Legacies of Empire Fuel Conflict Among Southeast Asian States

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

It sounds at first like the plot of a comic opera: A group of men from a small Filipino island chain attack a Malaysian village on the nearby island of Borneo.

But there’s actually quite a long history behind this.

The Philippines, an archipelago of some 7,000 islands in Southeast Asia, was a Spanish colony for centuries, until lost to the United States in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War, it attained its independence in 1946.

Though most of its people are Roman Catholics, thanks to centuries of Spanish rule, the southern island of Mindanao is home to a large Muslim population. It has been the site of a long-term insurgency against the Manila government by rebels of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front, two groups seeking to create a Muslim state on Mindanao.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Sultanate of Sulu, a Muslim entity, controlled the southwestern part of Mindanao, the Sulu Islands off Mindanao, and the northeastern part of Borneo, the world’s third-largest island.

While Mindanao and the islands of the Sulu Sultanate came under the control of Spain and became part of the Philippines, Spain relinquished all claims to the part of Borneo which had belonged to the Sultanate in an agreement made with Great Britain and Germany in 1885.

The southern three-quarters of Borneo, known as Kalimantan, is part of Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, and it was ruled for centuries as part of the Dutch East Indies. The northern part, however, was divided into two British possessions, Sarawak and North Borneo, as well as the tiny Muslim protectorate of Brunei Darussalam.

North Borneo, which was proclaimed a British protectorate in 1888, included areas that had been under the jurisdiction of the Sulu Sultanate.

In 1963, Sarawak and North Borneo (now renamed Sabah), were joined with the former British colony of Malaya, the Muslim-majority peninsula across the South China Sea, as the Federation of Malaysia. Singapore was also, for a time, part of this new nation, though oil-rich Brunei never joined.

While Sabah is inhabited by numerous indigenous ethnic groups, about two-thirds are Muslim. Sarawak is the only state in Malaysia where Christians form a majority.

While the Sultanate of Sulu is no longer a sovereign state, many of its inhabitants still consider it a legitimate entity and recognize Jamalul Kiram III as sultan.

They also continue to claim Sabah, maintaining that it was only leased, not ceded, to the British North Borneo Company in the 19^th century, with the Sultan’s sovereignty never being relinquished.

The 1963 Manila Accord signed by the heads of Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, at the time Sabah became part of Malaysia, stated that “the inclusion of Sabah in the Federation of Malaysia will not prejudice the interest of parties concerned until the issue of the Sabah claim is finally resolved by the United Nations.” This has not happened.

The Philippines broke diplomatic relations with Malaysia after the Federation had included Sabah in 1963; Malaysia, in turn, asserted that the people of North Borneo had been polled and supported joining the Federation.

Not wishing to continue the quarrel over territory with Malaysia, the Manila government has not pressed its claim in recent years. (For a time in the 1960s Indonesia, too, had claimed the entire island of Borneo and launched armed incursions into Malaysian territory.)

So supporters of the Sulu royal house decided to take matters into their own hands. Calling themselves the Royal Army of the Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo, about 200 men attacked and occupied the coastal Sabah village of Tanduo on February 12 in order to reaffirm their claim to Sabah. Some members of the Moro National Liberation Front were also involved.

After days of sporadic fighting between the invaders and Malaysian forces, government troops mounted a full-scale assault on Tanduo at the end of the month and retook the village. “Our patience has reached the limit,” Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia declared.

Supporters of the Sultanate criticized Philippine President Benigno Aquino III for saying that the incursion into Sabah was triggered by self-interest and that the invaders had not considered the welfare of the 800,000 Filipinos working in Sabah.

However, Aquino affirmed the country’s claim on Sabah, stating that his administration would pursue it through dialogue and diplomacy.

Meanwhile, lawyers acting for the Sultanate of Sulu are preparing charges against Malaysia for usurpation of authority and illegal development of natural wealth in Sabah. They will be seeking a $25 billion “fine” from the Malaysian government before the International Court of Justice.

So this obscure, centuries-old territorial dispute, like so many others, will continue to fester and remain an issue between Malaysia and the Philippines, providing one more source of instability in Southeast Asia.

Where Is Cuba Heading as Castro Era Draws to a Close?

Henry Srebrnik [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In the 1960s, many people around the world were inspired by the Cuban Revolution. It was the first state that had proclaimed itself a socialist society in the Americas, and the North American New Left looked to Cuba as a model for the Third World; some went to Cuba as volunteers. (Later, the Vietnam War would become its focus of attention.)

Many African-American intellectuals, then fighting for civil rights in the segregationist American South, were particularly enthusiastic, as Cuba proclaimed the elimination of racial discrimination as its official policy.

On New Year's Day 1959, the 26th of July Movement led by Fidel Castro and Ernesto ‘Che' Guevara had marched into Havana after more than two years of guerrilla warfare, and the dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country.

The exuberant revolutionaries proceeded to nationalize agriculture and industry - mostly American-owned - at breakneck speed. As Washington reacted with economic and military pressure, including the failed April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, Cuba turned to the Soviet Union for help and protection and later that year Castro proclaimed himself a Marxist-Leninist.

Cuba had become, as far as the U.S. was concerned, an outpost of ‘Soviet imperialism'.
As we know, the closest the Cold War came to becoming a nuclear conflagration was during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Indebted to the Soviets, in the 1970s Cuban troops fought on behalf of left-wing regimes in Angola, Ethiopia and Mozambique, as surrogates for the Soviet Union. Communism, for many, appeared to be on the march.

Cuba back then saw itself as a vanguard of Marxist revolution - though when Guevara had tried to incite one in Bolivia, he was killed for his trouble in 1967. (Dead almost 46 years now, his image remains ubiquitous, thanks to the posters of him so many students had taped onto their dorm walls back then!)

Like many, I was caught up in the enthusiasm over Cuba. In the late 1960s, I wrote my MA thesis in political science at McGill University on Cuban-American relations.

I spent 10 days in Cuba in late December 1975, at a time when few North Americans could travel to the country. (I flew in via Jamaica.) I was able to walk around Havana, travel on buses, and speak to people at the university, without any hindrance.

The First Congress of the Communist Party was being held, December 17-22, and the various parks and sides of buildings were festooned with revolutionary slogans. The old Havana Hilton had been renamed the Hotel Habana Libre and was a hive of activity at the time.

This is all, so to speak, now ancient history. Announcing that "history is on our side" is a foolhardy enterprise. The Soviet Union and its east European allies were themselves nothing but history by 1991, leaving Cuba economically adrift. Very hard years followed, a time that came to be known as the "Special Period."

To survive, Cuba has in many ways reverted to what it was prior to the revolution.

The country now allows for self-employment, freer travel, and the buying and selling of homes and cars.

Small businesses have sprung up everywhere. Tourism once again has become a mainstay of the economy, and foreign capital, from Canada, Spain, and elsewhere has flowed in.

Many socially unsavoury practices have followed in its wake, and (despite the continuing American trade embargo) the U.S. dollar is again king, fuelling an underground economy. The health and education systems, too, have suffered declines.

The country has moved backward in terms of race relations as well.

Cuba was a Spanish-ruled sugar plantation economy, with a largely black workforce, until the Spanish-American War of 1898. Slavery had only been abolished a decade earlier.

After independence in 1902 little changed. The population of African descent remained at the bottom of the economic and political ladder and whites at the top, with Mulattoes (of mixed European and African lineage) in between.

In the years following the triumph of the revolution the Cuban government was one of the world's most dedicated regimes in the fight against discrimination. It achieved significant gains in racial equality through a series of egalitarian reforms in the 1960s.

But today things are different - Afro-Cubans are often excluded from positions in tourism related jobs, where they could earn tips in hard currencies. They are relegated to poor housing.

"The government hasn't allowed racial prejudice to be debated or confronted politically or culturally, often pretending instead as though it didn't exist," contends essayist Roberto Zurbano in a recent article in the New York Times. After all, it's a socialist country!

Meanwhile, the aging and ailing Fidel Castro handed over power to his brother Raul in 2008, and the latter has said he will step down in 2018.

What happens then? Many older Cubans in the largely white anti-Communist expatriate community in Miami foresee a triumphant return to their homeland, but it's doubtful that they will ever regain control of the country.

It is more likely that post-Castro Cuba will become a country with a mixed economy and a pluralist political system, on the Scandinavian model.

Some of the Reasons Why Nations Fail

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

 “Inclusive economic institutions that enforce property rights, create a level playing field, and encourage investments in new technologies and skills are more conducive to economic growth than extractive economic institutions that are structured to extract resources from the many by the few.”

This is the thesis propounded by economist Daron Acemoglu and political scientist James A. Robinson, in their book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty,” published last year.

In countries with “extractive” economies, those in power destroy incentives and discourage innovation by creating an uneven playing field.

The elites who gain from the extraction also benefit from rigged political institutions, “wielding their power to tilt the system for their benefit.”

However, this inevitably produces instability and failure because it creates the motivation for others to depose the existing elites and take over, often through a coup d’etat. One set of exploiters succeeds another.

So states that are at the mercy of “extractive” economic institutions eventually collapse, the authors contend.

They cite numerous examples to illustrate their argument.

North Korea is a kleptocracy controlled by the armed forces and the Kim family, and its economic institutions make it almost impossible for people to own property. The state controls everything, so people don’t work for themselves, thereby destroying their incentive to succeed.

Such a regime, regardless of its military prowess, will never acquire legitimacy, whereas its South Korean neighbour has created a society with economic institutions that “encourage private property, uphold contracts,” and allows for “the entry of new businesses that can bring new technologies to life.”

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who ruled from 1981 until deposed on 2011, allowed big businessmen known as the “whales” to use their power to create monopolies and block the entry of new people and firms.

This, the authors note, blocked opportunities for the vast mass of Egyptians to move out of poverty. The country’s economic future remains precarious.

Libya’s Gadhafi family looted their country’s resources, to its detriment. Oil-rich states are particularly prone to this type of behaviour on the part of despots.

Central American countries like El Salvador and Guatemala, where small elites rule over an impoverished peasantry and appropriate most of the wealth, also make sustainable growth next to impossible.

In other places, the problems result from the failure to maintain an effective state, assert Acemoglu and Robinson. In such circumstances, there is no hope of providing order, a system of laws, a market economy, property rights, mechanisms for resolving disputes, or basic public goods. Many African countries, such as the Congo and Somalia, fall into this category.

Countries with extractive economic and political institutions may achieve temporary success – the Soviet Union was one such case – but they eventually stagnate.

The authors emphasize that none of this is preordained; human agency is always involved. Had a rising economic class in Britain in the 17th century been unable to overcome a repressive monarchy, for example, things might have gone in a very different direction. Whereas Russia might have followed a more “inclusive” path after 1917, had the Communists not seized power.

So the jury is still out on whether China can continue its present rate of growth. It is contingent on the path its rulers will follow.

In a nutshell, Acemoglu and Robinson argue that the wealth of a country depends on the degree to which the average person can participate in economic opportunities and share in the overall growth of its economy.

Economic opportunity sustains political democracy. This is a lesson even some developed nations seem to have forgotten in recent years.

Contending Territorial Claims are a Result of the Vestiges of Empire

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Boundary disputes and land claims often simmer between countries long after the major powers that collided over these regions are gone.

Two of the world’s largest empires, those of Great Britain and Spain, are, to all intents and purposes, no more. But in some cases, successor independent countries have continued the fight.

These claims and counter-claims stretch back centuries and often involve recourse to colonial maps and treaties as interpreted by each side to back its own position.

The best-known of these conflicts involves the Argentinian claim to the Falkland Islands, where a referendum held on March 10-11 reaffirmed the islanders’ desire to remain British.

But there are others. One vestige of the colonial demarcation of frontiers in South America concerns the old colony of British Guiana, which became independent as Guyana in 1966. Its western border with Venezuela continues to be a bone of contention (as does its eastern one with the former Dutch colony of Suriname).

The Guyana-Venezuela border largely follows theSchomburgk Line, so called after the German-born British explorer who sketched it in 1840.

The Venezuelans, however, have long maintained that the Essequibo River, further east, not the Schomburgk Line, is their natural eastern boundary. The area in between the line and the river, referred to as Guayana Esequiba on Venezuelan maps, covers fully 62 per cent of Guyana’s territory of 214,970 square kilometres!

In 1899 the dispute went to international arbitration. A tribunal, composed of two American, two British and two Russian judges, ruled largely in favor of the British. But Venezuela claimed they were biased.

Guyana’s 756,040 inhabitants consist mostly of English-speaking Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese, who consider themselves to be part of the Caribbean, not Latin America, and resist the idea of having part of their country absorbed by Spanish-speaking Venezuela.

Venezuela maintains its position to this day, though two years ago President Hugo Chavez declared that Guyana and Venezuela were “two sister nations” and that the issue would be treated “in a responsible way.” It’s uncertain whether his recent death will change things.

A similar story in Central America involves Guatemala and the old colony of British Honduras, which gained its independence in 1981 as Belize.

This small nation of 356,000 English-speaking inhabitants in an area of 22,966 square kilometres, bordering Mexico and Guatemala, also considers itself more Caribbean than Latin American.

Most Belizeans are of multiracial descent, with Mestizos (mixed Mayan-Europeans) and Kriols, of African background, making up a majority of the population.

While all of Central America was part of the Spanish Empire from the 16th century onwards, the Spanish never settled in this region, however, and increased British trade and settlement finally resulted in British Honduras being formally annexed as a crown colony in 1862.

Meanwhile, Guatemala had declared its independence from Spain in 1821, and under the terms of the Anglo-Guatemalan Treaty of 1859, Guatemala agreed to recognize British rule, while Great Britain promised to build a road from Guatemala to the Caribbean port of Punta Gorda.

As this never happened, the territory of Belize has been claimed in whole or in part by Guatemala since 1940. When Belize became a sovereign state, the territorial dispute remained unresolved. Currently, Guatemala claims everything south of the Sibun River, a total 12,272 square kilometres – more than half the country.

There have been periodic border clashes, but this past January the two countries signed an accord agreeing to refer their territorial dispute to the International Court of Justice for binding resolution. (Voters in both countries must still ratify the accord in referenda this coming October before it can be sent to the Court for final settlement.)

Then there is Gibraltar. Still a British possession, it is located at the western entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. It has an area of 6.8 square kilometres and borders Spain itself. At the foot of the Rock of Gibraltar sits the densely populated city area, home to almost 30,000 people.

Acquired by Britain from Spain “in perpetuity” by the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, following the War of the Spanish Succession, Gibraltar guarded the sea lanes that led to the Suez Canal, at the other end, and the passageway to India.

Spain continues to lay claim to Gibraltar. Its dictator General Francisco Franco closed the land border in 1969, to put pressure on Britain. In 1982, it was reopened and in 2006 the Spanish government agreed to relax border controls.

Today, while Gibraltar’s strategic value to Britain is gone, its inhabitants, the descendants of Britons, Indians, Italians, Maltese, Moroccans, Sephardic Jews, and Spaniards, do not want to become Spanish.

In referenda held in 1967 and 2002, they have overwhelmingly reaffirmed their desire to remain British. But recovering Gibraltar remains a stated objective of successive Spanish governments.

The legacy of imperial rule still haunts many parts of the world.

The Falkland Islands Remain Resolutely British

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Two of the world’s largest empires, those of Great Britain and Spain, left behind many contested areas. The best-known of these conflicts involves Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands, a 12,170 square kilometre archipelago located in the South Atlantic some 500 kilometres east of the mainland.

Over the past 400 years, the Falkland Islands, home to 2,841 people, have been variously claimed by the Dutch, the French, the Spanish, the Argentinians and the British.

In January, Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, declared that the islands had been forcibly stripped from Argentina in “a blatant exercise of 19th century colonialism,” and accused Britain of defying a United Nations resolution by not holding negotiations on the handover of sovereignty to Argentina.

In response, the people of the Falkland Islands on March 10-11 again spoke of their desire to remain an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. They cast their ballots in a referendum in which they voted overwhelmingly to remain British.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said that Argentina should take “careful note” of the referendum result and that Britain would always be there to defend the Islanders.

“We believe in self-determination. The Falkland Islanders have spoken so clearly about their future and now other countries right across the world, I hope, will respect and revere this very, very clear result,” he remarked.

The Argentinian claim to the Malvinas, as they call the islands, is based on the fact that the Falklands had been Spanish possessions prior to their occupation by Britain in 1833. Spain had ruled the islands intermittently as part of its American empire and Argentina, after declaring its independence from Spain in 1816, was in control of the islands for a brief period.

Buenos Aires contends that the principle of self-determination is not applicable since the current inhabitants are not aboriginal and were brought in to replace the previous population.

On April 2, 1982, Argentine forces invaded and occupied the islands. The resulting conflict lasted 74 days and ended with the Argentine surrender on June 14, 1982. During the conflict, 649 Argentinian and 255 British military personnel died.

While there have been no further attempts to conquer the Falklands, Argentina has persuaded South American neighbours to turn away Falklands-flagged ships, curtailed over-flights and imposed sanctions on companies that exploit the resources of the islands. Its constitution maintains its claim over the islands.

This dispute, protracted as it is, will remain an ongoing concern for many more years.

What Does the Future Hold for Northern Ireland?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer:

The official name of the country usually referred to as Great Britain is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It consists of England, Scotland, Wales, and the six predominantly Protestant counties in Ulster that remained part of the UK when the rest of Ireland, where Catholics were a majority, attained independence in 1922.

Ireland, for centuries ruled by Britain, had been incorporated as an integral part of the United Kingdom in 1801, when the Cross of St. Patrick was added to those of St. George and St. Andrew on the Union Jack, and Ireland was given representation in the Westminster Parliament in London.

Throughout the 19th century, though, Irish Catholics sought to govern themselves, either through “Home Rule,” a form of autonomy within the British state, or outright independence. Home rule opponents whipped up opposition with slogans like “Home rule is Rome rule.” Full sovereignty, on the other hand, became the rallying cry of Sinn Fein and its Irish Republican Army.

Following the First World War and the 1916 Easter Rising, the Irish War of Independence of 1919-1921 forced Britain into signing the Anglo-Irish Treaty. But Ireland was partitioned, and only 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties (including three from Ulster) formed the Irish Free State. (It became the Republic of Ireland in 1949.)

In Northern Ireland, the Protestant majority retained their ties with Britain, with their own assembly at Stormont. “We are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State,” announced its first prime minister. In this “Orange State,” Roman Catholics remained second-class citizens, discriminated against politically and economically.

Ever since the partition, a key aspiration of Irish nationalists has been to bring about a united Ireland and erase the border, while Unionists, who consider themselves “British” and prefer to call the province “Ulster,” wish to remain part of the UK.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Catholics in Northern Ireland began to rebel against their situation. Violence on both sides, during the “Troubles,” resulted in the deaths of more than 3,600 people, with another 107,000 injured.

Finally, in 1998, the Belfast -- or Good Friday -- Agreement was signed by the governments of Britain and Ireland, and ratified by referenda in both the Irish Republic and in Northern Ireland. It created a power-sharing system between Catholic (Republican) and Protestant (Unionist) parties in the Northern Irish Assembly.

It also stated that Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom until a majority of the people of Northern Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland wished otherwise. Should that happen, then the British and Irish governments are under “a binding obligation” to implement that choice.

The agreement thus acknowledges that Northern Ireland is not a permanent and inalienable part of the United Kingdom; its political future is contingent on the will of a majority of its population, which now numbers 1,789,000. (The Republic has 4,588,252 people.)

When the province was created, Protestants were the great majority of the population, but in the succeeding decades, the proportion of people in the Catholic community has increased. Today, they comprise 45 per cent of the population, and they now outnumber Protestants in half of Northern Ireland’s 26 districts. (In the south, about 84 per cent are Catholics.)

Protestant fears of being eventually outnumbered surfaced recently. In early December, the Belfast City Council decided to reduce the number of days the Union Jack would fly over the Council building. This was made possible by the fact that nationalists now hold 24 seats on the council, compared with 21 for the Unionists, reflecting the rapid growth of the Catholic population.

Weeks of Loyalist Protestant demonstrations have followed: firebombs and rocks were hurled at churches, police cars and lawmakers’ offices; and neighborhoods were sealed off by police or protesters’ barricades.

Ulster Protestants fear that Britain – England in particular -- is losing interest in them. The Protestants who settled Ulster from the 17th century on came mostly from Scotland, and Presbyterians form the largest Protestant denomination. Geographically, Northern Ireland is very close to Scotland, not England and Wales.

So in cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, many people might not be all that unhappy were the province left to its own devices.

Such attitudes would only intensify were Scotland itself ever to leave the UK -- a referendum on independence is scheduled there for next year.  A rump “United Kingdom of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland” would look absurd.

Should the UK dissolve, die-hard Unionists in Ulster might opt for a unilateral declaration of independence, but this would, needless to say, be resisted by the Catholics, who would of course prefer joining the Irish Republic. (This would also be the preferred option in Dublin.) 

All of this would most likely lead to yet another round of “Troubles,” even worse than the previous ones.

Our Growing Concern for Animal Rights

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Referring to the recent brutal killing of some fifty seals on a beach in eastern P.E.I., and the 2010 incident involving snowmobilers who harassed and killed a fox, Jane Thomas, in a March 1 Guardian letter to the editor, asserted that “violence towards animals is a symptom of lack of compassion toward all beings.”

A day earlier, an opinion piece by Elizabeth Schoales criticized “the utilitarian animal welfare model that underpins our existing laws, a model that categorizes animals based on our subjective interpretation of their value to humans. The level of suffering that we are legally allowed to inflict on them is measured against our perceived -- often simply imagined -- benefit to ourselves.”

This manner of thinking, she argues, “has little to do with any impartial moral obligation to protect other species from harm.”

Our concern for other sentient beings, including those which are slaughtered for food, has become more pronounced in recent decades. Indeed, many people have opted to become vegetarians, or even vegans, as a result.

I think we are witnessing a paradigm shift in the way we perceive our relationship with animals, one that is similar to previous changes in the way we perceive other human beings.

Since the beginning of recorded history, certain classes of people were regarded, like animals today, as property.

Until very recent history, women were treated as the possession of men, with few rights to property or the right to hold office.

It many countries, including Canada, they could not even vote a century ago. It took a great amount of political work by suffragists and others, to rectify this.

As well, chattel slavery was considered entirely acceptable as recently as the 19th century. The United States almost fell apart in a horrific civil war over this issue.

Today it seems incredible to us that anyone could condone the idea of owning another person and having the power of life and death over them.

How do such changes in attitude occur? Obviously, they involve a great transformation in bedrock moral values by vast numbers of people – indeed, the legal system usually plays “catch-up” with such ideological shifts.

In his book Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, Niall Ferguson traces this incredible shift regarding slavery, noting that “it is not easy to explain so profound a change in the ethics of a people.”

The same country that, for hundreds of years, condoned, and got rich from, the slave trade, by the late 18th century took to heart the admonitions of abolitionists like William Wilberforce, grew ashamed of its disregard for human life, and became an advocate for the eradication of this evil.

Let’s hope that our increasing concern for the welfare of animals will produce similar results.

When Was the State of Israel Established?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

When was the State of Israel established?

The official answer is easy: David Ben-Gurion, on behalf of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, proclaimed the formation of the Jewish state on May 14, 1948, as the British were pulling down the Union Jack and departing Palestine, which they had governed as a League of Nations Mandate after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.

But modern Israel is, in many ways, older than that. The World Zionist Organization, created by Theodor Herzl in1897, had been building the infrastructure of a Jewish country for many decades. 

One document on the road to statehood was the Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917. Signed by the British foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, it stated that Britain was “in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The text of the Mandate for Palestine (which incorporated the 1917 Balfour Declaration) was approved by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922 and Britain became the official Mandatory power. Jews arrived in Palestine, building cities, farms, and infrastructure – a de facto state.

One can also point to the Nov. 29, 1947 passage, by a vote of 33-13, with 10 abstentions, of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states to follow the termination of the Mandate. Among those in favour were the Soviet Union and the United States. The resolution was accepted by the Jews in Palestine but rejected by the Arabs.

Yet, to my mind, there is yet another, symbolic, date that predates the formal establishment of the state, though it is a day that surely ranks among the darkest in Jewish history.

By the end of 1942, most of the Jews of Poland, herded into ghettos after the Nazi conquest of the country in 1939, had been murdered in Hitler’s Holocaust. Those that remained, in cities such as Bialystok, Częstochowa, Vilna (Vilnius), and Warsaw, were mostly younger people, who knew the fate that awaited them, and, though knowing they could not prevail against the might of the Nazi war machine, were determined to fight.

In Warsaw, members of the Revisionist Zionist movement formed the Jewish Military Union (Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy, or ZZW), and began to acquire arms, much of it from the mainstream Polish underground, the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK). On the left, a number of political groups organized the Jewish Combat Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or ZOB); they gained some help from the Polish Communist-led Gwardia Ludowa militia.

When Nazi SS troops entered the ghetto in mid-January 1943, to deport more Jews to their deaths, they were met with gunfire and Molotov cocktails, and were forced to retreat.

Furious, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, on Feb. 16 ordered the entire ghetto destroyed. Two months later, the assault began. Though of course completely outnumbered and outgunned, the Warsaw Jews fought against these overwhelming odds for a month.

As the ghetto was being demolished, some Jews managed to escape through underground sewers into Warsaw proper, but at least13,000 were killed in the battle (almost half burnt alive  in the collapsing buildings set on fire by the Nazis.

However, on April 19, 1943, during the battle, the ZZW raised two flags atop the highest building in the ghetto:  the red-and-white Polish Eagle and the blue-and-white Zionist banner (today’s Israeli flag). That day, too, should be considered one of the founding dates of Israel.

An "English Canada" in the South Pacific

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

An American friend of mine who teaches at a Pennsylvania college is in Australia on sabbatical at the moment. It’s his third time in the country and he loves it. Who wouldn't? The “lucky country” has, in most areas, a benign semi-tropical climate, unlike our more frigid one – and it’s summer “down under” right now.

It got me thinking about the other ways Canada and Australia differ. Along with different colonial experiences, these are the two most obvious ones: Australia does not have a distinct “country” within it such as Quebec, with its own culture, language, and sense of nationhood; and it is not next to the United States, and therefore endlessly (especially in English Canada) trying to differentiate itself from America.

When its six colonies formed the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, none was a former European colony that had been conquered by the British. It has no equivalent to Quebec (or for that matter, the old Afrikaner republics in South Africa).

In many ways Australia is more “British” than Canada. The country retains its ensign flag, with the Union Jack in the upper left. Cars drive on the left side of the road. There are double-decker buses in the cities. Cricket and rugby are major sports. Even the accent is far more British than Canada’s.

On the other hand Australia has a far greater sense of nationalism. Its constitution, unlike ours, never required amendment by the British parliament.  There are no endless ruminations about “identity” -- a perpetual Canadian pastime. And its national culture remains more robustly “militaristic” than ours.

Australia’s political system is a hybrid of the American and British ones. Its lower House of Representatives is elected by population, but its upper house, the Senate, is also an elected body, representing the states. It has a classical two-party system, with a permanent Liberal Party-National Party Coalition – similar to Britain's Tories -- on the right, and a Labour Party on the left. The latter is in power at the moment.

Unlike Canada, which lives in the shadow of its neighbouring superpower, and hence has in recent decades made a virtue of a mild form of pacifism, Australia is the South Pacific’s hegemonic power. Indeed, it even governed colonies, including the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, which only gained its independence in 1975, as Papua New Guinea.

Canberra, unlike Ottawa, participated in the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. In more recent years, it has become a “Pacific policeman,” sending troops at various times to neighbouring islands in turmoil, such as East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

Aboriginal peoples have been -- and in many ways still are -- treated badly in both countries. Since the beginning of European settlement in 1788, Australia's indigenous peoples have at various times been murdered en masse, herded into reserves, and marginalized, with virtually no rights. Few could vote until the 1960s.

Both Canada and Australia were, until the 1960s, also quite racist in their immigration policies. In fact, in Australia, there was an explicit “white Australia” policy. But this has changed, and today cities like Melbourne and Sydney are vibrant, multicultural places. Trade with Pacific powers like China and Japan are essential to the country’s economic well-being.

By looking at the trajectory of Australian history, we can get a glimpse of the Canada that might have been, had it been founded as a confederation without Quebec, and far from the United States.

Two African Countries That Descended into Anarchy

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Two small countries adjacent to each other along the northwest coast of Africa have histories very different from those of their neighbours.

The populations of most African states consist of the indigenous people who lived within their current borders before the advent of European colonialism.

But Liberia and Sierra Leone were both founded as places where former Black slaves from North America could start new lives in their ancestral continent.

Liberia was mainly the creation of the American Colonization Society. Settlement of freed slaves from the United States began in 1822, and by 1867, the Society had assisted in the movement of more than 13,000 Americans to Liberia.

In 1847, these Americo-Liberians were able to establish a republic. Nominally independent, it was in effect an American protectorate, governed for some 150 years by the descendents of the Americans who had brought with them the culture of the U.S. south.

The capital, Monrovia, was named in honour of American President James Monroe, a prominent supporter of the colonization project, while Buchanan, the third-largest city, was named for an early governor who was a cousin of another American president, James Buchanan. The country’s flag is a one-star version of Old Glory.

Sierra Leone became a British colony in 1808, and gained its independence in 1961. In 1787, Britain had started to resettle Black Loyalists from the American colonies who had been freed in exchange for their services during the American Revolution, in the new capital, Freetown.

The Crown also offered resettlement to former slaves who had settled in Nova Scotia; they would have a profound influence on the emerging Creole culture. As well, some colonists came from the Caribbean or from England itself.

Both countries would later be undone by ethnic strife. First destabilized by military coups, the civil wars that followed ushered in years of chaos, violence and mass murder.

Although founded by freed American Blacks, Liberia is mostly inhabited by indigenous Africans, with the slaves’ descendants comprising just five per cent of the population.

So in 1980, when President William Tolbert was overthrown by Sergeant Samuel Doe, a member of the indigenous Krahn people who had suffered discrimination at the hands of the Americo-Liberian elite, it marked the end of dominance by the minority.

But things got worse. By the late 1980s, Doe’s arbitrary rule had led to economic collapse, and a former political ally of his, Charles Taylor, formed an opposition group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia. His armed militia overran much of the countryside, entering the capital in 1990 and killing Doe.

Taylor not only took control of Liberia, but also became involved with a civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone. He was finally forced out in 2003, but not before an estimated 250,000 Liberians were killed.

Eventually extradited to the Hague, Taylor in 2012 was convicted by a special tribunal of war crimes as a result of his involvement in the Sierra Leone civil war, and sentenced to 50 years in prison.

In Sierra Leone, the descendants of the Creole, or Krio, settlers, who continued to arrive in Freetown until 1855, today comprise just two per cent of the country’s population.

The country’s civil war began in 1991 with an invasion led by Foday Sankoh, of ethnic Temne and Lokko background. His Revolutionary United Front promised to end the domination of the country by the Freetown elite, considered corrupt and incompetent by many in the country.

But the RUF soon became more interested in the money to be made from the sale of “blood diamonds” and plundered the country’s resources. The fighting, which included incredible atrocities visited on people by the RUF, lasted about a decade. At least 70,000 people died; some estimates are much higher.

In 2000, amid increasing evidence of massive human rights violations, British forces were sent to the country by then Prime Minister Tony Blair and defeated the RUF. Sankoh was indicted for multiple war crimes but died in prison in 2003 before the trial took place.

The current president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is obviously America’s choice. Educated in the U. S., she had served in the administration of Tolbert before leaving the country after Doe’s coup. She then worked as an economist at the World Bank in Washington. First elected president in 2005, she subsequently won re-election in 2011 in a vote that was boycotted by the opposition.

In Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma, a former insurance executive, won a second term as president in 2012. He has said that he is still thankful to Tony Blair for the role Britain played in securing peace for Sierra Leone, and the British are playing a major part in rebuilding the country’s economy.

In a sense, Liberia and Sierra Leone have come full circle. Both are again under the tutelage of their former patrons, the U.S. and Britain.

A Political Philosopher's Analysis of Nazi Totalitarianism

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

It has now been half a century since the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, a refugee from Nazi Germany who became a distinguished American academic, published Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

It was based on the New Yorker articles she wrote while covering the trial of Adolph Eichmann, one of the architects of Hitler’s genocide.

He had been captured by Israeli agents in Argentina in 1960. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, war crimes, and membership in an outlawed organization, and was executed in 1962.

The book, published in 1963, has been the subject of heated controversy ever since. Arendt, who died in 1975, and who has herself been the subject of many books since, was accused of a lack of sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust, as well as of portraying Eichmann as a bureaucrat who simply followed orders, rather than a vicious anti-Semite.

Arendt’s views on Nazism as a major failing of European civilization can be found in seminal works written prior to Eichmann in Jerusalem, including The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951; The Human Condition, which came out in 1958; and the 1961collection Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought.

Arendt saw the curse of totalitarianism emerging out of mass movements, which trampled historical traditions, and were dismissive of private property and limited government.

The group, be it one of class, ethnicity, or religion, destroys, as she wrote in The Human Condition, “the paradoxical plurality of unique beings,” eventually eliminating the realm of freedom. Under Nazism, a homogenous society of “blood and soil” supplants individual difference.       

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt asserted that this loss of individual identity creates a totalitarian society in which “each individual knows that he lives or dies for the preservation of the species,” and leads to the “volkish” community of “race” envisaged by Hitler. It also creates the “mass man” – people such as Eichmann and SS commander Heinrich Himmler – for whom traditional morality becomes meaningless.

The primitive and “biological” category of race, rather than nation, becomes the principle of the body politic, contended Arendt, and bureaucracy becomes the means of rule. From this tribalism comes the grotesque theory of “the superman whose natural destiny it is to rule the world.”

For the Nazis, terror and mass murder become necessary, she stated, since the forces of “nature” and “history” must not be impeded in the course of the implementation of the ideal civilization, the so-called “Thousand Year Reich.”

No relativist, Arendt, in Between Past and Future, observed that the totalitarian impulse had introduced a “radical evil” in the world, one that constituted a break in the history of civilization. If there was no empirical reality, but rather the propagation of ideological claims that could be totally mad, this meant “quite literally that everything is possible not only in the realm of ideas but in the field of reality itself.”

Crimes such as the Holocaust were therefore so immense, she maintained, that they could not be judged by normal moral standards, and the murderers, too, were unprecedented in human history.

A true political conservative, Arendt cautioned that authority should always imply “an obedience in which men retain their freedom.” It remains prudent to always heed this advice.

Israel's Election Produces No Clear Winner

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Israel’s electoral system is a pure party-list proportional representation one. There are no individual constituencies. Instead, each party presents a list of candidates and the electors vote for the party list, and not for a particular person on the list.

The parties gain seats in the 120-member parliament in direct proportion to the overall national vote they received. If a party gains ten percent of the vote, they will have 12 members in the Knesset.

Obviously, there are some advantages to such a process: no votes are “wasted,” assuming a party passes a threshold and wins at least two per cent of the overall vote total.

But the disadvantages are glaring. The result is a multi-party system based on coalition governments, as no party has ever won a majority of seats in a national election. Parties rise and fall, winning large numbers of seats in one election and then virtually disappearing in the next.

The Jan. 22 election followed this pattern. Two parties that didn’t even exist a few years ago emerged as major players this time around.

One of them is Yesh Atid (There is a Future), which took 19 seats and has become the second-largest party in the Knesset, after first-place Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing Likud-Yisrael Beitenu coalition, which lost 11 seats and ended up with only 31 – obviously very far from a majority.

Yesh Atid’s leader, Yair Lapid, is a media personality and the son of the late journalist and politician Yosef Lapid, who once led a similar party years ago. Founded last year, Yesh Atid is a centrist and secularist party.

The party’s stance regarding the issue of relations with the Palestinians is somewhat oblique, though it does support the so-called “two-state solution.” Domestically, Yesh Atid’s demands include better public education and more equitable economic policies.

The other big winner is a new right-wing party, Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) led by Naftali Bennett, with 12 seats. Formed in 2008, its program calls for eventual annexation of the West Bank and much of its support comes from the Jewish settlements there.

Three predominantly Israeli Arab parties also got a combined total of 11 seats.

The venerable Labour Party won a respectable 15 seats and its leader, Shelly Yachimovich, will probably become leader of the opposition. Kadima, which as recently as 2006 was the largest party in parliament with 29 seats, and led a coalition government, barely made the two percent threshold this time, with two seats. It is now the smallest party in the Knesset.

Most observers see Lapid as the chief power broker in the formation of the next governing coalition. His vote came predominantly from the Tel Aviv area, Israel’s biggest (and most liberal) city.

Should Netanyahu ask Lapid to join him in a broad coalition, it will move Israeli politics to the left of where it has been in recent years. (And it would also probably gain the support of two smaller left-centre groupings, Hatnuah and Meretz, which have 12 seats between them.)

On the other hand, the prime minister might lurch further to the political right, by asking Bennett to join a coalition government, with the hope that the religious parties and others provide it with parliamentary support.

The next few weeks will be a political juggling act for Netanyahu.

But he’s been through this before.

Algerian Hostage Drama Highlights Crisis in Sahel Region

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The Algerian hostage crisis is now over – though at great cost. At least 38 foreign workers were killed at the Tiguentourine natural gas complex in the Sahara Desert that was overrun by Islamic militants last week, before Algerian troops managed to retake the plant.

The mastermind behind the attack was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian with links to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

This well-armed group originated with Algerian Islamists who fought against their government during the bloody civil conflict of the 1990s. At least 150,000 people were killed in that war.
The recent events in Algeria are connected to the situation in Mali, to its south, because al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is now active in Mali, as well as in neighbouring Mauritania, Niger and Chad.

Following a coup in Mali’s capital, Bamako, last year, Islamists took control of its vast Saharan north. They imposed a reign of terror and have destroyed priceless treasures in the fabled city of Timbuktu and other towns.

As well, the nomadic Tuaregs in Mali’s north – at first allied with the Islamists – want to create their own state, Azawad, which would comprise more than half of the country’s territory.

The French army is now engaged in a full-scale effort to regain northern Mali from these groups, who acquired large amounts of military hardware from Libya in the chaos that ensued after the collapse of the Gadhafi regime.

But Mali is just one of a number of fragile states across the vast semi-arid belt of Africa known as the Sahel region, which extends from Mauritania in the west to Sudan in the east. Most were part of the colonial holdings of France until the 1960s.

They are all extremely poor, and subject to recurring drought and famine – a perfect recipe for extremism.

In Mauritania, south of Algeria and west of Mali, President Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz survived an apparent assassination attempt last October.

He came to power in a military coup in 2008 – the third since 2002. The military has been involved in nearly every government since the country became independent from France in 1960.

The country’s Arabized rulers have long discriminated against its Black African population – indeed, slavery was only abolished in the early 1980s. Human rights abuses are the norm.

East of Mali and also south of Algeria lies Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries, where a Tuareg insurgency in the country’s north has been ongoing since 2007. Their Niger Movement for Justice demands a greater share of power.

In turn, President Mahamadou Issoufou, who came to power in 2011 after a coup ousted his predecessor in 2010, has turned the northern half of the country into a closed military zone under curfew and military law.

Chad, east of Niger and directly south of Libya, has long been plagued by various rebellions, coups, and attempts by Moammar Gadhafi to turn the country into a Libyan satellite.

The current leader, Idriss Déby, formed an insurgent group supported by Libya and Sudan, which started operations against the Chadian government in 1989. A year later, they marched into the capital, N'Djamena.

But newer armed groups, often operating from Sudan, continue operations in Chad, and have been thwarted only by the efforts of European Union and United Nations peacekeeping troops.

In 2009 eight rebel groups united to form a new rebel alliance, the Union of Resistance Forces. Without the military support of France, Chad would quickly collapse.

These are not simply failed, but “fake,” states, with no economic, ethnic or political cohesion. Any one of them could become the next Mali.

In Jordan, the Politics of Moderation Are Eroding

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

While much of the Middle East is in turmoil, with civil war in Syria, constitutional confusion in Egypt, continuing violence in Iraq, and near-anarchy in Libya, Jordan has remained a relative pro-Western oasis of tranquility. All has not been calm of late, though.

The monarchy that became modern Jordan was created after the First World War, when the British, who had been given control over Palestine by the League of Nations, carved out a state, Transjordan, on the East Bank of the Jordan River.

It was ruled by one of their Hashemite allies, Abdullah ibn Hussein. The Hashemites, who had been driven out of the Arabian Peninsula by the Saudis, claim to be direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.

The British-sponsored emirate became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after 1948, when the Arab Legion, the country’s army, captured the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem, during the first Arab-Israeli War. It lost the area in the 1967 conflict between the Arab states and Israel.

Abdullah’s grandson, King Hussein, ruled Jordan from 1952 to 1999. In 1994 he signed a peace treaty with Israel. Jordan also renounced all claims to the territories it had ruled west of the Jordan River before 1967; these are now under Israeli military control but governed mainly by the Palestinian Authority.

Although the current monarch, Abdullah II, and much of the political elite, are Bedouins, about half of Jordan’s 6.5 million people are Palestinian Arabs, many with close ties to their compatriots on the other side of the Jordan River.

The vast majority are of refugee origin, following the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel, and Palestinian attitudes toward Jordan have been ambivalent.

Although most Palestinians have Jordanian citizenship and many have integrated, Jordan still considers them refugees with a right of return to Palestine.

In January 2011, Jordanians protested economic hardship in demonstrations led by the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. There has been growing dissatisfaction due to rising unemployment and corruption.

Last year, there was further unrest, when an increase in gas prices triggered more anger at the government. This past November, some even called for the overthrow of the king.

The hike in prices had been forced upon the country by the International Monetary Fund, which made them a condition for the Jordanian government to receive $2 billion in IMF aid.

In turn, the king dissolved parliament and appointed a new prime minister, Dr. Abdalla Ensour – the fourth incumbent since February 2011.

Parliamentary elections have been called for Jan. 23, and many Jordanians fear more economic austerity measures will be in store afterword.

The Islamic Action Front is boycotting the vote, in protest against an election law it sees as biased in favor of pro-government loyalists. Some analysts assert that it would probably gain power in any free and fair election.

European Disunion

Henry Srebrnik, [Halifax, Nova Scotia] Chronicle Herald

Many are the academics and politicians who have predicted the death of nationalism in a Europe where people are bound ever more closely, economically and politically, within the European Union.

But as a new year dawns, three regions on the continent may be moving towards independence.

It appears that referenda will take place in 2014 in both Catalonia, one of Spain’s most prosperous regions, and Scotland, which has been part of Great Britain for more than three centuries.

Catalonia has a long history of national self-awareness, dating back to the Middle Ages, and was only fully absorbed into Spain in the 18th century. When the Spanish monarchy was succeeded by the left-wing Spanish Republic in 1931, Catalonia became virtually self-governing. 

However, its autonomy ended and Catalan nationalism was suppressed after the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, when the fascist dictatorship of General Francisco Franco defeated the republic and re-imposed a centralized state in Spain. Catalan was even outlawed as a language to be learned in school.

After Franco’s death in 1975, a democratic political system was re-established, one more favourable to the aspirations of regions such as Catalonia. Since 1978, it has been termed an “autonomous community” within the Spanish kingdom, and the 2006 Statute of Autonomy passed by the Catalan parliament defines it as a nation.

But even this may not be enough. In the November 25 Catalan parliamentary election, four parties supporting a secession referendum gathered 59 per cent of the votes and gained 87 of the 135 seats in the Catalan Parliament. 

Artur Mas, president of the Catalan government, said that his Convergencia i Unio (Convergence and Unity) party -- at 50 seats, the largest group in the assembly -- will organize a plebiscite so that the 7.5 million Catalans can decide on their status for themselves. But Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, views any independence referendum as a violation of the country’s constitution.

On the other hand, an agreement setting out terms for a Scottish independence referendum for its 5.2 million people was signed on October 15 by British Prime Minister David Cameron and Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond. The vote will be held in the autumn of 2014.

Scotland was an independent nation for centuries, from the early Middle Ages to the Treaty of Union with England in 1707, when the parliaments of the two countries were combined at Westminster and a new state, Great Britain, was born.

Scotland retained many of its institutions, including separate educational and legal systems.

In recent decades, demands for Scottish home rule grew, culminating in the creation of a devolved Scottish parliament in 1999.

While this has given Scotland greater autonomy within the United Kingdom, the Scottish National Party, led by Salmond, wants a fully sovereign Scotland.

The party won 69 of 129 seats in the Scottish assembly in the May 2011 election, and Salmond called the “Edinburgh Agreement” that he negotiated with Cameron one that will lead to Scotland becoming “a prosperous and successful European country, reflecting Scottish values of fairness and opportunity, promoting equality and social cohesion.”

Belgium has virtually ceased being a state, with its two main regions, Flanders and Wallonia, increasingly going their separate ways.

The Belgian kingdom, established in 1830, has always been an uneasy union of Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speaking Walloons. For most of its history, the richer French in industrialized Wallonia ran the country and were disdainful of the poorer, rural Dutch.

Today, though, Flanders is significantly richer than Wallonia and its people are no longer second-class Belgians. But though the 6.3 million people in the Flanders region have achieved nearly total autonomy, both administrative and linguistic, many still resent the former hegemony of Wallonia. 

In provincial elections held on October 14, the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (New Flemish Alliance), which advocates the eventual independence of Flanders, gained 104 of the 351 seats in the Flemish parliament and is now part of a Flemish coalition government. In fact, party leader Bart De Wever has made it the largest party in Belgium. The country is slowly dissolving.

If any of these entities do manage to acquire independence, they will seek membership in the European Union, and this may pose a problem for a supra-national body which already consists of 27 member states. In the end, though, there will be no choice other than to let them join.

Israel Then and Now

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

I hope soon be heading off on a trip to Israel, as part of an academic project (as well as visiting many of the famous sites, of course). It will be my first time there in almost 36 years. And it will follow an Israeli election being held this Jan. 22.

Between the ages of 22 and 32, I spent time in Israel on four occasions: in the summer of 1967, as a volunteer on Ma’agan, a kibbutz (collective farm) on the shores of the Sea of Galilee; in the summer of 1972, as a student on the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; in July 1976, attending a conference on Yiddish in Tel Aviv; and in June of 1977, along with a group of students, on Kibbutz Bror Cha’il, not far from Gaza and the Israeli town of Sderot.

That was still the “old Israel.” The Labour Party, in its various incarnations, had ruled the country continuously from its formation in 1948. During my stays in the country, it was governed by Levi Eshkol (1963-1969), Golda Meir (1969-1974), and Yitzhak Rabin (1974-1977).

But in May1977 Labour lost power to Menachem Begin’s Likud (a consolidation of right-wing movements) and Begin became prime minister during my last days in Israel. He would remain in power until 1983.

Israel is a very different place now, as I’ll no doubt discover soon enough. The political spectrum since that time has moved even further to the right, while the once-mighty Labour Party is now a shadow of its former self.

The political right, under leaders like Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon, has dominated the state in recent decades. The political clout of various religious parties has also increased tremendously.

Not surprisingly, Likud’s current leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister since February 2009, is heading into the Jan. 22 election, in an alliance with Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) Party, and polls suggest a convincing victory. The two are running on a joint ticket.

In February 2009, Likud won 27 seats in the 120-member Knesset (parliament) and Yisrael Beiteinu obtained 15. The two parties have led an unstable coalition government together, with support from other parties, until now.

Israel’s proportional representation system allows for a multitude of parties to contest elections, and the current one has an incredible 34 in the field, including the once-mighty Labour Party, now led by Shelly Yachimovich, which held only eight seats in the last Knesset.

Most of these parties will not even win a single seat.

Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu looks set to capture 35 seats. But Netanyahu’s main challenge comes from a party even further to his right, a coalition of nationalist/religious groups running as the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) Party, which current polls suggest may win as many as 18 seats. Its leader, Naftali Bennett, is the 40-year-old son of American immigrants. He wants to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, and is steadily chipping away at Netanyahu’s margin.

As well, there is talk among three centre and left-wing parties, including Labour, about forming an electoral bloc to challenge Netanyahu.

Following the election, Bennett’s party will probably join a Likud-led coalition, giving the right-wing bloc a majority in parliament.

How all this will affect Israeli relations with the United States, and the surrounding Arab world, remains to be seen.

1973 Was Politically Momentous Year

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

The year 1973, now four decades on, saw a series of momentous political events on the world stage: The winding down of a war in Southeast Asia, a scandal surrounding an American president, a coup in South America, and a major Middle Eastern war.

On Jan. 27, Henry Kissinger, U.S. President Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor, and North Vietnamese Politburo member Le Duc Tho signed the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War.

The United States had been fighting in Vietnam for a decade, to little avail, and at an immense cost in lives, money, and prestige. Almost 60,000 troops had been killed, and tens of thousands wounded.

Tens of billions of dollars had been spent. Domestic pressure to finally end the war was enormous.

In January-February 1968, the North Vietnamese and the Communist Viet Cong had launched the massive Tet Offensive in South Vietnam.

Although it was not a victory militarily, the ability of the Vietnamese Communists to mount such a large-scale operation shocked the American public, which had been led to believe by its political and military leaders that the war was being successfully prosecuted.

As Bruce Springsteen would later sing, in “Born in the U.S.A.”:
 
I had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he's all gone.

With little American support after 1973, the corrupt South Vietnamese regime was no match for its opponents. In April 1975, the Communists completed their conquest of the country, and North and South Vietnam were united under their rule.

The war would destroy the careers of two American presidents.

On March 31, 1968, Democrat Lyndon Johnson, whose popularity was plummeting after Tet, announced that he would not seek re-election that fall. His successor, Republican Richard Nixon, though ending American military operations in Vietnam, would be brought down by the Watergate scandal in 1973-74.

Although not directly connected to the war, Watergate – named for the building that housed the Democratic National Committee, which was burglarized by Nixon operatives in 1972 -- was the culmination of a long period of illegal activity on the part of the White House.

The unpopularity of the war had led to massive opposition on the part of students, workers, and most of the elected leaders of the Democratic Party in Congress, so Nixon had become used to using unlawful methods to combat his enemies, real and perceived.

It finally caught up to him.

By May 1973, a special Senate Watergate Committee had been established and its hearings were broadcast on television. As evidence against him mounted, Nixon would resign in disgrace a year later, forestalling certain impeachment and removal on the part of Congress.

On Sept. 11, a CIA-sponsored coup deposed the Marxist-inspired regime of Salvador Allende in the South American nation of Chile, installing the right-wing General Augusto Pinochet.

Allende was killed, and thousands more would be tortured and executed under Pinochet’s brutal regime.
It too was carried out in the name of fighting Communism.

Finally, Oct. 6 saw the start of the largest Arab-Israeli war to date. The Yom Kippur, or Ramadan, War began with the simultaneous attack by Egypt and Syria on the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, both captured in 1967.

Thrown onto the defensive during the first days of fighting, Israel eventually gained the upper hand and carried the war into Syria and Egypt.

A UN-brokered cease-fire ended the fighting on Oct. 25.

But the war, in which Israel suffered heavy losses, was a political setback, and Kissinger, who was now U.S. Secretary of State, started conducting shuttle diplomacy, and engineered a military disengagement agreement between Israel and Egypt on January 18, 1974.

An Israeli-Syrian one followed a few months later.

A final peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was brokered by President Jimmy Carter five years later, though none was ever signed with Syria.

Today, while the Middle East remains in turmoil, Chile is once again a democracy and Vietnam, which now has diplomatic relations with the U.S., is one of the world’s most peaceful nations.

Examining America's Asia-Pacific Policy

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Ever since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American foreign policy under both presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama has been preoccupied with the Muslim world. 

U.S. forces have been fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have also battled, from the air and sea, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other Islamists, in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere.

All the while, in east Asia, China’s economic and military might has been growing by leaps and bounds. 

Apart from its huge land army, China is now the world’s second-ranked naval power, behind only the United States, with a fleet including about 80 major warships, 53 submarines, 50 landing ships and 86 missile patrol boats. In September its first aircraft carrier went into service.

 Why has the country built such a large navy? China claims sovereignty over a large area of the Pacific Ocean off its shores, bringing it into dispute with several neighbouring countries

Ships from China and the Philippines have recently confronted each other over a reef known as the Scarborough Shoal, in the South China Sea. Called Huangyan Island by China, it consists of a series of rocks and reefs some 160 kilometres from the Philippines and 800 kilometres from China.

Another quarrel involves the Spratley Islands, further south. Comprising about 750 pieces of land, all or parts of this archipelago are claimed by China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Even tiny Brunei is involved.

While these islands are in themselves economically unimportant, the surrounding waters contain significant reserves of oil and natural gas. Last year Chinese naval vessels fired on Vietnamese fishing boats in the Spratleys.

China and Japan both lay claim over a group of five tiny islands in the East China Sea currently controlled by Tokyo. Known as the Diaoyu Islands in China, and the Senkaku Islands in Japan, their nearby waters are believed to harbour valuable mineral resources, including oil and natural gas.

In September the Japanese government itself bought the islands from a private owner, setting off demonstrations in Beijing and 19 other cities in China. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that Beijing would “never yield an inch” over the disputed islands, reported the state-run news agency Xinhua.

Whoever controls these various island chains will, of course, reap the benefits from the surrounding waters.
China’s recent assertiveness worries its neighbours. The United States, in response, has indicated its intention to strategically “pivot” its attention to the Asia-Pacific region. Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said in September that the disputed Diaoyu/ Senkaku Islands were “clearly” covered by a 1960 treaty obliging the United States to come to Japan’s aid if attacked.

Also, almost as soon as he won re-election, Obama set off on a trip to Cambodia, Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) in mid-November, to “wave the flag” and increase American visibility in the region, as a counterweight to Beijing. He sought to reinforce America’s strategic and economic interests.

“The United States of America is a Pacific nation and we see our future as bound to those nations and peoples to our west,” said the president while in Burma. “And as our economy recovers this is where we believe we will find enormous growth. As we have ended the wars that have dominated our foreign policy for a decade, this region will be a focus for our efforts to build a prosperous peace.”

Obama knows that if America is to compete globally in the 21st century, it must take greater steps to engage economically and politically with this part of the world, as well as containing Chinese geopolitical ambitions.

The Gaza War and the New Egypt

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The latest war between Hamas-ruled Gaza and Israel appears, for the moment, to be over. And Egypt has played a key role in negotiating a cease-fire, since unlike the United States, it can talk directly to Hamas, its kindred ideological spirit.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Mohammed Kamel Amr, visited the enclave during the fighting and the country’s new president, Mohamed Morsi of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood, has emerged as a major regional player.

“I want to thank President Morsi for his personal leadership to de-escalate the situation in Gaza and end the violence,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said at a Cairo press conference announcing the accord.

So let’s step back a little. So far, last year’s “Arab Spring” has brought Islamic movements or parties to power or increased influence in virtually every country in the region, including Libya, Tunisia and even Jordan. In the current civil war in Syria, they are playing a major role in the struggle to bring down the Assad regime.

For decades, American foreign policy in the Middle East was predicated on keeping these movements out of power. We were told they posed a danger, not only to Israel, but to world peace. Yet now, Morsi is lauded for his positive role in ending the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Indeed, an Israeli Foreign Ministry source told the New York Forward newspaper that Cairo’s role in mediating the conflict has brought into sight a day when Egypt will take over from Israel responsibility for Gaza.

“We would be quite happy for Egypt to take over as many responsibilities as possible that Israel currently has over Gaza.” This would involve controlling security and, to some extent, supplies.

So this begs the question: If the election of President Morsi is now viewed positively in Washington, why did the U.S. work so hard in keeping the autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak in power all those years, citing the threat of a fundamentalist takeover as the reason? (Even Moammar Gadhafi was seen as a “lesser evil.”)

Two Competing Views of Israel in the Middle East

 Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

There are two competing narratives when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian (and wider Arab-Israeli) conflict.

On the one hand, those on the political left, adhering to the thesis propounded by Marxists and post-colonialists, view the entire Zionist enterprise as an imperialist project, the seizure of indigenous Arab lands by white Europeans.

They view Israel as a ‘settler state,’ one similar to the former white-dominated Rhodesia or South Africa.

For them Israel’s defenders are, to quote the late academic Edward Said, “Orientalists,” motivated by a “Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture.”

The other story, subscribed to by the vast majority of Jews, in both Israel and the diaspora, entails the return of a people who originated in the land to reclaim its patrimony.

They contend that Jews in Christian Europe were not only not considered “Europeans” by many people in the host nations where they lived, but were, rather, subject to recurrent waves of violence, culminating in the Holocaust. As well, they add, more than half the Jews in Israel are in any case Mizrachim, Jews native to the Muslim lands of the Middle East, who had been forced to flee their former homes.

Which of these two stories do Israel’s Middle Eastern enemies themselves endorse? Obviously, many of those in left-wing and nationalist movements, including some Palestinian groups, prefer the first. They fancy themselves secularists and so avoid using religious terms, preferring the word “Israeli” to “Jew.”

But, somewhat ironically, the rise of Islamist movements such as, among others, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, prefer a religious reading of the quarrel. Their literature is replete with references to ‘Jewish’ treachery and evil, going all the way back to Qur’anic times – hundreds of years before the establishment of the modern Jewish state.

They may not realize it, but they in fact confirm that Jews are native to the area, and not some recent foreign implant. As well, they demonstrate, by using the word ‘Jew,’ that their issue is not with the Israeli presence in areas occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, but with the very idea of a non-Muslim entity in the region.