Border Battle Raises Tensions

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

Last week, Iran fired missiles into Syria, Pakistan, and Iraqi Kurdistan, claiming to target Islamic State affiliates in the first two, and an “Israeli Mossad headquarters” in the city of Erbil in the third.

Iran has been methodically consolidating an alliance of forces across the entire Middle Eastern battlefield. Calling it the “axis of resistance,” it started with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but it is rapidly evolving into something larger. Its other members now include the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria.

Iraq and Syria are both countries whose governments are within Tehran’s sphere of influence, and where Iranian forces and proxy militias have a large presence. But an attack on Pakistan, a nuclear power, is a very different case, because there was immediate pushback.

The strikes by Pakistan in retaliation were the first external land attacks on Iran since Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded the country in the 1980s, launching a brutal eight-year war.

This current military exchange between Iran and Pakistan, however, stems from a more local cause. The Baloch are an ethnic group of some 10 million people who live on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border and into parts of southern Afghanistan.

In total, this area is roughly the size of France, but sparsely populated. The Pakistani province of Balochistan forms the largest part, followed by the province of Sistan and Balochistan on the Iranian side. They are the most impoverished regions of their respective countries, vast and arid provinces constantly battling drought, with rampant unemployment.

This restive region is where security forces of both countries have for years battled militant groups on both sides of the 1,000-kilometre border, which is difficult to navigate and control. Tehran and Islamabad have long accused each other of not taking strict enough action against the separatist Balochs in their own respective countries.

Efforts for autonomy or independence have been violently suppressed for decades by both countries. On the Pakistani side, separatist Baloch efforts are seen as an attempt to divide the country; on the Iranian side, things are complicated by fact that the Baloch are a Sunni minority in an otherwise predominantly Shia country.

Both states have taken correspondingly harsh action against them. In Pakistan up to 20,000 Balochs have disappeared in recent decades, presumably abducted, tortured or even murdered by Pakistani security forces, according to Amnesty International. 

Since 2014, the separatists have targeted projects associated with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $58-billion project that is part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and large parts of which run through mineral-rich Balochistan.

Iran’s Shia clerical government has discriminated against their part of the  region economically and politically, and dozens have also been killed by Iranian security forces in recent years. Amnesty International said that in 2021 at least 19 per cent of all executions in Iran were of members of the Baloch minority.

So Iran’s strike on the Pakistani border town of Panjgur on Jan. 16 was aimed at the Baloch militia Jaish al-Adl, or the Army of Justice. Tehran holds the group responsible for several attacks on civilians and soldiers in Iran. The Iranian attack was likely in retaliation for a Jan. 3 bombing that killed 80 in the southern Iranian city of Kerman.

Two days later, Pakistan’s army retaliated with an attack on an Iranian village near the city of Sarawan. Their aim was to eliminate fighters of the Balochistan Liberation Front and Baloch Liberation Army, both operating from inside Iran.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry said its missile strikes had come in light of “credible intelligence of impending large-scale terrorist activities.”

No, Islamabad is not going to put a stop to the Iranian regime’s activities across the Middle East, including Balochistan. But the Pakistanis fired after being fired upon, and the Iranian regime has backed down, at least for now.

 

Rising Antisemitism in France sees Exodus of Jews

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

More than 1,500 antisemitic incidents have been recorded in France between Oct. 7, the day Hamas attacked Israel, and mid-November, according to the latest statistics from the French Interior Ministry. This is three times the reported number in all of 2022.

“These are mainly tags and insults, but there are also assaults and injuries,” reported French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. The number of requests from French Jews for emigration to Israel has continued to rise as more seek to escape what they perceive as a climate of fear.

Many confirmed that they no longer consider themselves safe in France and feel compelled to hide their kippah or other outward signs of Judaism for fear of being targeted. They perceive a lack of empathy for the Israelis killed during the Hamas massacre and for the relatives of the hostages who are suspended in an agonising limbo.

Israeli officials have recorded a 430 per cent increase in the number of applications from France. In December, several events were organized aimed at providing information and advice for those who wish to relocate to Israel. Gatherings in Paris, Marseille and Lyon each drew hundreds of attendees, some of whom had to travel to get there.

The Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) is also listening to such concerns from the French Jewish community, as it has in the past when events locally or in Israel precipitated an increase in antisemitic activity.

The figures for immigration to Israel and the opening of files “have always been a barometer of the level of concern of Jews in French society regarding antisemitism,” remarked CRIF president Yonathan Arfi.

Even if he believes that measures are being put in place to fight this climate of fear, Arfi believes it is now a much deeper problem in French society.

“Political authorities are very aware of the current reality but this is not enough, it’s now more social. We will only really fight antisemitism if it’s socially condemned in all walks of life in French society, which is not always the case today,” he added.

France has lived through antisemitic waves, from the Dreyfus affair (1894-1906) to the Vichy government’s antisemitic laws and its collaboration in the Holocaust between 1940 and 1944.

So this concern about rising antisemitism in France is fuelled in part by what happened to Jews before and during the Second World War, and that makes it particularly fearsome for those who may be only one or two generations removed from people who were the victims of Nazi brutality, including deportation to the death camps in Poland.

Today in France, the Jewish community faces not just centuries-old far-right antisemitism and decades-old Islamist antisemitism, but now a rapidly growing left-wing antisemitism that includes both anti-Zionism and traditional antisemitism.

While left-wing antisemitism has existed in France for many years, its mainstreaming is a source of deep concern in the French Jewish community. Since the mid-20th century, the French left had been influenced by the Soviet Communist Party with its anti-Zionism that challenged the legitimacy of Israel’s existence.

This has also found fertile ground mainly in successive generations of immigrant communities. In this version, the State of Israel and the Zionists, with whom all Jews are identified, are seen as the last vestiges of Western colonialism. Israel is considered a Western outgrowth in the Middle East and the Palestinians are the last people awaiting national liberation.

Traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories are also prominent on the left. Images of Jews controlling the government have been found on social media accounts of left-wing activists, including some prominent personalities.

In 2017, Gérard Filoche, a member of the Socialist Party executive committee, tweeted an image of newly elected President Emmanuel Macron with three prominent French Jews in the shadows behind him.

President Macron appeared with his arms outstretched over the globe, wearing a Nazi armband on which the swastika has been replaced by a dollar, and American and Israeli flags were in the background.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, today the most important politician of the French left, is frequently criticized for using antisemitic tropes in his rhetoric and for his indifference to the resurgence of antisemitism. Mélenchon has attacked CRIF, accusing it of dominating behaviour when it advocates political positions that Mélenchon opposes.

Every time Mélenchon is questioned, he responds that antisemitism on the left does not exist and that accusations of antisemitism are manipulated to prohibit criticism of Israel.

On Oct. 22, Melenchon accused Yael Braun-Pivet, the speaker of the French National Assembly and a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling party, of “camping in Tel Aviv to encourage the massacre,” referring to Israeli strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. “Not in the name of the French people!” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. She is Jewish and had travelled to Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas attack.

And it is significant that a successful march against antisemitism on Nov. 12 in Paris that gathered more than 182,000 people from across the country did not include him or those of his party, France Unbowed (France Insoumise), who refused to condemn Hamas or its Oct. 7 attack.

 

Israel Caught Between Russia and America

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

Russia’s pro-Palestinian stance has underscored a shift in relations between Moscow and Jerusalem since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

For two decades under Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Russia and Israel pursued a delicate balance. While the two countries often found themselves on opposite sides of the geopolitical spectrum, Israel sought to be on good terms with Russia.

Russia is an ally of Syria, so Israel did not want to accidentally collide with Moscow while Israel pursued its own conflict with Damascus. Israel was also careful not to antagonize Moscow because of Russia’s ties to Iran.

As for Putin, he also saw in Israel a partner in keeping alive the memory of the Second World War, the monumental historical event around which Russian nationalism now revolves.

“It was never an alliance, but there was always a strategic understanding. Both countries needed each other,” indicated Vera Michlin-Shapir, of King’s College London and a former official at Israel’s national security council, who specializes in Russian foreign policy.

However, Russia’s subsequent invasion of Ukraine placed Israel in a bind.

“The two countries’ ties are absolutely at the lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union,” according to Nikolay Kozhanov, a former Russian diplomat in Tehran and now an associate professor at Qatar University.

But can Israel put all its eggs in the American basket? As Israel’s war in Gaza proceeds, more opinion pieces appear in the New York Times and Washington Post painting Israel as an aggressor destroying helpless Palestinians.

An article by Shalom Lipner in the Dec. 29 Foreign Affairs warns Netanyahu about “How Israel could lose America.” Since these publications represent the points of view from the American ruling establishment, it’s something Israel needs to worry about.

The United States is in a position similar to that of Britain during the pre-1948 Palestine Mandate period, needing to consider the wider foreign policy implications of how it deals with the Gaza war, since it’s a global power and can’t let Israel derail relations with the far larger Arab and Muslim world.

This makes it a perfect storm for Israel. The Ukraine war has led to Russian gains in the Arab world, hence distancing Israel’s relationship with Moscow. The war against Hamas now also strains Israeli relations with the U.S, which worries that it can’t support Israel too strongly or it will lose out to Russia elsewhere.

The battle with Hamas has revealed Israel’s political and military dependence on the United States. This is particularly problematic at a time when trends in the United States on matters concerning Israel are not necessarily in Jerusalem’s favour.

The Democratic Party is riven with disagreement over the war, and the younger its supporters, the less they support Israel. The war on Hamas has been a major political problem for President Joe Biden. The base of his party is reeling from dissent within the ranks of Democratic staffers and the party’s left-wing activist base.

Typical is a Jan. 11 letter by the young Thomas Kennedy, an elected Democratic National Committee member from Florida who’s from the progressive wing of the party.

“I am submitting my resignation,” he wrote, “in large part because of the Biden administration’s inexcusable support of Israeli war crimes and the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza.”

The rising tide in the party is represented by the anti-Israel “Squad,” personified by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who has led efforts to pressure Washington to censure Israel “and seek accountability for grave violations of human rights.”

What will the party’s left say now that Israel has been accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice?

In that regard, it’s interesting that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Jan. 11 offered some limited praise for Netanyahu, while appearing to compare Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Lavrov indicated that Moscow is pleased Netanyahu has not criticized Russia for its ongoing war.

“Despite condemnations from around the world, including of course Israel, he finds himself in quite a serious situation, that he never dared to make any statements against Russia.”

Remember, Russia too has been accused of genocide and war crimes, and the International Criminal Court issued a warrant in March for Putin’s arrest.

To what extent might it be wise for Israel to spread the risk and establish economic and perhaps also security relationships with other key powers? Should Israel preserve what is left of the relationship with Russia in an effort to moderate Moscow’s attitude?

And if it does, what risks happening to the Jewish state’s relationship to the United States?

Israel is at a strategic crossroads. Where it chooses to go will have far-reaching implications for its future international relationships.