The Changing Place of Jewish Canadians in Federal Politics

   By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

In their 2018 Survey of Jews in Canada, Keith Neuman, Rhonda Lenton, and Robert Brym, asserted that Canadian Jews were a model Jewish community. The 2021 volume No Better Home?: Jews, Canada, and the Sense of Belonging, edited by David Koffman, suggested that Canada might be the most socially welcoming, economically secure, and religiously tolerant country for Jews in the diaspora. A similar narrative about Canada’s Jews is found in this year’s Faces in the Crowd: The Jews of Canada, by Franklin Bialystok.

This is the “official” story, but behind the scenes, it’s somewhat different. One of the main changes in Canadian politics in recent years has been the diminished political role of Canadian Jews, who number just under 400,000 people.

Their influence crested in the 1960s-1970s under Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau -- many Jews were well-known cabinet ministers. Their efficacy continued into the Stephen Harper era, when Jews began voting Conservative because of his robust defence of Israel.

Irwin Cotler was probably the last important Jewish political figure. He served as Canada’s minister of justice and attorney general in Liberal Paul Martin’s government from 2003 to 2006.

But today? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are a very different bunch. You’d be hard pressed to name one important Jewish politician in his party. If anything, the community has gone back to the pre-1960s, again worried about anti-Semitism, which is harder to counter now.

Much of it comes not from old stock Canadians, but in many cases from racialized and recent arrivals – who are the mainstay of the Liberal Party’s base.

In hindsight, the country’s embrace of multiculturalism, something Jews supported and fought for in the 1960s as a way of breaking the British/French monopoly of power, turned out not an unalloyed panacea for Jewish Canadians.

The country has welcome in the last few decades millions of immigrants from parts of the world that never heard of Jews, much less the Holocaust, and if they have, some have brought their anti-Semitism with them.

Jews remain by far the most targeted religious group for hate crimes in Canada, according to the Canadian government’s annual survey of police-reported hate crimes.

The spike in anti-Semitism was caused by a variety of factors. The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel has whipped up hatred, not just toward the Jewish state, but toward Jews in general. Likewise, the rise of populism has made Jews a target both of extreme-left and extreme-right ideologies. Throw in the proliferation of anti-Semitism on social media, and the results are toxic.

Jewish Canadian leaders are found wanting on this issue. They still largely turn a blind eye to left-wing anti-Semitism, since much of it comes from non-whites, and some of these leaders buy into the idea that oppressed racialized communities can’t be racists.

Trudeau’s own attitude was summed up perfectly during the winter 2022 “occupation” of Ottawa’s downtown by truckers protesting mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some in the Conservative Party were sympathetic to their cause.

Trudeau dismissed the Canadian protesters and those who supported them as a fringe group of Nazi and racist sympathizers. That included Melissa Lantsman, the Conservative MP for Thornhill, north of Toronto, the most demographically Jewish constituency in the country. And she is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.

During a heated exchange in which she criticized negative comments he made toward truck convoy supporters, Trudeau responded this way: “Conservative Party members can stand with people who wave swastikas; they can stand with people who wave the Confederate flag.”

Lantsman denounced his comments. “I think the Prime Minister should think long and hard about his own history before singling out a Jewish Member of Parliament and falsely accusing me of standing with a Swastika. What a disgraceful statement unbecoming of anyone in public office – he owes me an apology.”

The prime minister refused to do so.

There was deafening silence from the Canadian Jewish community’s so-called leaders. Politically adrift, they have become the Jews of silence and have largely retreated into their own communities.

 

NATO, Russia in Proxy war in Ukraine

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Halifax, NS] Chronicle Herald

We know that ever since the collapse of the east European Communist states in 1989, followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself two years later, the advanced capitalist states of North America and Europe — what we used to call the First World — have sought to draw these newly independent nations into the imperial sphere America and western Europe control, via the European Union and NATO.

This hegemonic system goes by various names — “the West,” the “free world,” “Davos,” “globalism,” the “rules-based international order,” and so on. But we are talking about good old fashioned economic and political imperialism. And its main military organization, NATO, was not going to let an enfeebled Russia (or, for that matter, China) stop them.

The West claims it’s defending democracy in Ukraine, but let’s be frank, that’s not really true. Even Afghanistan and Iraq had ostensibly “honest” elections under American tutelage — but who really believes that? In actuality, Ukraine, like most of the other ex-soviet states, is run by oligarchs — just ask President Biden’s son, Hunter!

Ukraine has had five presidents since independence, but none of them were “dictators.” The 2010 election of Viktor Yanukovych — the incumbent overthrown unconstitutionally in 2014 when he tilted towards Russia — was likely no more, but also not any less, honest than the two that have been held since.

Yes, Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine has plunged the world into a perilous situation. By any reasonable standard, his move was an over-the-top response. However, that conclusion is different from saying that there were no provocations, as far too many policymakers and pundits in the West are doing now.

It has become especially fashionable to insist that NATO’S expansion to Russia’s border was in no way responsible for the current Ukraine crisis. But whether or not Russia has imperial ambitions, it is clear that the United States has consistently had such ambitions, and never more so than in the past 75 years, a period in which it consciously took over Britain’s role of dominant Western empire.

It was inevitable that NATO expansion eastward would at some point run into a hostile Russian reaction, given the ideologically driven obsession by American political leaders for global hegemony.

This is, of course, an old story. I’m not saying anything new. As many, many socialists have noted over the decades, the political economy of a home country such as the United States is intrinsically related to imperial expansion.

John Stuart Mill, one of the 19th century’s foremost political philosophers, speaking of his own nation, in his 1848 study Principles of Political Economy, argued that Britain had developed to a point where it produced more capital than could be profitably invested at home.

The solution to the problem of surplus capital, he suggested, was “systematic” state-sponsored colonization. This, “in the present state of the world, is the best affair of business, in which the capital of an old and wealthy country can engage.”

Many others, including J.A. Hobson, another British writer, in his book Imperialism, published in 1902, came to the same conclusion. Hobson contended that capitalist business activity brought about imperialism.

What he called the “taproot of imperialism” was not due to nationalism but in capitalist oligarchy.

The 1998-99 Kosovo War was the first time that NATO operated without United Nations approval. As James Bissett, a former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, has stated, “It was a historical turning point and a serious blow to the framework of world peace and security. NATO was converted from a purely defensive body acting in accordance with the principles of the United Nations into an organization that could use force to intervene whenever and wherever it deemed it necessary to do so.”

Once the Soviet bloc fell, NATO had no reason to exist, so its existence must be justified. Today, the U.S. intervention in Ukraine, from 2014 to the present, has centred on promoting a proxy military conflict with Russia. Perhaps accusing Russia of imperialism is just projection for what NATO itself is guilty of?

Meanwhile, we may be at the brink of a dangerous escalation. The influential American magazine Foreign Affairs, in a July 12 piece by Dan Altman, called on NATO “to encourage, organize, and equip its soldiers to volunteer to fight for Ukraine.”

Simon Tisdall, a foreign affairs commentator for the Guardian of London, in a July 17 article recommended “using NATO’S overwhelming power to decisively turn the military tide. Enough of the half-measures and the dithering!” He wants to “force Putin’s marauding troops back inside Russia’s recognised borders.”

People like this seem to think that a cornered Russia would simply fold. A more likely outcome is that they’ll use nuclear weapons sooner than face defeat.

As for Canada, it is simply a junior partner and political ventriloquist for Washington. Its former identity as a “peacekeeper” on call on behalf of the United Nations has gone with the wind.

 

Minority Issues in Eastern Europe

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The number of people found to be illegally present in the European Union increased by 22 per cent to reach nearly 700,000 in 2021, according to data released May 19 by Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU.

Altogether, 23.7 million non-EU citizens were living in EU countries, making up 5.3 per cent of the total EU population.

The post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe, now members of the EU, see such immigration as the principal threat to their identity, and some have refused to accept quotas regarding refugee distribution.

Historic minorities

In part, this is a protest directed at Brussels’ high-handedness: Who is the EU to impose anything against the will of its member states? Mostly, however, it is opposition to the very idea of diluting the national fibre by admitting foreigners.

These countries already have historic minorities within their borders, which many are not too happy about either. But a criterion for their entry into the EU included respect for and protection of minorities.

For many, this was an unpleasant reminder of the Minority Treaties that had been imposed upon them in the aftermath of the First World War. These treaties had been bitterly resented by some. Poland, for instance, renounced its treaty in 1934.

But the demographic structure of the area changed radically after the Second World War, due primarily to the mass murder of Jews and the expulsion of Germans.

Delicate issue

Yet ethnic and religious minorities do exist. Poland guarantees rights for the three per cent of its population that is not of ethnic Polish stock. Most numerous remain the Germans.

This is a delicate issue in Poland because of the Nazi occupation and mass murders during the Second World War and the fact that present-day Polish boundaries encompass territories that were previously German. Poland also recognizes 12 other ethnic and national minorities and one linguistic minority.

The post-Communist regime in Hungary adopted a progressive law governing the eight per cent of the population not of Magyar descent. It has defined 13 groups as national minorities and has offered them financial support administered largely by local councils.

On the other hand, Hungarians comprise large minorities in neighbouring Romania and Slovakia. Their ethnically based political parties have played a pivotal role in national politics and have participated and often served as a critical element in governmental coalitions. An ethnically Turkish party in Bulgaria has also played a major role in that country.

Anti-Roma sentiment

Except for Poland, the condition of the sizeable Romani population in these countries is a matter for national and international concern. According to official figures, Roma in Romania number 621,000. Unofficial figures sometimes place their number almost four times higher.

Romania may contain the highest number of Roma. Proportionately, however, Roma are equally or more important in several other East European countries. The Bulgarian census records 320,000 Roma; that, too, may be an under-estimation. Bulgarian Roma are predominantly Muslim and many declare themselves as Turks.

In Hungary, Roma constitute the largest minority, at slightly over 200,000. Slovakia reports slightly over 100,000 Roma but the true figure may also be up to five times higher. In any case, they are less numerous than Slovakia’s Hungarian minority.

The Czechs believed they had no minorities left after the post-war expulsion of the Germans. They were surprised to learn that they had a substantial Roma population, formally numbering only 13,000 citizens but with perhaps as many as 300,000 people. It turned out most had come from Slovakia to occupy houses in the Sudetenland area abandoned by the Germans.

The level of anti-Roma sentiment is stronger in the Czech lands than in any other part of the region. Czech Roma continue to struggle against policies of forced female sterilization and a system of educational apartheid which puts Roma children in classes destined for “backward” pupils.

The condition of Roma throughout the post-Communist world has worsened since 1989 and they have experienced a wave of racially motivated violence. Socialism had proletarianized the Roma, making them virtually indistinguishable from their non-Roma neighbours.

With the closure of factories where Roma once worked, the unemployed now live in self-contained ghettos characterized by sub-standard infrastructure and terrible hygiene conditions. They are convenient scapegoats for societal ills, real and imagined.