Don’t Ignore These Results in Britain’s Election

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

 Somewhat overlooked in the massive victory of the Labour Party in the July 5 British general election has been the ability of independents and Green Party candidates to gain votes and win seats based on their opposition to the war in Gaza. Labour lost five seats with large Muslim populations.

Muslims are estimated to form around 6.5 per cent of the population of England and Wales, with around 2 per cent in Scotland. According to a BBC analysis, Labour’s vote was down on average by 23 points in seats where 20 per cent or more of the population identify as Muslim. Well over 80 per cent of Muslims are believed to have voted for Labour in 2019.  

When the group The Muslim Vote (TMV) was launched last year, it announced that its goal was to demonstrate that Muslim voters would ‘”no longer tolerate being taken for granted. We are a powerful, united force of 4 million acting in unison.”

Candidates backed by TMV beat Labour in constituencies with a high Muslim electorate across the country, from London’s Islington North, where the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn retained his seat after running as an independent, to Blackburn, where Adnan Hussein won in a town that had been Labour for 69 years. In Yorkshire’s Dewsbury and Batley, Iqbal Hussein Mohamed scored a victory over Labour’s Heather Iqbal of almost 7,000 votes.

In early 2024 Corbyn was barred from running for his seat and announced he would run as an independent. In 2019 Corbyn had been accused by a Labour party branch of personally engaging in anti-Semitic acts on nine occasions. The accusation was featured in a damning 53-page report filed by the Labour Jewish Movement, one of the oldest societies affiliated with the party.

He was suspended from the party, to which he had belonged for 40 years, in 2020. But he kept his seat, winning with 24,120 votes, beating the official Labour candidate Praful Nargund, who secured 16,873 votes.

Corbyn led the charge of the single-issue candidates who campaigned largely against Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza. “I promise to always stand up for the people of Gaza, and for the only path to a just and lasting peace: an end to the occupation of Palestine,” he announced. He was rewarded with victory, with supporters greeting the news with cries of “free Palestine.”

Jon Ashworth, the shadow (that is, prospective) work and pensions secretary (minister), lost Leicester South to Shockat Adam, another pro-Palestinian independent endorsed by TMV. The constituency, where around 30 per cent of the electorate are Muslim, had been held by Ashworth for 13 years. He previously had a majority of more than 22,000. “This is for the people of Gaza,” Adam declared, holding up a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf.

In nearby Leicester East, the Conservatives benefitted from independent candidate Claudia Webbe, the area’s former Labour MP, picking up several thousand votes. She had been expelled from the party and is a vocal pro-Palestinian campaigner. The Tories won her former seat by 4,426 votes, which was less than the number secured by Webbe.

Other senior Labour figures in London ridings with large Muslim populations only narrowly held their seats. In Bethnal Green and Stepney, in east London, shadow small business minister Rushnara Ali, who was defending a majority of more than 31,000, beat independent candidate Ajmal Masroor by just 1,689 votes.

In Ilford North, Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, came close to defeat by Leanne Mohamad, who is the granddaughter of Palestinian refugees, winning what had been a safe Labour seat by just 528 votes. His majority in 2019 was more than 5,000. Mohamad, a TMV post asserted, is “the community’s real winner. You put Gaza back on the ballot. You’ve created history and given us incredible hope for the future.”

In Birmingham Perry Barr, Labour’s Khalid Mahmood lost to independent Ayoub Khan by 507 votes. But in next-door Birmingham Ladywood, shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood held off a challenge from independent candidate Akhmed Yakoob. However, her majority fell from more than 32,000 to 3,421.

One of the few defeats for anti-Labour supporters was that in Rochdale, where the Workers Party’s anti-Zionist firebrand leader George Galloway lost the constituency he had won in a by-election in February to Labour’s Paul Waugh.

The Green Party went from one seat to four, by pushing their Gaza position very strongly, after the party took three new seats, one from Labour and two from the Conservatives, and held their existing Brighton Pavilion constituency. They expanded their representation beyond their usual urban heartlands.

The party’s co-leader Carla Denyer unseated Labour’s prospective culture, media and sport secretary, Thangam Debbonaire, to win Bristol Central by more than 10,000 votes. The party took North Herefordshire by more than 5,000 votes, a more rural seat where the sitting MP was Conservative, Bill Wiggin, had a 25,000 majority in 2019. Denyer’s fellow leader, Adrian Ramsay, competing against the Tories in the new seat of Waveney Valley, won as well, with nearly 42 per cent of the vote.

The Greens have called for a “full bilateral cease-fire” and the suspension of arms exports to Israel. Labour backs a cease-fire, but not the end of arms exports, and Keir Starmer, the new Prime Minister, faces pressure to take a tougher line on Israel’s military operations. In its manifesto, Labour has committed to recognising a Palestinian state.

Will the new Labour government toughen its position in response to these results? We shall see. 

Is Viktor Orban A Peace-Maker?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, has spent the past few weeks travelling to various capitals on a “peace mission” to try to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. European Union and NATO members are not happy about it.

Leader of the right-wing populist Fidesz party, he has been Hungary’s prime minister since 2010. He has backed nationalist, Euroskeptic policies and rejected any redistribution of refugees across the EU.

His government has clashed with EU officials and other member states over what they consider domestic democratic backsliding and, more recently, the bloc’s military support for Ukraine.

Budapest has frequently deployed its veto in key votes, stalling policies when all others were ready to proceed. It has had billions of euros of EU funds initially withheld due to what Brussels deemed rule of law violations.

Nor do his cordial relations with Donald Trump endear him to other EU leaders. Orban met with Trump last March and showed up again July 11 at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, following the NATO summit in Washington. The meeting was part of Orban’s self-proclaimed “peace mission” to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”  Orban wrote on X, following the meeting. The Hungarian leader described Trump as a “president of peace,” while Trump referred to Orban as a “fantastic leader.”

The prime minister has also openly supported Trump’s candidacy in this year’s American presidential election, expressing hope that the Republican would be able to bring an end to the Ukraine war.

Orban, who is widely considered to have the warmest relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin among all EU leaders, and who has frequently delayed sanctions on Kremlin officials and EU military aid packages for Ukraine, made an unannounced visit to Kyiv July 2, where he held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Hungary has viewed its current six-month stint holding the rotating European Council presidency as a peace mission. “You cannot make peace from a comfortable armchair in Brussels,” argued Orban.

“A cease-fire connected to a deadline would give a chance to speed up peace talks,” he suggested to Zelensky. This didn’t go over too well, of course. But Orban then moved on to Moscow. Putin indicated he wanted to take the opportunity to “discuss the nuances that have developed” over the conflict with Orban.

Putin wasn’t budging, though. He demanded that Ukraine pull its troops out of four eastern regions claimed but not fully controlled by Moscow. “We are talking about the full withdrawal of all troops from the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and from the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions,” Putin told Orban. 

Orban remained hopeful. “Even if the rotating EU Presidency has no mandate to negotiate on behalf of the EU, we cannot sit back and wait for the war to miraculously end. We will serve as an important tool in making the first steps towards peace. This is what our peace mission is about.”

Most EU members don’t agree. EU President Ursula von der Leyen warned that “appeasement will not stop Putin. Only unity and determination will pave the path to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”

The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, was more blunt, saying Orban does not represent the EU. Borrell’s incoming replacement, outgoing Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, insisted that Orban “in no way represents the EU or the EU’s positions.” She added that he “is exploiting the EU presidency to sow confusion.”

Still unfazed, Orban then flew to Beijing for talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Calling it “peace mission 3.0,” he described China as a stabilizing force amid global turmoil and praised its “constructive and important” peace initiatives.”

Xi, for his part, used Orban’s visit to call on the international community to “create conditions and provide assistance for the two sides to resume direct dialogue and negotiations.” China presents itself as a neutral party in the war, but strategic relations with Russia have strengthened since the invasion.

“Believe me: the next two or three months will be much more brutal than we think,” Orban predicted. He insisted that he is “not arguing about who is right and who is wrong” and his “aim is peace and a cease-fire.”   

 

Antisemitism is on the Rise Down Under

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Winnipeg] Jewish Post

As in other western countries, Australian Jews have been targeted by boycotts, harassment, and intimidation since the Gaza war began last October.

Throughout its history, Australia has been good to its Jewish community, which numbers more than 100,000 people today, with most living in Melbourne and Sydney.
From around 1947 to 1952, Australia took in more Holocaust survivors as a proportion of its population than any other country. Their children and grandchildren form more than half the community in Australia.

Being Jewish in Australia has never been seen as a bar to success. Yet since the Gaza war started, reports of antisemitism have spiked 700 per cent, including violent attacks.
Responding to pressure, on July 9 Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appointed Jillian Segal, the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, to be “special envoy to combat antisemitism in Australia” for three years.

There is an urgent necessity to overhaul laws about doxing, the intentional online exposure of an individual’s identity, private information, or personal details, which has had a disproportionate impact on Jewish individuals. Pro-Palestinian activists distributed a nearly 900-page transcript that they leaked from a private WhatsApp formed last year by Jewish writers, artists, musicians and academics.

For example, Josh Moshe, a 33-year-old grandson of Holocaust survivors, moved to Melbourne in 2010. He and his wife operated a well-known gift shop in Thornbury. He had never experienced problems before.

However, all of this rapidly changed after the WhatsApp group was doxed. “We were sworn at, the shop was graffitied with ‘Glory to Hamas,’ and ‘we don’t want Zionists in Thornbury,’” he said. As a result of such stories, the government plans to make the practice illegal.

Many politicians espouse openly anti-Israeli views. A video of Jenny Leong, an Australia Green Party member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, discussing how “the Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby” are using their “tentacles” to “influence power” went viral in early February.

Pro-Palestine encampments have come under increased scrutiny. A joint statement by protest organizers at 10 universities claims their movement has been peaceful and opposition to the state of Israel and Zionism as an ideology was not antisemitism.

“There needs to be more nuance around the conversation,” remarked David Slucki, associate professor at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilization at Monash University in Melbourne. “Our governments at the local, state, and federal level come out regularly in support of Jews and against antisemitism, which is something we have rarely seen throughout history. And yet I routinely hear people talk how similar the current situation is to 1930s Germany.”

On the other hand, a Monash colleague of his, Philip Mendes, Director of the Social Inclusion and Social Policy Research Unit, disagrees. “Australia has experienced an unprecedented outbreak of anti-Semitism,” he maintains. (Full disclosure: he and I have collaborated on a number of scholarly articles and books.)

Jewish university students and academics have been subjected to various forms of defamation, threats and hate speech by university-based encampments and associated forums, flyers and graffiti, which are intended to exclude them from academic and public discourse, he maintains. Many Jewish students and staff assembled in early May at Melbourne University Square, well away from the encampment, where some told stories about feeling intimidated on campus.

On May 9 the federal opposition Liberal Party’s education spokesperson, Sarah Henderson, claimed campuses had become “hotbeds of antisemitic activism” in “flagrant breach” of university policies. Mendes sees this as a new form of McCarthyism, like that experienced by Communists and other leftists during the Cold War.

Michael Gawenda, a well-known Australian journalist, was editor of the centre-left Melbourne Age for seven years from 1997-2004, and a foreign correspondent in both London and Washington. In an article published in the British periodical Fathom in February, he describes his anxiety over current events.

“The Labor Government in Australia has been all over the place on Israel and the Palestinians and on the Hamas-Israel war,” he explained.  “There are vital Labor-held seats in Sydney and Melbourne that have significant numbers of Muslim Australians, enough to swing election results.” It has meant that from Albanese on down, “there has been a failure to properly, unequivocally, call out what has clearly been an explosion of Jew hatred in Australia.”

Western Australian senator Fatima Payman, a devout Muslim born in Afghanistan, quit the Labor party recently in a major rupture with the Albanese government over Palestine. She used the politically charged phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which, she said, asserted “a desire for Palestinians to live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominating others nor being dominated.”

A close friend of mine, Michael Birkner, professor of history at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, has spent many sabbaticals in Melbourne over the past two decades. He agrees that the Labor Party in Australia is walking on eggshells about the war in Gaza.

“The intellectual community is pro-Palestinian, and there are thousands more voting Muslims in Australia’s cities than Jews.” A small community perhaps a fifth the size of the Muslim community, the Jewish community’s “political influence is scant, even as there are notable Jewish writers and elected officials.” Indeed, in so many ways, it resembles its sister community in Canada.

 

The Bloom is Off the Rose for the ANC

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled a new coalition government July 1, after his ruling African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary majority in the May 29 elections.

It includes eleven different parties in a power-sharing agreement. Ramaphosa put the best light on it, saying this government of national unity “is unprecedented in the history of our democracy.”

The ANC holds 20 out of 32 cabinet posts, while the pro-market Democratic Alliance (DA), until now the main opposition party, holds six. The other portfolios are shared amongst seven smaller parties. These appointments followed weeks of tense negotiations.

The ANC, led by Nelson Mandela came to power in 1994, ending decades of white-minority rule in South Africa. In May’s elections the party got 40 per cent of the vote, while the DA, it’s main new coalition partner, secured 21 per cent. This is the first time the ANC has been forced to share power.

The ANC electoral decline has been irreversible. They fell from 69 per cent of the vote in 2004 to 66 in 2009, then to 62 in 2014, and down to 57.50 per cent in 2019. The shrinking of ANC support in the elections reflected public frustration over its poor record on delivering basic services and tackling unemployment, poverty and corruption.

Some of its activists have criticized it for sharing power with the DA, which some see as representing white interests. The DA said it was “proud to rise to the challenge and take our place, for the first time, at the seat of national government.” The coalition government was welcomed by the business community who said it would ensure economic stability.

In the new cabinet, the ANC will keep key ministries such as defence, finance, and foreign affairs. The DA’s portfolios include home affairs, which controls immigration as well as public works. These have been at the centre of a series of corruption scandals. Party leader John Steenhuisen will lead the agriculture ministry.

“The incoming government will prioritise rapid, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and creation of a more just society,” declared Ramaphosa. He pledged “good governance, zero tolerance for corruption and pragmatic policymaking.”

How did things go so wrong for a party that was celebrated throughout the world 30 years ago? Rampant corruption under Ramaphosa’s predecessor, Jacob Zuma, has hollowed out the state. Nearly half of the population under the age of 34 is considered unemployed, while basic public services are either poor or non-existent, and this has fueled social instability, reinforcing xenophobic sentiments and resulting in dozens of deaths over the years.

Rolling power cuts, known as loadshedding, have become the new normal. Africa’s most industrialized nation had only 35 days in 2023 where the state-run power utility Eskom didn't have to cut power to some part of the country. The unpredictable power supply has a dramatic impact on everything from business to healthcare and schooling.

The gap between rich and poor keeps growing, even though the ANC made the issue a central concern when it came to power in 1994. Power and wealth still reside in a tiny minority, while poverty is extreme, making South Africa arguably the most unequal society in the world. The richest 20 per cent of the population hold nearly 70 per cent of the income. By contrast, the poorest 40 per cent of South Africans hold just seven per cent.

This has made South Africa one of the world’s most dangerous states. “Everywhere in the country, crime is the thing that people talk about, whether you’re black or white,” according to William Gumede, a political analyst who helped some of the opposition parties form a pre-election coalition pact. “It deprives South Africans from living a full life. It has sucked the soul out of the country.”

The progress made under the leadership of Mandela and his successor, Thabo Mbeki, stalled when Zuma took power in 2009. He was forced to quit as president in 2018 over corruption scandals. Billions was looted from the state, leaving almost every part of it bankrupt, from the national airline to the agency that ran the railways.

This helped the DA, which has gained a reputation for its relatively impressive management of Cape Town and Western Cape province. The DA also partnered with the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) led by Velenkosini Hlabisa, which, at four percent, is also now part of the governing coalition. Hlabisa assured IFP supporters the party would not “lose its identity” as they have worked in a coalition government before.

In this election, many younger people voted for the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), headed by firebrand Julius Malema, which ended the day with nine per cent. He was the ANC’s youth league leader when he was expelled in 2012 for advocating the nationalisation of mines and expropriation of land without compensation.

As for Zuma, he led a new party, Spear of the Nation (MK), which did surprisingly well in the elections, with 15 per cent of the vote, becoming the country’s third-largest party and taking a big chunk of votes from the ANC. Like the EFF, it will be part of the opposition in parliament.

But without revolutionary measures such as income and wealth redistribution, the deep social crisis will persist and get worse.