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, referring to Dec. 7, 1941 as “a day of infamy.” All of these 1939 dates were also “days of infamy.”

And that label might just as easily be applied to another date from 70 years ago: Aug. 23, 1939, the day the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, better known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop or Hitler-Stalin Pact, was signed. It created the conditions for the “perfect storm” that led, one week later, to the Second World War and the Holocaust.

The pact destroyed Jewish faith in the pro-Soviet left, including the Communist Parties and their various front groups in North America. From Sept. 3, 1939, when Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, until June 22, 1941, when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Communists directed much of their venom, not at Hitler’s Germany, but at Britain and France.

This caused special consternation among Jewish Communists. Those who supported the change in Moscow’s line were now forced to rationalize their defence of the treaty. Shloime Almazov, the head of the ICOR, a Communist front group, published Der Sovyetish-daytsher opmakh: vos meynt er? (The Soviet-German Pact: What Does it Mean?) immediately following the announcement of the pact.

The enemies of the USSR were displeased that the Soviet Union had thwarted a German attack against it, something its foes devoutly desired, he remarked. The Soviet-German pact was not a danger to the progressive movement, he concluded; rather, it was motivated by the Soviet desire to live in peace with its neighbours and to guard with all its strength the peace of the world.

The Soviets had already saved some two million Jews when they “liberated” eastern Poland in mid-September 1939, declared Almazov. (A secret protocol to the pact had allowed the two dictators to partition Poland.)

And the prospect for European Jews improved even more dramatically, according to the Communists, when in June, 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Romanian Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Added to the total within the pre-1939 Soviet borders, by 1941 perhaps as many as 6.5 million Jews lived under the protection of “Soviet power” – about two-thirds of European Jewry.

Moishe Katz, a writer for the New York Communist daily Morgn Frayhayt, was so certain that “a new and bright day” had dawned that in August 1940, he wrote an article entitled Der oyflebung fun dem mizrakh-europayishn yidntum (The Rejuvenation of East European Jewry).

Most Jews, however, were simply not buying the party line. And they were, unfortunately, proven correct. The Nazi attack on Russia in 1941, and the subsequent mass murder of the majority of east European and Soviet Jews, punctured the fantasy of a 6.5-million-strong Jewish community living safely and productively in a peaceful USSR, a country that had been spared the horrors of war thanks to Stalin’s wise decision to sign the pact with Hitler.

In the wake of the rationales to which they had been subjected between 1939 and 1941, even pro-Soviet Jews realized that they had been lulled into a false sense of security. Those who remained in the movement were never again as certain as they had been before 1941 that they could trust Russia to protect Jews.

The lesson most other Jews – including the many former Communists who abandoned the movement in 1939 – learned was that we needed a sovereign state of our own in the old homeland, Eretz Yisroel.