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.

"Don't Cry for Me, America"

Henry Srebrnik. [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Ever since his defeat on Nov. 6, many people, including even fellow Republicans, have been writing Mitt Romney off as a bad candidate and a sore loser. He’s been mocked for declaring that Barack Obama won by giving out “gifts” to voting groups such as African-Americans, Latinos and younger women.

“The Obama campaign was following the old playbook of giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they would get to vote for them,” Romney is reported to have said. Talk of sour grapes! After all, he planned to give a lot more “stuff,” also known as lower taxes, to millionaires and billionaires.

According to the Huffington Post, Romney also blamed the “liberal media,” including CNN and NBC, for supposedly favoring Obama during the presidential debates.

Romney was definitely not an ideal candidate. In an age when politicians are supposed to “connect” with voters and “feel their pain,” he came across as a wooden plutocrat whose attempts at compassion didn’t ring true. It was clear he had led a charmed life financially.

When Hurricane Sandy struck the week before the vote, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, lauded the President for his concern as they toured the devastated beaches, it was the last nail in Romney’s electoral coffin.

What is really telling about Romney’s failure to realistically gauge how things were going was his delusional certainty that, despite all this, he would win the election. He hadn’t bothered to write a concession speech.

Romney even had a fireworks display ready in Boston harbour once his victory was announced, one that would have been visible from his election night party at the Boston Convention Center!

But in fact the election wasn’t even close. Obama secured 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206, with battleground states like Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia all ending up in the president’s column.

I think this speaks to Romney’s contempt for the American electorate, on par with his comments earlier in the year that “47 per cent” of Americans were simply lazy moochers expecting government handouts and so would, of course, should they manage to get off their sofas, vote for Obama.

It’s an arrogance born of extreme wealth: Romney saw in Obama a mere “community organizer,” someone who got lucky in 2008 – and who would certainly not stand comparison with a titan of finance!

But we shouldn’t feel too sorry for the ex-governor. He can spend the next little while crying over the tens of millions of dollars he’s accumulated at Bain Capital and elsewhere – and since some of it is stashed away in the Cayman Islands, there’s also the prospect of a nice Caribbean holiday.

Radical Right-Wing Forces Make Gains in Europe

Henry Srebrnik, (Summerside, PEI) Journal-Pioneer

While most of us have been fixated on the American election these past few months, there have been a number of recent contests in Europe which should give us cause for concern.

As deeply indebted nations face massive unemployment and austerity, some voters are turning to parties long outside the ideological pale.

In hard-hit Greece, one in every four people is without work. Youth unemployment is above 50 percent. The far-right Golden Dawn Party, led by Nikolaos Michaloliakos, ran a campaign during the spring 2012 Greek election based on the dire economic situation, as well as virulent anti-immigration rhetoric.

It won 6.92 per cent of the vote on June 17, taking 18 of the 300 seats in parliament, the first time it has managed to elect members to the legislature. A survey taken in September found that 22 per cent of Greeks now view the party favorably.

Golden Dawn calls for the deportation of all non-Greek immigrants, broadly defined as anyone not of Greek ancestry, and its followers have been blamed for violence against recent arrivals, including attacks on immigrant-owned market stalls and shops. Its officials say they have persuaded a major restaurant chain to begin replacing immigrants with Greek workers.

The press quoted Elias Panagiotaros, one of the new legislators from Golden Dawn, as stating that Greeks "have the right to protect themselves and their property from all these illegal savages."

In Ukraine, parliamentary elections held on Oct. 29 saw the Svoboda (Freedom) All-Ukrainian Union, an ultranationalist, right-wing movement, win 38 of the 450 seats in the national legislature, with 10.44 per cent of the vote. In the previous parliamentary election, in 2007, the party was supported by just 0.76 per cent of the electorate.

Leader Oleg Tyagnibok insists that "Svoboda is simply and only a pro-Ukrainian party." His party has benefited from frustration over the country's stalled economy and dissatisfaction with the government of President Viktor Yanukovich, which favours closer ties with Moscow.

While Svoboda has emphasized national sovereignty and warns of encroachment by neighboring Russia, some of Svoboda's members are neo-Nazis, and this has elicited warnings about the rise of anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Ukraine. Tyagnibok has himself in the past referred to the "Jewish-Russian mafia, which rules in Ukraine."

Tyagnibok maintains that nationalist parties are enjoying a renaissance in Europe because of people's financial problems: "Economic failures make people look for reasons."

In Hungary, too, dissatisfaction with the state of the economy has led to the rise of a right-wing nationalist party. Jobbik, known for its anti-Semitic and anti-Roma (Gypsy) rhetoric, won 16.67 per cent of the vote, good for 47 of 386 seats, in the April 2010 election and is now the country's third largest party.

Its leader, Gabor Vona, in 2007 founded the radical nationalist Hungarian Guard, which was banned by authorities a year later on the grounds that the activities of the organization "were against the human rights of minorities as guaranteed by the Hungarian Constitution."

The next parliamentary elections in Hungary must be held by spring 2014.

Obama's Biography Is Unique Among American Presidents

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Barack Obama is by far the most “rootless” – and therefore most “cosmopolitan” – president Americans have ever elected to that office.

His mother, Stanley Ann Durham, was a transient left-wing “hippy” from Wichita, Kansas, a child of the “sixties” who lived in various places before ending up in Hawaii.

There, while attending the University of Hawaii, she married a Luo graduate student from Kenya and had a child at age 18. The husband, Barack Sr., abandoned her almost immediately and returned to Kenya. Barack never really had a father.

In 1965, Ann married another student, Indonesian Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Indonesia. From age six to ten, Obama attended local Indonesian-language schools in Jakarta.  He therefore spent his formative childhood years in a country culturally, geographically and religiously about as far from America as possible; he still has a half-sister in Indonesia.

Ann’s second marriage too would eventually dissolve. Meanwhile, his mother shipped the boy off to live with his white grandparents in Honolulu – itself a city in another island chain out in the mid-Pacific that had only become an American state in 1960.

Obama finally went off to college and law school, in California, New York, and Massachusetts – like many a foreign student coming to study in the United States.

After graduation, Obama in effect chose to become part of the historic African-American community – by moving to Chicago’s South Side, working as a community organizer, joining the Trinity United Church of Christ, a Black congregation, and, in 1992, marrying Chicagoan Michelle Robinson.

America’s 44th president has “made it” through sheer intellect and drive. (He holds degrees from Ivy League universities Columbia and Harvard.) He had no money, no “background,” no ethnic or social ties of the sort that even a poor boy like Bill Clinton of Arkansas could rely on.

Barack Obama is in effect culturally the equivalent of a naturalized citizen – and this is both his strength and weakness.

In the Middle East, the Future Remains Unpredictable

Henry Srebrnik. [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Twenty years ago, who could have imagined that Israel would be in more danger today than at any time in its 64-year history?

By 1992, the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe had all imploded, and the USSR had itself dissolved into 15 countries. Israel’s ally, the United States, remained the world’s only superpower.

The Soviet Union had been an implacable enemy of the Jewish state, arming and supporting the Arab countries in their wars against Israel from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Now it had given way to a much weaker, and far less ideological, Russia, a country itself in deep trouble and less concerned with Middle Eastern issues.

Many of the new east European governments – Poland being a prime example – became friendly towards Israel.

Another former ideological enemy, China, had dropped its reflexive pro-Arab policies and also moved towards more amicable relations with Jerusalem.

Yet today, Israel faces ideological hostility in many quarters in the western world, accused of being an “apartheid state,”while its borders are under threat from rocket attacks by Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the southwest.

Most ominously, a potentially nuclear-armed Iran, whose Shi’ite theocracy replaced the benign government of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, makes no secret of its intentions to wipe Israel off the map.

What has happened?

With hindsight, we can now see what a pivotal time the late 1970s were. They changed the very “zeitgeist” in global affairs.

On Oct. 15, 1978, Karol Józef Cardinal Wojtyla, archbishop of Krakow, was elected the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. As Pope John Paul II, he was an inspiration to dissidents throughout the Communist bloc and he was instrumental in ending Communist rule in his native Poland and eventually in all of eastern Europe.

A year later, on Dec. 24, 1979, the Kremlin made the fatal mistake of invading Afghanistan, to prop up a pro-Communist regime. By the time the war ended in May of 1988, almost 15,000 Soviet troops had been killed. Dissatisfaction with the conflict on the part of ordinary Russians helped the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev come to power in 1985, and by 1991 the entire Soviet system had collapsed.

While the years 1978-79 were the beginning of the end for the decaying Communist regimes in Europe, they also ushered in the era of Islamist militancy.

In Iran the Shah, unable to withstand the tide of opposition to his rule, left the country on January 16, 1979. Two weeks later Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini returned from exile in France to Tehran, to an enthusiastic welcome.

In November 1979, a constitution for the new Islamic Republic was adopted and Khomeini became the Supreme Leader of the country. Iran would henceforth become arguably the fiercest opponent of Israel.

Inspired by the Iranian revolution, Hezbollah was formed in southern Lebanon in 1982 and has served as an Iranian proxy since then. Hamas was created in 1987 and has established itself as the undisputed ruler of Gaza since 2007.

While the two movements on Israel’s doorstep have inflicted significant damage over the past three decades, Iran remains the far greater danger, of course.

The threat of Communism is gone, but now extremist Islamist forces have placed Israel in great jeopardy. It turns out that, as far as Israel is concerned, Ayatollah Khomeini was a more dangerous figure in the 20th century than was Vladimir Lenin and his successors.

Control of Senate Vital in U.S. Election

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Most Canadians, understandably, are concentrating on the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. But there are other important contests underway in the general election. All 435 members of the House of Representatives are up for re-election, as are 33 members of the Senate.

The latter body of 100 members - two each from the 50 states -is the very powerful upper house of the U.S. Congress. Senators are elected for six-year terms, with one-third up for re-election every two years. The Democrats currently control the Senate, with 51 seats to the 47 held by Republicans.

Some senators in states that are heavily Democratic 'blue' or Republican 'red' are virtual shoo-ins. On the Democratic side, Diane Feinstein will easily win re-election in California, as will Kirsten Gillibrand in New York state.

Other Democratic incumbents with safe seats are Tom Carper in Delaware, Ben Cardin in Maryland, Debbie Stabinow in Michigan, Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota, Bob Menendez in New Jersey, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Sheldon Whitehouse in Rhode Island, Maria Cantwell in Washington state, and Joe Manchin in West Virginia.

In liberal Vermont, socialist Bernie Sanders, who votes with the Democrats, will cruise to victory.

However, Montana might be a loss for Obama's party. Incumbent John Tester trails Republican challenger Dennis Rehber in many polls, though it's still too close to call.

Among Republicans, Roger Wicker in Mississippi, Bob Corker in Tennessee, Orin Hatch in Utah, and John Barrasso in Wyoming will retain their seats without any difficulty. In Nevada, incumbent Republican Dean Heller continues to hold a lead over the Democrat, Shelley Berkley.

In the swing state of Florida, the Senate winner will probably be determined by which presidential candidate carries the state. Incumbent Bill Nelson, the Democrat, faces Republican Connie Mack IV; in recent polls, the gap between Nelson and Mack has widened, in Nelson's favour.

In closely-contested Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown faces Republican Josh Mandel, and will be re-elected unless Romney wins the state by a considerable margin, which is unlikely.

There are a number of open seats, where the incumbent has left office, and some are toss-ups.

In Arizona, Republican Jeff Flake faces Richard Carmona, the Democrat; it will be close, but Flake will probably retain the seat for his party. In Connecticut, where Joe Lieberman, running as an independent, beat back challenges from both major parties in 2006, Linda McMahon, the Republican candidate, has remained competitive against the Democrat, Christopher Murphy. Connecticut is a strongly Democratic "blue" state, though, so Murphy should prevail; however, McMahon could conceivably gain this one for the Republicans.

The Democrats 'own' Hawaii, so Mazie Hirono will trounce the former Republican governor, Linda Lingle.

Longtime Republican senator Richard Lugar of Indiana lost the primary to a Tea Party candidate, Richard Mourdock, giving the Democrat challenger, Joe Donnelly, a fighting chance to take the seat away from the GOP.

In the 'red' state of Nebraska, where Democratic incumbent Ben Nelson has retired, former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey, a Democrat, faces Republican Deb Fischer; the Republicans will gain this seat. 'Blue' state New Mexico, meanwhile, will elect Martin Heinrich, the Democrat, to replace fellow Democrat Jeff Bingaman.

North Dakota's Kent Conrad, a Democrat, has retired, and the race between Democrat Heidi Heitkamp and Republican Rick Berg is a virtual dead heat. In Texas, the open seat will remain Republican, with Ted Cruz, a Tea Party favourite, replacing outgoing Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Virginia is witnessing a battle between a Democratic former governor, Tim Kaine, and a Republican former senator, George Allen. Kaine has opened up a significant lead in a majority of recent polls. In Wisconsin, the Democrat, Tammy Baldwin, is projected to prevail over former Republican governor Tommy Thompson, but it is a tight race.

In Maine, where Republican senator Olympia Snowe has stepped down, a three-way contest has former governor Angus King, running as an independent, leading both his Democratic and Republican challengers, so this will be a Republican loss.

Two of the most-closely watched contests are in Massachusetts and Missouri. In the 'Bay State', high-profile challenger Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat, now has a small lead over Scott Brown, the Republican, who won Ted Kennedy's old seat in a special election two years ago. This is a seat Democrats, in the 'bluest' of 'blue' states, dearly want to regain.

In the 'Show Me' state, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill seemed certain to lose to Republican Todd Akin, until he stated in an interview that in cases of what he termed "legitimate rape," women rarely become pregnant. His lead in the polls has evaporated since then, and McCaskill, though still unpopular in the state, may prevail. Still, this one could go either way.

It does appear likely that, after Nov. 6, the Democrats will still control the United States Senate, regardless of the presidential winner.

The Diverse Jewish Community of Los Angeles

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

Greater Los Angeles, where I spent two weeks in August, is a mega-city, sprawling over five counties in the southern part of California. The Los Angeles region has a population of more than 17.8 million – half that of all Canada.

A warm climate, and industries such as oil, rubber, aerospace, and, of course, motion pictures, brought in millions of people from all over the United States and the world through the decades.

Jews came to Los Angeles as early as 1845, while California was still a Mexican territory. In the latter part of the 19th century, Jews held public office and helped establish the Chamber of Commerce and other civic organizations. Of course, they predominated in running the film studios in the 20th century.

In a report published in 2000, Raphael J. Sonenshein of the political science department at California State University, Fullerton, noted that the Jewish community has a long history of activism in political and social rights.

“Jews have played a pivotal role in the development of progressive coalitions throughout the history of modern Los Angeles,” he wrote. In the early 20th century, the growing Jewish community became a major presence in Boyle Heights, which had between 70,000 and 80,000 Jews from the 1910s through the 1950s. “The Boyle Heights Jewish community was working-class and often militantly progressive in its politics.”

As Deborah Dash Moore in her 1994 book To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Dream in Miami and L.A., remarked, “The visible, immigrant, Yiddish-speaking community centred in Boyle Heights ardently supported FDR and the New Deal.”

This tradition continues today. I was at a picnic in Clover Park, Santa Monica, organized by Jerry Rubin, a Jewish activist running for city council. (He calls himself “the other Jerry Rubin,” so as not to be confused with the more famous radical, who died in 1994.) Pamphlets for numerous causes were on display and one of the speakers was a California state senator.

At the Workmen’s Circle, another left-wing organization on Robertson Boulevard, a very large audience came to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the murder of Soviet Jewish writers by Joseph Stalin on Aug. 12, 1952. A silent film, made in the Soviet Union in 1924, entitled Yidishe Glik, was shown, introduced by Kenneth Turan, the film critic of the Los Angeles Times.

By mid-century many Jews began moving west, to the Fairfax area, which became the centre of the LA Jewish community. In 1935, there were four synagogues in the Fairfax District; by 1945, there were 12. But in the 1960s Jews began moving further west.

Today, more than 600,000 Jews live in greater Los Angeles, especially in the Pico-Robertson area, where one can find a very large number of synagogues, Jewish community centres and schools, and kosher restaurants, cafés, bakeries and coffee shops. Many of these Jews are immigrants from Iran and the former Soviet Union.

During the past two decades, the Orthodox community has grown to become the largest Jewish denomination in the area. Chabad operates four schools, while Yeshiva University High School has campuses on both South Robertson Boulevard and West Pico Boulevard. Los Angeles is also home to the American Jewish University.

Los Angeles has about 150 synagogues and they span the entire spectrum of Judaism, with some testing the outer limits of what most Jews would consider proper.

The Wilshire Boulevard Temple, founded in 1862 as Congregation B’nai B’rith, is the oldest synagogue in the LA area. In 1929, the congregation built its current home on Wilshire Boulevard. It was, writes journalist Susan Freudenheim, “to be the fanciest building money could buy for the denizens of the silver screen’s Reform Jewish congregation,” and its dramatic, quasi-Byzantine-Moorish design is an architectural landmark. It is now being totally restored, at a cost of $50 million.

On one Friday evening I attended services at the Santa Monica Synagogue, a Reform congregation of 250 families, founded in 1981. The cantor, Daniel Leanse, accompanied the rabbi on a guitar and the service lasted just one-half hour.

Even less traditional was the non-denominational Nashuvah congregation in Brentwood led by Rabbi Naomi Levy, where I spent another Friday evening. There, a full band accompanied the worshippers in singing Hebrew prayers. The band, states their website, “links us to soulful music from across the globe. Our band represents a partnership between Nashuvah and Westwood Hills Congregational Church. The music they create connects us to one another and to G-d.”

Like the city itself, LA Jews are always pushing the envelope.

Do American Values Stem from Judaism?

Henry Srebrnik, Calgary Jewish Free Press

The American presidential election is now in full gear, with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney debating, among other things, what the United States should look like in coming years.

The citizens of very few countries examine their ideological “essence” in the way Americans do.

Michael Lind, author of The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution, has noted that many American theorists posit a view of the United States as not a nation-state but an idea-state, based on the philosophy of liberal democracy in the abstract. There are no American people as such, but rather an American idea.

Yale University professor David Gelernter goes further, stating that the American world-view emerged not just from the Bible, but especially from the Hebrew Bible, via those English Protestant Calvinists known as the Puritans, who looked to the “Old Testament” for their values.

Puritanism would turn into “Americanism.” In a sense, Gelernter asserted in “A Religious Idea Called ‘America’,” a lecture he gave at the American Enterprise Institute in 2006, “the molten bronze of Puritanism became the solid metal of the American Religion.”

As such, the “American creed” is derived from biblical Zionism, “which is based on two ideas: a chosen people and a promised land,” he maintained. “Both elements were understood by the biblical prophets to imply privileges and duties. The chosen people is closer to God than any other and is held to higher standards. The promised land flows with milk and honey and must be made by its inhabitants into a beacon of sanctity for the whole world.”

The community as a whole conceived itself as having a covenant with God, or a vow agreed to by both sides. The Puritans who came to America on the Mayflower in 1620, known as the Pilgrims, signed such as compact before landing at Plymouth. Many consider it the seed of American democracy. American Puritans often described their settlements as covenant communities. “We are the children of Abraham; and therefore we are under Abraham’s covenant,” declared one early settler.

The Puritans had fled a “house of bondage” in Europe, as it seemed to them, and made a dangerous journey to a pagan land where they struggled to establish themselves. They were forming a “new Zion” in the Americas. “American Puritans thought of themselves as ancient Israel reborn, and said so often,” stated Gelernter. And liberty, equality, and democracy all had Biblical roots, so far as the Puritans understood them. “Biblical passages dealing with man and the state and the organization of a state -- such as they are -- are mainly located in the Hebrew Bible,” he said.

It was these “founding ideas,” as enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution -- human equality, natural rights, civil liberty, democracy, and constitutional government – that made people into Americans. “American-ness,” in this view, is less membership in a national community than a belief in a secular political faith -- the religion of democracy.