ITYS - I Told You So

Will Mass Immigration Lead to Collapse of Western Political Inclinations?

2026-11-05T06:54:35.998-04:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

The horrors of Nazi race theory led to the murder of millions of innocent people. As a postwar reaction, it became taboo to assert that ethnicities or religious groups differ in their readiness to adapt to Western institutions. To acknowledge the reality of profound cultural differences was now beyond the pale. Every link between peoplehood and political inclinations was verboten.

Instead, this was replaced by the belief that nations must henceforth be “ideas” rather than historical inheritances -- which meant anyone arriving would immediately realize that the benefits of liberal democracy outweighed whatever cultural and religious norms they brought with them and join the polity. A win-win situation.

That postwar rejection of “ethnopolitical” thinking produced a liberalism that contended that belonging is for “everyone,” and treated every border as a nuisance, if not a prejudice. Hence, we have today’s European Union. Ideally, the Brussels bureaucrats would like to erase even indigenous national differences in some far-off future, the way Russian Communists assumed that the various ethnic groups in the USSR would blend into a new Soviet nationality under Communism.

In the last half-century in Europe, this kind of thinking allowed for massive postwar immigration and a resulting dependence on population growth. As native birth rates declined below replacement levels, these countries became dependent on immigration to sustain their economies and social systems.

But it didn’t work out the way they expected, and so you have a liberal capitalist order now in crisis. Multiculturalism and globalization have profoundly altered communities. As such, public trust has measurably declined. Shared identity, traditions, and a common sense of belonging have all eroded. Illegal migrants are dispersed nationwide, and – of course! -- disproportionately housed in poorer neighbourhoods, away from those who rule.

In European debates today, migration is not simply presented as a problem to be managed. Rather, its opponents now hold it responsible for a gamut of problems, from poor social services to wage stagnation to crime. The rioting and disorder in France are a harbinger of what may be coming everywhere. What they are now living through is the unravelling of the postwar liberal order. Eventually, this divergence between what most of the population wants and what leaders prefer will bring down governments across the Continent, as surely as “socialism” collapsed in eastern Europe and Russia last century.

Europe’s political and social problems surrounding immigration will become even more intractable. Germany is an obvious example. Within a decade, even in its most urban and populated areas, it went from a stable nation with high levels of social trust and generous social safety nets, to something rather different. Everyone there knows the cause, everyone sees the “elephant in the room” -- it’s immigration, lawful and otherwise.

There is a frustration with immigrants who don’t seek to integrate into the fabric of the culture and its identity, or at least seek to understand and respect it, but who desire to change the identity of the countries in which they move or to create isolationist enclaves within them. The broader illiberal treatment of women by some non-Western immigrants to Europe, for example, is a ticking time bomb, and tensions are likely to continue rising, especially as Western populations continue to reject mass immigration at every electoral opportunity. Western leaders, of course, are more eager to prove their cosmopolitan bona fides and dedication to postwar liberal principles.

The rise of right wing parties has been driven in most European countries by public perception showing recent immigrants have disproportionately been involved in crime and have resisted many liberal norms for cultural and or religious reasons, and in at least a few of these countries, well grounded data supports the perception, so much so that some countries, like Denmark and Sweden, have enacted strict controls on immigration and asylum for more than just political reasons.

France will elect a new president on April 18, and it looks as if the Rassemblement National’s Marine Le Pen might finally win in her fourth attempt. In Spain, the leftist prime minister Pedro Sanchez has just called snap elections for November 29 and is in trouble over the Ceueta incursion by Moroccans last summer. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz lurches from crisis to crisis as the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland gains strength in regional elections. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni is already too conservative for many tastes, but her supporters may defect to Roberto Vannacci’s authentically fascist Futuro Nazionale. A decrepit Labour Party in Britain faces Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party on the right.

These right-wing parties draw moral force from claiming to represent people who consider the parties of the left to have forgotten them. Their supporters are united by a sense of meaninglessness that was once filled by other structures and parties which no longer give them a framework for identity.

Anti-immigration policies are essentially about providing an identity, whether rooted in whiteness, language, Christianity or something else. Mainstream parties need to come up with competitive platforms. The right thrives on the questions everyone else refuses to answer.

The immigration issue is fundamentally a fight between universalism and particularism. The state has been attempting to reshape society around a secular, universalist moral ideology. We don’t yet know which side will prevail.

What Constitutes Genocide, and is Israel Guilty?

2026-11-04T05:07:33.582-04:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

Genocide is a grave and exceptional violation of international law, defined and prohibited by the Genocide Convention of 1948. But maybe Raphael Lemkin did us no favour in coining the word during the Holocaust. It is now used by antisemites against Israel.

Raphael Lemkin was a Polish-Jewish jurist who escaped from Europe when the Nazis occupied Poland. He moved to Washington, DC, in the summer of 1942, and went on to document Nazi atrocities in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In this text, he introduced the word “genocide,” the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, ethnicity or tribe) and the Latin cide (killing).

But it’s not that cut and dried. Even before the antisemites accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, as a way of ridding themselves of any residual guilt about the destruction of European Jewry, the word had become little more than a term used by states and “human rights” groups who for one reason or another want to punish their adversaries.

Most of the time they really are talking about “ethnic cleansing,” pogroms, massacres and war crimes. By such criteria, every participant in World War II committed “genocide.” The mass killings of civilians in Hiroshima and Dresden in 1945 would today qualify. But these were acts against even far worse perpetrators of what we now call genocide, designed to speedily end the war.

What about the American war in Vietnam, and of course the almost numberless conflicts across Africa? The wars that dismembered Yugoslavia involved terrible massacres, particularly in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, but did they really meet the criterion for genocide? The numbers killed needn’t be huge. About 8,000 Bosniak Muslims were murdered in Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb militias in 1995 during the Bosnian war. In the Western Hemisphere it would -- and lately does -- refer to the cultural and also physical extinction of pre-contact peoples from the Arctic down to Patagonia.

Are ideological attempts to kill groups of identifiable people within a state -- the Holodomor in Ukraine, but also elsewhere in Stalin’s USSR -- genocide? What about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia? Should we call this an “auto-genocide,” since it was perpetrated by the nation’s own mad Maoist regime? Was China’s Cultural Revolution a genocide? Millions probably died. Rwanda is an interesting case -- obviously a mass murder by one class-cum-ethnic group against another, a giant pogrom involving intertwined peoples, but where the victims have now turned the tables.

Actually, there have been very few ideologically intentional attempts to destroy a powerless and helpless people, in whole or in part. Only a few qualify by that definition, the Holocaust being an obvious one, as well as the Turkish mass murders of Armenians in World War I. The allegations that Israel committed this crime do not meet the established definition and standards of genocide, are unsupported by established facts, nor do they stand up to common sense scrutiny.

A finding of genocide requires evidence of acts that are intended to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part. Israel has neither intended to, nor destroyed, Palestinians as a group in Gaza. Israel’s accusers allege genocide mostly because of the supposed number of civilians killed in Gaza. Such claims are rife with flaws. Genocide is not a quantitative crime; there is no specific number of civilian casualties that constitutes genocide.

Israel set a high bar for how to conduct urban warfare against an enemy who will stop at nothing, including the death of its own civilians. What kind of genocide is it when the population of Gaza is larger today than it was three years ago? And how could it be that Israel is trying to kill innocents when the ratio of civilian-to-combatant casualties is lower than that of other urban wars fought in even less-difficult conditions?

Dave Rich, an Associate Research Fellow at the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism, writes extensively about the intersection of anti-Israel activism, far-left politics, and modern antisemitism. He observes that people respond to the genocide charge through facts and data: Israel’s supporters take the charge of genocide on its face, as an evidence-based allegation of a crime, and try to construct the case for the defence. But there is no defence, because the charge is not made on that basis, or for that purpose, he states.

The term “genocide,” he notes in “From Be’eri to Bondi: Global Antisemitism After October 7, published in Fathom, October 2026, has shed its legal meaning and become a political label, whose antithesis is “resistance.” These two terms represent two states of being: in a colonial setting, either you are engaging in genocide or you are resisting it. There is no middle ground. “Israel is condemned as genocidal, not by observation, but through logical deduction: Israel is colonial, therefore by definition it is genocidal. It cannot be otherwise. And Gaza represents resistance against the entire Western colonial and capitalist power structure.”

Maia Zelkha, editor-in-chief of Yad Mizrah, a Sephardi and Mizrahi cultural magazine, also contends that the left employs the word “genocide” as an ideological weapon. “Before Israel had even launched its ground invasion of Gaza, and before there was any evidentiary record of Israel’s military campaign,” she writes, in her article “Genocide and Its Jurors,” in Quillette, Sept. 24, 2026, many leftist groups “were already describing Israel’s response as genocide.”

On Oct. 8, just a day after Hamas’s massacre and kidnappings, thousands of demonstrators gathered in New York’s Times Square in an “All Out for Palestine” rally to support “Palestinian resistance.” Within days, other organizations were issuing statements describing Israel’s unfolding military response as genocide, situated within a pre-existing theory of Israel as a colonial project that had produced genocidal dehumanisation. Prominent academics, human-rights organisations, activists, journalists, and public intellectuals described Israel’s conduct as genocidal.

Although the conviction that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians is not new, it has garnered ever more strength since the beginning of this war. In March 2024, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, published a report alleging that the Israeli war in Gaza constituted a genocide. In December of the same year, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch did the same. Then in July 2025 came both Physicians for Human Rights and B’Tselem, followed almost immediately by the International Association of Genocide Scholars. A resolution from the latter organization requires a two-thirds vote of its members, academics in the field of genocide studies, to pass. One would be hard-pressed to find a more reputable source for the libel.

On Sept. 16, 2025, a UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza; other prominent left-wing organisations and scholars have reached the same conclusion. And finally, on Oct. 9, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that it awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 to South African judge Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, who led the 2025 UN commission that found Israel guilty of genocide against the Palestinians while completely ignoring many of the world’s worst human rights abusers, including, of course, Hamas. Pillay’s commission found that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes. Yet it accused Israel of genocide. This is a staggering moral inversion. And now the award of the Nobel; this appears to be the greatest possible legitimization of the now-established consensus about Israel’s war in Gaza. The icing on the cake!

But remember this: When a jihadist terrorist organization like Hamas applauds a Nobel Peace Prize, the moral judgment of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee should rightly be called into question.

Suspicious Election Result in Brazil Means Trouble Ahead

2026-10-29T07:16:20.646-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been re-elected president of Brazil in a result marred by controversy. He won an unprecedented fourth term after a dramatic comeback from a first-round defeat.

The Oct. 25 runoff saw Lula capture 51.8 per cent of the total vote over opponent Flavio Bolsonaro’s 49.2. It capped an evening of chaos at polling places following a last-minute decision to extend voting by two hours. Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ruled three minutes before the scheduled end of voting to keep polls open for two more hours.

Bolsonaro, whose father Jair is serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election to Lula, pointed out that Justice Cristiano Zanin is Lula’s former lawyer and criticized him for “changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game.”

Flavio Bolsonaro bested Lula in the first round of the election Oct. 4, coming in at 47 per cent to 45 per cent for the president. Almost all polling had continued to show Bolsonaro in the lead in the three weeks between the balloting.

But with just 2.2 million votes separating the candidates in the first round, it turned out even a small change in turnout tipped the balance. This result marked the first time since Brazil’s military dictatorship ended in 1985 that the second-highest vote-getter in the first-round elections won the presidency.

Brazil over the past decade has been dominated by two political forces: Lula, who governed from 2003 to 2016 and again since 2023, on the left; and Jair Bolsonaro, who governed from 2019 to 2023. The imprisonment and electoral exclusion of Jair Bolsonaro attempt have not dissolved his movement

Both men had been hit by corruption suspicions involving family members and allies, so this is not the first time Lula faced an uphill climb. He had in the past been serving a 12-year sentence over a corruption scandal that appeared to have ended his political career. But his convictions were annulled by the Supreme Court in 2021 amid evidence that the judge, prosecutors and the police had colluded to put him behind bars. This freed him to run against the elder Bolsonaro in 2022, a race he won in a huge political comeback.

Jair Bolsonaro’s admission that he accepted about US$12 million from disgraced former banker Daniel Vorcaro to produce a film on his father’s life cast a shadow over his campaign. He is under investigation for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion in connection with the case. Last week the Brazilian magazine Piaui claimed that at the height of Brazil’s 2020 coronavirus outbreak, Bolsonaro attended a boat party attended by sex workers and vaccine lobbyists hoping to strike a deal with the government of his father.

The background to the election is a nationwide corruption case -- the so-called Banco Master scandal, which has tarnished many senior figures, including some in Lula’s entourage. This includes his own son, as well as a key political ally: the country’s most powerful judge, Alexandre de Moraes of the Federal Supreme Court, hero of the Brazilian left and the man responsible for taking down Jair Bolsonaro. Recently, the juror’s ties to the bank’s head, Daniel Vorcaro, now under arrest, have come to light. Investigators believe that Vorcaro acted on different occasions based on advice from de Moraes.

The Banco Master scandal is apparently the largest bank fraud in Brazil’s history. Five years ago, Vorcaro bought a nearly bankrupt bank and renamed it Banco Master. The institution grew exponentially, based on a highly risky strategy, selling fixed-term deposits with interest rates far exceeding those offered by the competition, and without verifying whether it would have the liquidity to pay investors.

The operation functioned, in practice, as a pyramid scheme, in which applications from new customers covered the deficit of previous customers. The bank evidently went as far as to also launder money from the Primeiro Comando da Capital, the largest drug gang in the Western Hemisphere and Brazil’s most powerful crime syndicate. The bank also overvalued the property and assets it offered as collateral.

The fraud was uncovered in late 2025 with the launch of Operation Compliance Zero by the Federal Police and the liquidation of the financial institution by the Central Bank. Vorcaro was arrested last November. The Central Bank is expected to set aside over US$970 million to cover transactions with the failed lender, and the bank’s missing funds may reach US$2.2 billion. A minimum of 1.6 million people may have been affected and lost money.

This has been huge, but not unprecedented. Corruption has been endemic on both sides. Lula’s handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached and removed from office in 2016, also for corruption.

Lula emerged on the political stage in the 1970s, making his name as a union leader on the outskirts of São Paulo. As president between 2003 and 2010, Lula, a former metalworker with a fifth-grade education, created generous social programs that helped some 20 million Brazilians climb out of poverty.

The fiercely contested presidential race has come to a chaotic conclusion, and Lula will face a hostile Congress, where Bolsonaro’s allies are in the majority, and a polarized country. Brazil’s politics, always volatile, may get even worse. Stay tuned.

Will the Fifth Republic Survive PAID?

2026-10-22T07:50:31.002-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Daily Gleaner

Will the French Fifth Republic, now almost 70 years old, survive PAID (political assistance in dying)? The political “doctors” administering the coup de grâce might be Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from opposite political ends of the spectrum.

Founded in 1958, upon the death of the short-lived Fourth Republic, the Fifth Republic was designed by war hero Charles de Gaulle to create a strong semi-presidential system. The Fourth Republic formed in 1946 was a multi-party parliamentary system with politically unstable coalitions that frequently collapsed. The result: 16 individuals formed a total of more than 20 administrations, in just 12 years. The executive was a revolving door.

De Gaulle had chaired the postwar provisional government from 1944 to 1946 to restore democracy in France but hated the Fourth Republic and left office. He came out of retirement in 1958 during the political crisis over the Algerian War and commissioned a new constitution.

It placed power in a directly elected president winning a nationwide majority vote, in a two-person runoff, if necessary. It established a seven-year term, reduced to five years following a 2000 constitutional referendum to align the presidency with parliament. A president is limited to a maximum of two consecutive terms. De Gaulle served as its first president, the first of eight, a position he held until his resignation in 1969.

The division of powers remained in force. National Assembly elections were separate, with premiers forming cabinets designed to do the president’s bidding. Other powerful men who became head of state included Georges Pompidou, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, François Mitterrand, and Jacques Chirac.

But the last three have been less stellar, with the current incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, an unpopular “lame duck.” As well, there have been six prime ministers over the last five years. Macron was elected president in 2017 with 66 per cent of the second-round vote. He defeated Marine Le Pen of the National Front, now the National Rally (Rassemblement National, or RN), who won 34 per cent. He beat her again in a second round in 2022, with 59 per cent to her 41, becoming the first French presidential candidate to win re-election since Chirac in 2002. Le Pen first ran in 2012, placing third with 18 per cent in the first round of voting.

As for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the head of France Unbowed (La France Insoumise, or LFI), he has also run for the presidency three times. In 2012 and 2017, he was knocked out in the first round, winning 11 and 20 per cent respectively. In 2022, Mélenchon also came in third place with 22 per cent of the vote in the first round, behind Macron at 28 per cent and Le Pen at 23.

Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in France next spring. Will the fourth time be the charm for one of these two? It looks quite possible. An economically troubled, polarized and angry France may select one of these two so-called “far-right” and “far-left” candidates. The centre isn’t holding.

France’s underlying problem is a government caught between expensive social commitments, sluggish economic growth and mounting pressure to cut spending. It is nearing a debt crisis. The violent and massive student protests that began in September over crumbling schools are fueling more discontent, and experts warn that the country’s mounting financial troubles, President Macron’s weakened political centre, and radical movements are pushing the unrest far beyond its original educational grievances.

Between 250,000 and 500,000 people have taken to the streets. There have been rallies in roughly 110 places by Oct. 17, and large marches later took place that day in the country’s major cities, including Paris, Lyon, Nantes and Rennes. Nearly 8,000 people have been arrested, and about 900 police officers, as well as more than 350 students and staff members, have been injured. More than 100 high schools have been severely damaged, and several were burned down. In Marseille, firefighters responding to burning trash outside Saint-Exupéry high school were assaulted.

France’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, suggested that student anger was being manipulated. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said outsiders had hijacked it; Interior Minister Laurent Nunez described troublemakers moving between schools to incite violence.

Le Pen seized on the violence to intensify her law-and-order message. She called the images “unbearable” and described the rioters as “a pack howling its hatred.” She has asked for a new anti-riot law, while RN president Jordan Bardella blamed the disturbances on “decades of laxity and mass immigration.”

Behind the chaos is a calculated strategy for Mélenchon. LFI lawmakers have appeared at school gates and called for blockades to spread. His allies include the Antifascist Young Guard (La Jeune Garde Antifasciste), accused of the murder of a far-right activist in Lyon last winter, and Hope Dignity Resistance (Espoir Dignité Résistance), a group that under the guise of fighting Islamophobia, engages in violent activism. It’s also hard to miss the prevalence of Algerian and Palestinian flags.

“We will establish the Sixth Republic!” Mélenchon shouted at a recent event. “A republic of popular power through citizen referendums!” No one retains respect for the outgoing president or for the rusted institutions of the Fifth Republic. What began with legitimate complaints is exploited by forces seeking confrontation with the state. The anger is real, but the violence is organized.

An Overview of Antisemitism in Western Europe

2026-10-21T06:45:30.421-03:00

Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights survey of 2024 found that 96 per cent of Jewish respondents had encountered antisemitism online or offline in the 12 months before the survey, and that 76 per cent avoided wearing or displaying items that would make them recognizable as Jewish in public.

Antisemitism in Austria remained at alarmingly high levels last year, reaching its highest point since records began. The Antisemitism Reporting Center of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (IKG), the official body tracking antisemitic incidents against Austria’s Jewish community, released its annual report in April documenting 1,532 cases in 2025.

Last November, protesters rallied in Vienna against an event dedicated to Franz Dinghofer, an Austrian politician who was a self-confessed antisemite and a Nazi party member. They were protesting an event called the Dinghofer Symposium that they say is antisemitic. The far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) members countered that they remember Dinghofer as a statesman in the period between World War I and World War II.

In Belgium, Jewish communities are described as tight-knit but insecure, and constantly aware that their citizenship and prosperity don’t guarantee their acceptance or safety. Too often, writes Brandeis University historian Flora Cassen, who grew up in the country, “governments and the media treat attacks on their Jewish communities as a front in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not as an attack on their own citizens.” In March, there was a car burning in the Jewish quarter of Antwerp. As well, a synagogue in Liège was damaged by an explosion in what the country’s interior minister called “an antisemitic act.”

In France, antisemitic violence has intensified while the experience of protection has weakened. Jewish students face harassment framed and justified as political expression. Synagogues operate behind security. Wearing a kippah can require calculation. These are no longer marginal experiences; they have become familiar features of Jewish life in places that once felt self-evidently safe. Since 2000, between 80,000 and 100,000 Jews have fled France -- more than 20 per cent of the community.

More troubling still is the ideological shift. Antisemitism is increasingly reframed as political critique, social protest, or resistance to power. Jews are often excluded from the moral category of vulnerable minorities. The very frameworks designed to protect them can struggle to recognise them as victims.

A staggering number of antisemitic incidents has now become normal in France -- 1,320 in 2025 is nearly double the already extreme 851 in 2014. But what’s more interesting is the shift in social permission to openly hate Jews.

The far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) Party in France has been accused by academics and ministers of antisemitism after their de facto leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization and party members marched with Islamist-linked NGOs during Gaza protests. The LFI’s popularity has been on the rise in polling ahead of next year’s presidential election, according to the French newspaper Le Monde. Ninety-two per cent of French Jews believe that the LFI contributes to antisemitism in France.

Mélenchon took advantage of nationwide student protests in early October. To advance his political prospects, his strategy appears to be to capitalize on the discontent currently roiling the country. Mélenchon has also accused authorities of repression with a racist undertone, since many of the protesters are Muslim. No surprise, then, that Palestinian flags have appeared at the protests.

Although Mélenchon was known in the 1990s as a hardcore secularist, by 2020 he had allied himself with Houria Bouteldja, co-founder of the “decolonial” (anti-West) Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR). Under Bouteldja’s influence, Mélenchon began to utter questionable remarks on the Jews. The way Mélenchon uses the idea of uniting against one enemy by speaking of Israel “is similar to the way Hitler used to speak about the Jews,” according to Israeli Ambassador to France Joshua Zarka. So it’s no surprise that French president Emmanuel Macron, getting more and more unpopular, recognized a Palestinian state in 2025.

Germany has cracked down on speech and demonstrations that assert support for Palestinians and accuse Israel of atrocities, part of a national policy toward antisemitism, defined over decades in the shadow of the Holocaust and sharpened recently under the helm of Felix Klein, the first federal commissioner for combating antisemitism. Many Jews say they feel safer under such bans. The Central Council of Jews in Germany recommended Klein for his appointment as antisemitism czar. Some human rights groups have objected, however, saying the bans limit free speech and criminalize legitimate expressions of support for the Palestinian cause.

Disputes over Israel recently erupted at the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial, as both Israel’s critics and its defenders claim the Holocaust for their terrain. The anti-Zionist group Kufiyas in Buchenwald announced a demonstration there on April 11, the anniversary of its liberation, in protest against a German court’s decision that the site could refuse entry to visitors who wear a Palestinian keffiyeh. The court said that wearing a keffiyeh to send a political message “would endanger the sense of security of many Jews, especially at this site.” The Buchenwald protest was condemned by the European Jewish Congress, and Klein said it marked a “new low point in the unfortunately all-too-common reversal of perpetrator and victim roles.”

In an election held Sept. 20 in Berlin, the left-wing Die Linke came in first, winning 25.7 per cent, more than doubling its 2023 share. Israel’s ambassador, Ron Prosor, described antisemitism within Die Linke as systemic. Philipp Peyman Engel, editor in chief of the Jüdische Allgemeine, the newspaper of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, wrote that party was “riddled with people who hate Jews and Israel.”

Italy in April announced that it was declining to renew a longstanding defence agreement with Israel, a sharp reversal for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government. Opposition parties had put pressure on the government for over a year to suspend the renewal. Marco Grimaldi, an opposition lawmaker, said the decision was “a victory” for those who had protested Israel’s military offensive in Gaza over the last three years.

On Oct. 3, 2025, there was a nationwide general strike, which the labour union leaders officially called “to support the residents of Gaza and a humanitarian aid mission.” While mass anti-Israel rallies gripped other parts of Europe, Italy’s were the most numerous.

Recent Italian demonstrations of “solidarity” with Palestine saw protesters carry Palestinian flags, flags of Italian labour unions, and red flags with hammers and sickles. Some of the banners had the words, in Italian, “yesterday partisans, today anti-Zionists and anti-Fascists,” and declared support for “Palestinian resistance.”

Dutch Jews have long been used to seeing security and armed police in front of their schools, synagogues and gatherings. Since a school and a synagogue were attacked over two days in March, an unsettling feeling has spread among Jews in the Netherlands. Assailants struck Jewish buildings -- a religious school in Amsterdam, where most Dutch Jews live, and a synagogue in Rotterdam. Mayor Femke Halsema of Amsterdam called the blast at the school a “targeted attack against the Jewish community.”

Before the Holocaust, the Netherlands had a robust Jewish population. The Nazis deported 75 per cent of Dutch Jews to death camps, the highest such rate in Nazi-occupied western European nations. Today, the Jewish population of the Netherlands is estimated at about 35,000 people, just 0.2 per cent of the country’s 18 million residents.

“I am mostly angry,” declared Menno ten Brink, a rabbi at the Liberal Jewish Community in Amsterdam. The explosions have had a big impact on Dutch Jews and the wider society, added Eddo Verdoner, the Dutch national coordinator for combating antisemitism. Antisemitism has been increasing over the last decade or so, he said, with an “exponential increase” since October 2023.

Relations between Israel and Norway have plummeted to historic lows, with Oslo becoming one of the Palestinians’ staunchest supporters in Europe. Norway became the first European country to announce that it would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant following the International Criminal Court’s issuance of warrants against them, and it then joined South Africa in its International Court of Justice case against Israel.

“I find it shameful that we have one of the most anti-Israel governments in Europe,” MP Himanshu Gulati, chairman of the Israel Allies Caucus in the Norwegian Parliament, has remarked. Not surprisingly, the Norwegian government has recognized. a Palestinian state.

In May, Norway’s higher education minister indicated that she did not intend to punish a university professor who praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacres in Israel because he had “the same freedom of expression as everyone else.” Sigrun Aasland was referring to Bassam Hussein, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), who on April 21, during a lecture before the Socialist Forum in Trondheim, said that the Oct. 7 massacres were “the most beautiful thing that has happened in our century.”

Norway’s Foreign Ministry put out a bill this fall before its parliament that would send Norwegian citizens and companies to prison for buying from, selling to, building for or investing in businesses owned by Jews who live in the West Bank. Negligent violators get six months.

In Portugal anti-Israel sentiment punctuates the actions of the political press. The most significant antisemitic events that occurred in recent years included demonstrations for better housing that targeted local Jews whose personal names were published in newspapers, bomb threats against the country’s largest synagogue and the Holocaust museum, which was called a “brothel that teaches the lie of the 6 million,” and hate messages written on the facades of Jewish homes to identify “Zionist pigs.”

Following October 7, 2023, antisemitic and antizionist incidents surfaced more visibly in public spaces and academic institutions. High-profile incidents include verbal electoral harassment against Jewish community figures like writer Esther Mucznik, acts of vandalism directed at the Lisbon Synagogue, and hostile propaganda targeting Jewish and Israeli students at the University of Coimbra

The far-left Sumar Party in Spain is part of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s ruling coalition. Their support has been strongest in areas with high Muslim populations, with party members attending demonstrations with Muslim Brotherhood-adjacent groups and Gaza protests organized by Islamist-leaning networks. Members also pushed for Spain to recognize a Palestinian state, which it did in 2024, while also referring to Israel as an “apartheid state.”

The political left spread a narrative across social media asserting that the recent migrant invasion by Moroccans of Spain’s Ceuta enclave is part of a vast American-Israeli conspiracy to destroy the country. Spain’s Transportation Minister supported the theory on social media while Gabriel Rufian, a spokesperson from the Spanish Congress, asserted that the U.S. and Israel were flooding Europe with migrants to “blackmail” the country.

In Sweden, debates about antisemitism loomed large throughout the recent election season, despite the country’s small population of Jews, who number about 20,000 in a country of more than 10 million people. Politicians on all sides repeatedly sought to position themselves as the best defenders against antisemitism.

Aron Verständig, who chairs the Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities, said that while he appreciated gestures of solidarity with the Jewish community, he worried that politicians hurling accusations of antisemitism against each other could reduce Jews to a weapon of political debate. “Of course, it’s good that our situation is discussed and people are interested in what happens to the Jews here in Sweden -- but on the other hand, there’s a risk that we are becoming a tool.”

Simona Mohamsson, Sweden’s minister for education and integration, who is of Palestinian and Lebanese descent, wore a Star of David during a televised debate. A member of the center-right Liberals, she wore the symbol “for the children who do not dare to in today’s Sweden.” She criticized members of the Left Party for “flirting with extremists.”

Since 2023, the war in the Middle East has been a defining trigger for antisemitic incidents in Switzerland. For the Jewish community, this has been a constant strain for more than three years.

Pro-Palestine activists are very active at Swiss universities. There have been anti-Israel demonstrations, some of which were associated with calls for violence and antisemitic slogans. The one in Bern in October 2025 stands out in particular because there was a massive outbreak of violence. In the larger cities of Switzerland, offensive graffiti relating to the conflict in the Middle East is omnipresent.

Here and there we see small improvements on the continent, but not enough to turn things around. The ancestral Jewish knowledge that safety can collapse with terrifying speed, even in civilised societies, begins to return.

Morocco’s Shifting Domestic and International Politics

2026-10-15T06:47:30.216-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Daily Gleaner

Last summer, some 60,000 migrants pushed their way into the Spanish town of Ceuta, a coastal enclave on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Ceuta and its sister enclave Melilla have long been a source of tension between Madrid and Rabat, with Morocco claiming the territories as its own.

The Spanish-Moroccan boundary on the African side of the Mediterranean is the line on the ground with the greatest economic disparity from side to side in the world. It’s the border between the developed world and the Global South. So the relationship between the two countries is as thick and complex as globalization itself. It is also part of a larger geopolitical conflict that involves Algeria, Israel, and the United States, relating to Morocco’s occupation of the old Spanish Sahara.

Morocco’s sudden lapse in border enforcement may be in response to deepening ties between the left-wing government of socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez in Spain with Algeria, including the reopening of lucrative economic ties, as well as Moroccan resentment over the perceived colonial nature of Spanish rule in Ceuta. (Rather than rebuking Morocco, Sanchez thanked Rabat for defusing the situation.)

Algeria has long supported Sahrawi separatists in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara. And it considers itself a paragon of Third World leadership, the legacy of its bloody revolution against France from 1954 to 1962. So it doesn’t like the increasingly close relationship by monarchist Morocco with the Trump administration in Washington and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, under the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Arab states, including Morocco, in 2020. Morocco also signed a security agreement with Israel in 2021, proving vital for the conflict in Western Sahara, and in January, the two nations signed an additional joint military work plan.

The dispute over Western Sahara traces back to Spain’s 1975 withdrawal from what was then called Spanish Sahara, which handed administration of the territory to Morocco and Mauritania; Mauritania withdrew from its share in 1979 after heavy losses to Sahrawi guerrillas. A 16-year war followed, pitting Moroccan forces against the Polisario Front. Rabat eventually built an extensive sand wall, fortified with landmines and troops, partitioning the territory. A shaky stalemate is now in place.

To show its appreciation to Trump on the Western Saara issue, Morocco recently announced that it was naming the Dakhla-Tiznit highway, which runs through Western Sahara, after the U.S. president. Meanwhile, the Polisario Front sits across the border in the Algerian town of Tindouf, where thousands of displaced Saharawi people live in refugee camps.

The Ceuta crisis also stems from Morocco’s internal political dynamics. Morocco is a semi-constitutional monarchy led by a king, who governs alongside an elected parliament where Islamist, secular, and nationalist parties compete for political influence. Islamist groups dedicated to challenging the legitimacy of the monarchy itself also operate within the country, because they believe the king does not conform to their interpretation of Islamic law and governance.

This opposition intensified after Morocco normalized relations with Israel and it gained momentum after the Gaza war began three years ago. Also, though Morocco has never formally recognized Spanish sovereignty over the enclaves, successive Moroccan governments refrained from actively pursuing these territorial claims.

Islamists in Morocco consider the territories to be part of historic Muslim land, and reclaiming them to be a religious imperative. “We are still required to work diligently for the return of Ceuta and Melilla to the homeland,” asserted Abdelilah Benkirane, Secretary-General of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), the main Islamist party, earlier this year. In contrast to other Islamist players, the PJD has a longer record as an officially recognised and institutional actor.

According to their narrative, Morocco is not worth anyone’s loyalty until the government is overhauled. Young Moroccans are urged toward a permanent stance of confrontation with the West. The PJD and others claim that Morocco in its current political system has no future, and Islamist rule is the only viable salvation.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to blunt their message, King Mohammed VI asked Fatima Zahra El Mansouri, a lawyer from the centrist Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), to form a new government. The Moroccan king, who took the throne in 1999, has been broadly supportive of women’s rights.

Her selection comes after legislative elections held Sept. 23 were characterized by low turnout, amid widespread frustration over unemployment and poor public services, as well as concern about the exodus of Moroccans in search of better economic opportunities. Unemployment is high, with about one-third of young Moroccans jobless. About one-fifth of the work force is considered underemployed. Schools and hospitals are crumbling, and the space for public expression is shrinking.

Her party won 97 of 395 legislative seats, far from a majority, so she promised to form a coalition government with other moderates promptly. But the Islamist PJD took 54 seats – a big gain of 41.

El Mansouri has been nicknamed the “pasha’s daughter” because she comes from a prominent Marrakesh family and her father was formerly a municipal governor. She referred to her selection as “historic,” and framed it as a win for all women in Morocco. “This isn’t just pride for me but pride for all women,” she declared. “This is a message to all women in the kingdom.” It’s a work in progress.

Will Yemen’s Houthis Block the Red Sea?

2026-10-08T06:19:57.861-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

The ongoing conflict between Iran and the United States has made the world aware of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passageway that serves as a chokehold between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. On one side lies Ian, on the other an exclave of Oman.

On the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, the Bab el-Mandeb strait serves a similar function between the Red Sea, with the Suez Canal connecting it to the Mediterranean Sea, at its north, and the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean to the south. It separates Yemen on the Middle Eastern side and Djibouti and Eritrea on the African side. And it is a waterway through which about 12 per cent of seaborne-traded oil travels.

While Iran blocks the first waterway, Yemen’s Houthis might now do the same at the second. They are the strongest remaining member of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, and they are currently exerting significant pressure on America’s Gulf allies.

The Houthi rebels emerged in the 1990s from the Zaydi Shi’ite heartland of northern Yemen, fought six wars against the Yemeni government between 2004 and 2010, and seized the capital city of Sanaa in 2014. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia led an Arab coalition in a major anti-Houthi military intervention, yet more than 11 years of warfare have failed to dislodge them from the capital or much of Yemen’s densely populated northwest.

The Saudis back the Aden-based ruling Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council (YPLC), the official recognized government of Yemen. There had been an on-again, off-again truce by the various contending forces in Yemen after 2022, but no longer. In July, the Iranians flew a Houthi delegation from Tehran to Sanaa, challenging the anti-Houthi Saudi-led coalition’s control of Yemen’s airspace.

To prevent the aircraft from landing, Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government bombed the Sanaa airport’s sole runway. Although the plane landed at the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah instead, the Saudi action gave the Houthis a pretext for abandoning the fragile truce. It was at that point that the group began their bold escalation against Saudi interests and launched their new offensive against government forces in Yemen. The Saudi airstrikes and the rapid Houthi response may signal the beginning of a new and dangerous phase in the conflict.

In the past few weeks, the Houthis have launched a major new bid for military dominance in the country. Backed by Iran, they unleashed a wave of drones and ballistic missiles strikes on Saudi Arabia, setting fire to oil facilities. They defeated Saudi-backed government forces along the Red Sea coast, captured the strategic port of Mokha, and seized Perim Island at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandeb.

Houthi control of these will allow the group to more easily harass Red Sea shipping, placing further pressure on global energy and financial markets. Saudi oil exports through the Bab el-Mandeb have plummeted 95 per cent. Now, by also targeting infrastructure and ships near the Saudi Red Sea port complex of Yanbu, an industrial center known for its oil refineries, the Houthis are threatening the transit of oil exports sent by pipeline from eastern oil fields and then shipped northward through Egypt’s Suez Canal.

Israel and the United States caused significant damage to Houthi strongholds during the Gaza War. In the spring of 2025, the Trump administration undertook more than 1,000 airstrikes; a few months later, the Israelis targeted Houthi infrastructure and assassinated the group’s de facto prime minister and its military chief of staff.

Yet, with Iranian support, these campaigns simply emboldened the group, and they assumed that Saudi Arabia would also step back. This was a miscalculation. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has clearly had enough and has been preparing for confrontation.

On July 30, Riyadh announced a 14-country naval defence coalition for the Red Sea that included Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan and Djibouti. The crown prince signed a mutual defence agreement with Turkey and Pakistan at a ceremony in Mecca with the leaders of both countries at his side. The chiefs of staff of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey then met in Riyadh July 25 under the Mecca defence pact, as Houthi attacks continued.

Yemen has many armed groups apart from the Houthis, who oppose the internationally recognized regime. In January, Saudi Arabia had a falling out with its ally in Yemen, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), when Abu Dhabi-aligned separatist forces led by the Southern Transition Council (STC) tried to assert control over all of south Yemen, which had once been the British-governed Aden Protectorate. The north has been an independent state, ruled for centuries by a monarchy.

Riyadh wants a Yemeni state capable of securing the Saudi border, while Abu Dhabi cultivated those southern forces in Yemen whose ambitions for autonomy or independence conflicted with Saudi priorities. Since then, the Emiratis have withdrawn from Yemen entirely, allowing Riyadh to unify government military forces under its direct command.

Yemen’s government has now called for a general mobilisation. Rashad al-Alimi, head of the ruling YPLC, has asked citizens to “contribute in every way possible” in the fight. He pledged to recapture Sanaa and restore government sovereignty over the whole of Yemen. This will not be easy, even with Saudi help. The Houthis are a resilient movement.

A “Tour” of Antisemitism in Eastern Europe

2026-10-07T07:49:42.375-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

As we enter the fourth year of the “October 7” wars, things in Eastern Europe remain dire. There have been dozens of attacks on Jewish institutions across the region.

True, there are a few bright spots. Albania’s prime minister is a surprising ally of Israel in a mostly Muslim country. Edi Rama openly defends Israel’s right to protect itself, and condemns Hamas in extremely harsh terms, calling them the “Nazis of the 21st century.” He notes that waves of Jewish refugees were welcomed over the centuries.

“On the eve of World War II, only about 200 Jews lived in Albania,” he told the Jewish magazine Mishpacha. “After the Holocaust, there were more Jews here than before -- about 3,000. We didn’t hand over a single Jew to the Nazis. Seventy-five Albanians are officially recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, but in truth, the entire population mobilized.”

There is also better news from Croatia. Rabbi Pini and Raizy Zaklas moved to the country in 2004 to establish the first Chabad centre on “the land of a thousand islands.” Coming from their native Israel, it took time for them to come to terms with the fears of the Jewish community.

“We spent the first decade just earning their trust,” Raizy explained. “We had to put our grand ambitions aside and choose an individualized approach, fostering relationships through one-on-one meetings at coffee shops. Sometimes we felt disheartened at the slow pace of growth here, and worried we weren’t making progress. But I see in retrospect that we were putting down roots.”

In 2016, the Zaklas purchased a five-story building in the centre of Zagreb. Since then, it has become the spiritual center of Jewish life in the country. It’s a place where hundreds of weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and holiday programs take place annually. It’s a place where more than 3,000 Croatian Jewish men, women, and children find connection with their heritage. And it’s a place where thousands of tourists visit each year.

Less positive is the position of the Czech Jewish community. The Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic registered a total of 4,694 antisemitic incidents in 2024, compared with 2023, when 4,328 cases were reported. The severity of antisemitic incidents dramatically increased following the events of October 7. 2023. Anti-Jewish hatred, particularly in the form of demonization and delegitimization of Israel, became socially accepted and, according to the Federation, dominated public opinion.

In Greece, a spate of incidents in 2025 included a pro-Palestinian protest that blocked Israelis attempting to disembark from a ship in Syros, an alleged attack against Israeli teens in Rhodes, and an attack on King David Burger, a kosher eatery in Athens. Greek Jewish groups condemned an “anti-Zionist patrol” which took place on the streets of Thessaloniki, 95 years after assault squads targeted Jews in the same city. The left-wing anarchist Rouvikonas group organized the “anti-Zionist patrol” heading toward Mavili Square, which they said “Israeli capital has parasitically infiltrated.” They were joined by members of the groups Permanent Struggle for Class Liberation and the Libertarian Initiative of Thessaloniki.

However, in recent years there has been great improvement in formal Greek-Israeli relations, particularly following the disintegration of Israeli relations with Turkey. In August, Israel and Greece finalized a $3.5 billion deal, called the “Achilles Shield,” providing the Hellenic Republic with a multilayered antimissile system designed to protect the European Union country against aerial attacks from nations such as Iran and Turkey. It is one of the largest defence export deals in the history of the Jewish state.

The two countries “share common strategic interests and face shared regional challenges,” Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz indicated. “At a time when actors with hegemonic ambitions are seeking to expand their influence and undermine stability in the region, Israel and Greece will continue to deepen their defence and strategic cooperation.”

Hungary too is a bright spot. It has stood virtually alone in defending Israel in the European Union. Budapest has consistently blocked one-sided, anti-Israel statements and stood firm on Israel’s right to defend itself. At the United Nations, where Israel is routinely demonized, Hungary has refused to go along with the mob. And not just on the international stage. At home, Hungary walks the walk.

Hungary is home to the largest Jewish community in Central Europe, with estimates ranging from 80,000 to 100,000 Jews, most of them living in Budapest. The city is one of the only capitals in Europe where Jews can freely wear a yarmulke without being harassed, attend synagogue without metal detectors and celebrate Jewish holidays without police guarding the doors of synagogues. The government has invested millions into preserving Jewish heritage sites, restoring synagogues and funding Holocaust education not just as a formality, but as a national priority.

Poland had the highest Jewish population in Europe prior to the Holocaust and was also the site of the Nazi death camps where most European Jews were murdered. It has therefore always been careful to curb expressions of antisemitism since it became a democratic state in 1989.

But the proportion of Polish citizens who dislike Jews has risen to 40 per cent, according to Poland’s Centre for Public Opinion Research’s 2026 findings. Conducted annually since 1993, the survey asks Poles whether they like or dislike various national and ethnic groups (21 in total). It found that the proportion of people saying they dislike Jews rose eight percentage points, more than for any other group.

Still, thousands of people converge on the historic Jewish quarter of Krakow every summer to attend the annual Krakow Jewish Festival. The festival was initially launched three-and-a-half decades ago for a non-Jewish audience as a new generation of young Poles has discovered a shared past in their mixed history.

“We seek to reintroduce the Jewish contribution to Polish culture to mainstream Polish society after many decades under Communism, where Jewish issues were banned in the country, and people didn’t know that Jewish contributed so much to our heritage,” Krakow Jewish Festival director Robert Gadek explained. “Here you have a Jewish festival that is being held in the open air, and everyone feels safe.”

The war in Gaza sparked a wave of antisemitism in Romania, which has a poor track record of protecting its Jews. Antisemitism in Romania today is visible in far-right demonstrations, extremist political movements, and hostile rhetoric in parts of the media. “It’s getting worse,” according to Alexandru Muraru, a member of Romania’s parliament and vice-president of its National Liberal Party, who is not Jewish. “In Western Europe, they have big Muslim communities, which generates antisemitism. In Romania, there are only one or two mosques, but our antisemitism has historical roots.” Indeed, it does. In the 1930s, Greater Romania was home to some 800,000 Jews, giving it the world’s fourth-largest Jewish population after the United States, Poland and the Soviet Union.

“Back then, Jews made up an important proportion of Romanian society,” indicated Gilbert Șaim, who is the gabbai, or custodian, of Bucharest’s famous Choral Temple. “Despite widespread discrimination, there were villages, towns, and cities with large Jewish majorities -- even villages established by ethnic Jews centuries ago, like Podu Iloaiei.”

Only 20 per cent of Romanians know about the Holocaust or its wartime role under pro-Nazi puppet Ion Antonescu. Most are unaware of their country’s role in the mass murder and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews during World War II.

Antisemitism is expanding on social media, Facebook, TikTok and Telegram, though less visible in traditional mass media. The COVID pandemic amplified conspiracy dating back to the late 19th century. Despite a ban on glorification of Nazi heroes, at the end of November 2024, there was a public ceremony to commemorate a fascist leader.

This past April, the European Parliament lifted the immunity of one of its 33 Romanian members, Diana Sosoaca, the controversial leader of the ultra-nationalist and antisemitic SOS Romania party. Sosoaca, a lawyer, received the honorary Order of the State of for her support of the Palestinian cause.

Although antisemitic incidents are not too common, Serbia, like most other countries in Eastern Europe, also contends with a strong nationalist streak. Around 1,500 Serbs belong to extremist groups, of which perhaps 120 are active. Serbian Action, a small group of neo-Nazis, occasionally holds rallies and spray-paints antisemitic, anti-immigrant and anti-gay graffiti on public buildings.

Israeli and Serbian officials denounced antisemitic comments made by demonstrators during a clash between Serbian students and police at a protest last April. “Death to Vucic and all the Jews around him,” one protester said in a televised interview, referring to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. “Long live Serbia.”

Nemanja Starovic, the Serbian minister of European integration and the chair of Serbia’s delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, called on the protest leaders to “unambiguously condemn these antisemitic incidents and to immediately remove all antisemitic messages and slogans from university premises.”

A cause of uncertainty among Jews in Slovakia is the continuing defence by some traditionalist Slovak Catholic clerics and others of the reputation of Father Jozef Tiso, Slovakia’s most senior perpetrator during the Second World War. Tiso was responsible for extreme anti-Jewish laws and widespread Jewish impoverishment followed by expulsion of most of the country’s Jews to Nazi death camps. Yet there has emerged a whole literature of excuses for him.

As Slovenia takes a hard line against Israel, its tiny Jewish community feels increasingly isolated. Slovenia’s Jews have experienced a pattern of hostility for decades. In June 2024, Slovenia’s parliament voted to recognize a Palestinian state, only one week after Spain, Ireland, and Norway had taken that dramatic step. Half a year later, Slovenian public broadcaster RTV, became the first in Europe to demand Israel’s exclusion from the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest. RTV warned it might boycott future editions of Eurovision if Israel isn’t expelled.

Slovenia banned imports from Jewish settlements in the West Bank, only a week after prohibiting all weapons trade with Israel, the first EU member to do so. It also became the first European Union country to impose a travel ban on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Antisemitism is a Problem Across the British Isles

2026-10-01T06:12:29.097-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Daily Gleaner

As we enter the fourth year of the wars of “October 7,” things in the British Isles keep getting worse.

In the United Kingdom, the Community Security Trust recorded 924 antisemitic incidents in 2015. It recorded 3,700 in 2025: a fourfold rise in 10 years, and the second-highest annual total in the Trust’s history, exceeded only by the 4,298 incidents of 2023.

In fact, the U.K. recorded the biggest rise in antisemitic incidents last year of any country with a major Jewish population outside Israel, according to a report by the J7 Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism. Incidents rose by five per cent compared with the previous year, the largest increase among the seven countries.

Two of the highest profile attacks this year were in London, where two people were stabbed in the same Jewish neighbourhood, Golders Green, in April, and where arsonists torched four ambulances run by a Jewish group, which were parked next to a synagogue on a residential street, in March.

In September 2025 Britain recognized Palestinian statehood in a coordinated move with Canada and Australia. Last June, it was among 12 countries that have backed restrictions on trade with what Britain considers illegal Israeli ⁠settlements in the occupied West Bank. Critics accused the left-wing Labour government of sanctioning Israel as a ploy to win back Muslim voters from the far-left, anti-Israel Green Party and others.

Conservative lawmaker Tom Tugendhat called the sanctions announcement “performative politics.” Britain’s Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis saw the announcement as “a truly dark day for British Jews.” He warned that the effect of such policies could “further embolden those, at home and abroad, who use hatred as a weapon against Jews.”

University campuses across Britain have become sites of intense conflict over Israel, Gaza, Zionism, and antisemitism. Campus protests and confrontations have raised difficult questions about the boundaries between protected political expression and conduct that intimidates, excludes, or discriminates against Jewish and Israeli students and faculty. After all, antisemitic expression may emerge without taking the form of overtly antisemitic language.

Anti-Jewish violence is a symptom of British non-integration. Demographically and culturally, Britain is a very different country from what it used to be. In 1991, the foreign-born population was seven per cent of the country. By 2021, it had reached 16 per cent. In London, where most of Britain’s Jews live, the demographic shift has been even more dramatic. In 1991, the foreign-born population was around 20 per cent; today it is 41 per cent. Across Britain, ethnic ghettoization, Islamist radicalism, sectarianism, and white counter-mobilization are all familiar and constant problems.

In Ireland, antisemitism grows by leaps and bounds. A 2024 poll found 71 per cent of Irish agreed the Palestinians live under “apartheid.” Last summer, Trinity College Dublin became the first Irish university to sever ties with Israeli institutions. Not only has it divested from companies with links to the Israel Defence Forces, but it has cut all research projects involving Israeli universities and even refused to allow Israeli students to attend Ireland’s oldest university as part of long-standing exchange programs.

One well-known Trinity College graduate, the Irish novelist Sally Rooney, has barred her novels from being translated into Hebrew by Israeli publishers. She, too, draws links between Ireland and Gaza: “Israeli settler colonialist techniques have been inherited and refined from the practices of British and European imperialism,” she declared. She openly supports Palestine Action and has stated that if it makes her “a supporter of terror” under British law, “so be it.” Ireland has not proscribed the group as a terrorist organization.

Even Eurovision has found itself a victim of this new Irish radicalism. Ireland refused to enter the song contest in May in protest at the participation of Israel, and the Irish state broadcaster chose not to televise the event. Micheal Martin, the prime minister, backed the boycott.

Pro-Palestinian activists, supported by members of left-wing parties including People Before Profit and the Socialist Party and students, have led protests against Israel, in the National March for Palestine and other activities.

Last November, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) called on the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to banish Israel, on the grounds that the Israel Football Association (IFA) had organized leagues in West Bank settlements and failed “to implement and enforce an effective anti-racism policy, in breach of UEFA statutes.”

The most recent anti-Semitic act was the attempt to erase the name of the late Israeli President Chaim Herzog from a park in Dublin. Herzog is best known for his dramatic opposition, with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to the United Nations “Zionism is racism” resolution in 1975. He was also an Irish Jew; his father, Isaac Herzog, was chief rabbi in Ireland before taking the same position in the newborn Jewish state.

This problem also extends to Northern Ireland. Ireland’s past troubles are romanticized and then linked to Palestine’s present; the IRA and Hamas are presented as freedom fighters. On the International Wall in Belfast, a large mural displays the bond between Ireland and Gaza’s causes, with two hands clasped through prison bars, one arm draped in the tricolour, the other in the Palestinian flag.

Turning things around won’t be easy, given how intertwined all this is with the ongoing wars in the Middle East.

Despite Problems, U.S.-Mexican Trade Negotiations Continue

2026-09-24T07:11:50.538-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

While Canadian-American trade negotiations are at an impasse, U.S.-Mexican talks continue and seem to be moving towards a deal.

The divide-and-conquer tactic is not new for U.S. President Donald Trump. In Trump’s first term, when U.S. officials were negotiating the CUSMA free trade deal, they also pushed ahead with negotiations with Mexico, while threatening to jettison Canada.

In an interview with The New York Times this past January, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, maintained that there was no “natural reason” that CUSMA needed to be one pact. “We’re not wedded to any particular agreement or format of an agreement simply because it’s there,” he explained.

U.S. officials began meeting with the Mexican government about a separate trade deal in January, and Mexicans say they are optimistic, even though Washington has criticized Mexico for welcoming investment from Chinese factories, which can then export their products to the United States under the preferential terms of the trade deal. Trump also wants to broaden liberalization of Mexico’s energy sector, and to advance a range of other manufacturing, labour, and farming-related goals.

In 2025, Mexico became the top trading partner of the United States, above China and outpacing Canada, for the first time in 30 years. Mexico to overtake Canada as the main buyer of American goods: U.S.-Mexico trade reached a record $94.8 billion in July with Canada second at $62.8 billion.

More than 80 per cent of Mexico’s exports -- cars, appliances, fresh produce -- now go to the United States. Each day, approximately one million individuals and 40,000 trucks cross the border. In 2024, roughly $800 billion of goods were transported across the border, and over one billion dollars in commerce between the two countries occurs daily. Mexico is the top source of both automobiles and automobile parts imported into the United States.

Of course, non-economic friction between the two countries revolves around illegal migration and drugs, especially fentanyl, coming into the U.S. This leaves Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in a bind. She must appease President Trump enough to avoid threatened air strikes while firmly standing up for Mexican sovereignty and maintaining her own domestic political support. She has kept trade flowing and tariffs manageable while defusing calls for military strikes from MAGA elements who view the country as more of an enemy than an ally.

“We have a president on the Mexican side who is more interested, much more interested, in cooperating than her predecessor was,” Roberta Jacobson, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, told Atlantic magazine journalist Nick Miroff, who covers immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border, referring to former President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador. “I think she has done an amazing job navigating that minefield.”

Mexico’s security cooperation with the United States had fallen to a low point under Lopez Obrador, who lashed out at the Drug Enforcement Administration after U.S. agents arrested a former Mexican defence minister at Los Angeles International Airport and accused him of working with traffickers. Lopez Obrador ordered Mexico’s military to shun the agency.

Sheinbaum has drawn a red line at U.S. strikes on Mexican soil and insisted that they would not happen. Her government has set other firm limits on what it considers to be nonnegotiable matters, rejecting the possibility of joint operations that would allow armed U.S. forces to embed with Mexican troops.

Mexico’s national identity is deeply entwined with the legacy of U.S. conquest and imperial bullying. So this remains out of the question for members of Sheinbaum’s leftist Morena party, the Movement for National Regeneration, which has held the reins of governance in Mexico since 2018.

As Sheinbaum herself has noted, the first American intervention cost the country half its territory. The Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 resulted in the acquisition of more than 1.3 million square kilometres of Mexican territory by the U.S., including all of Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, and parts of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Wyoming. Texas had already been acquired.

For Morena, therefore, the sovereignty of the nation comes first, even before its own capacity to police itself, and before the safety and lives of its citizens. But the prime beneficiaries of this approach have been the drug cartels, which control somewhere between a third and a half of Mexico, according to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.

Now, however, Mexico’s drug smugglers are under pressure. There has been a slowdown in drug trafficking at sea since the U.S. began striking smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. The cartels are already contending with the loss of revenue from human smuggling and extortion payments because of Trump’s border crackdown.

On April 19, a vehicle carrying four officers engaged in an anti-drug operation in the northern state of Chihuahua crashed, and all four were killed. Two were CIA officers. Americans had died in an operation on Mexican soil, apparently in cooperation not with the Mexican federal government, but the government of the state of Chihuahua, which is controlled not by Morena but by the rival PAN, the National Action Party. This was hugely embarrassing to Sheinbaum.

However, on Sept. 14 she authorized the entry into Mexico of 139 U.S. Army troops to participate in joint training exercises with Mexican military personnel in Chihuahua. After all, a major trade deal still hangs in the balance.

Book Review: A Yiddish Play about an American Miscarriage of Justice

2026-09-23T07:28:55.205-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

Mississippi: A Yiddish Play about the Scottsboro Affair, by Leib Malach, edited by Alyssa Quint, translated by Ellen Perecman and Alyssa Quint (Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 2026; 128 pages, $89.50USD hardcover, $29.50USD paperback).

On March 22, 1935, enthusiasts of Warsaw’s avant-garde theatre scene slipped into a community hall at 19 Dluga Street to see an edgy, new play called “Mississippi” performed by the Yiddish experimental theater group, Yung Teatr (Young Theatre; in Polish, “Teatr Mlodych”).

A new book that includes a translation of the play retells the story of the notorious Scottsboro Affair. Alyssa Quint, the editor, is the author of The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater and the editor of two forthcoming volumes on the Yiddish theatre, Women on the Yiddish Stage and Avrom Goldfaden’s Shulamis: a Critical Edition. Ellen Perecman holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the City University of New York. Her book, Ten Yiddish Plays in Translation, includes translations of plays by Sholem Aleichem, Sholem Asch, Peretz Hirshbein, H. Leivick and David Pinski.

Although devoid of any Jewish themes, “Mississippi” is, nonetheless, an original Yiddish play. In their English translation” Perecman and Quint have undertaken what the publishers call “a work of cultural salvage.” Penned in 1935 by Polish-Jewish playwright Leib Malach, “Mississippi” was performed on the Warsaw stage by the experimental Yiddish theatre company Yung Teater (Young Theatre) led by legendary director and drama theoretician Mikhl Weichert. Yung Teater dramatized favorite themes of the international left, including the trials of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti and the Scottsboro trial. Malach and Weichert were keen to depict a dramatic episode from contemporary life that reflected their humanistic and leftist political ideas as well as avant-garde theatrical practices. Weichert praised the cultural activities of the Soviet Union, especially its innovations in the theatre, but he and Malach were not members of the Communist Party, as Communism in interwar Poland was illegal, though they saw their production as contributing to this movement.

Writing in the weekly Literarishe Bleter on the eve of Mississippi’s premiere in March 1935, Malach explains how watching Weichert’s theater group inspired him to write about the Scottsboro Affair:

“I itched to write something with a social theme. I had just been in America. . . . I had attempted to represent in dramatic form the tragic event of the Scottsboro incident, the tragic lynch-sentence of nine Black boys. The event is well known to everyone. But the living drama is so big that my first attempts at capturing it struck me as lifeless . . . But seeing the youth of Yung Teatr in their performance [. . .] brought the Scottsboro tragedy back to my head.”

Malach, Quint tells us, researched and laboured over the play “in the context of a growing corpus of literature by Yiddish writers who trained their focus on racism in the Jim Crow South, and who identified with the socialist and Communist Party politics attached to the ordeal of the Scottsboro Boys. Moreover, they also found that the racism and lynchings depicted in the play bore a deep resemblance to the injustices perpetrated against Jews both historically and contemporaneously.”

Quint notes that historically, Malach’s most significant encounter with Black Americans and Black American culture was in Harlem, and the very specific details with which one of the Scottsboro Boys, Peter, dreams of Harlem are likely a product of this encounter.

The Yiddish composer Henekh Kon wrote all the songs that appear throughout the play. They are in Yiddish but based on Kon’s understanding of African-American genres including gospel, freedom songs and jazz. A self-taught musician who grew up immersed in Jewish music -- tunes of the Hasidim, of the klezmorim and of the wedding jesters -- and who later trained at the Music Academy of Berlin, Kon composed music for over forty works, including the film version of S. Y. Ansky’s The Dybbuk (1937).

“Today’s readers of Mississippi will note that it is not a play that might have been written or performed today,” Quint writes. “Its portrait of African-American life tilts toward stereotype, its Communist ideological aspirations are also too baldly expressed, and the play lends itself to charges of cultural appropriation.” Since the actors are all white, they also perform in blackface. Presumably, there were few, if any, Yiddish-speaking Black actors in Poland, so the problem of how to present the actors playing the Scottsboro Boys as Black Americans without the production’s resorting to make-up might have seemed insurmountable.

I’ve written books and articles on American Jews and Communism, so I’m familiar with the story of the “Scottsboro Boys.” But I knew almost nothing about Leib Malach and “Mississippi,” though it has been mentioned in some books by, among others, Amelia Glaser, in Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine; Joshua Morris, in The Many Worlds of American Communism; and the very many others who have written shorter articles on the Jewish left and theatre, like Zack Rothbart and Jeffrey Veidlinger. In fact Alyssa Quint herself has written about the play in a volume, Oyfn Sheydveg: At the Crossroads: Jewish Intellectuals and the Crisis of 1939, edited by Joshua Karlip.

Leib Malach (the pen name of Leib Zalzman, 1894-1936) was born in Zwolen, Poland where he received a traditional Jewish education. He moved to Warsaw as a teenager, supporting himself by working in various trades. His literary talents were discovered by Hersh Dovid Nomberg, who helped him publish his first ballad in 1915. He later became a prose writer and noted dramatist. He emigrated to Argentina in 1922 and traveled widely in South America. After his return to Poland in 1929, he continued to travel and write popular travel sketches. He lived in Mandate Palestine from 1934-35 and was active with the Labour Zionists. Many of his plays reflect his leftist politics and concern with social injustices. He died after an illness in a Paris hospital, aged 41.

Born in Podhajce in eastern Galicia and raised in Stanislawow, Weichert received his education at kheders and in Polish schools. He attended law and humanities programs at universities in Lwów, Vienna, and in Berlin, where he studied avant-garde theatre with the preeminent German director Max Reinhardt.

“Mississippi” is a fictionalized retelling of the Scottsboro Affair, which began with the wrongful arrest of nine African American youths accused of rape in Alabama in 1931. It was staged in Warsaw in early 1935 and hundreds of times thereafter at various theatres in Poland, Israel, Canada, and Argentina. While the Scottsboro trial played out in the state of Alabama, the playwright thought it best to set the play in Mississippi, a name closely associated with the American South. The internationally acclaimed play highlighted the injustices of the American South, resonating with Eastern European Jewish audiences. It demonstrated how important it was to Yiddish writers of the 1920s and 1930s to grapple with the persecution of American Blacks.

In her introductory essay, Quint treats the political aspirations that animated Malach and Weichert, and the vulnerability felt by European Jewry that it saw reflected in the experience of Black Americans. It was the first play on the Yiddish stage -- and possibly on a Polish stage -- to depict the oppression of Black Americans. It traveled to multiple Polish cities and was met by the Jewish press with almost uniform enthusiasm and curiosity. That the Scottsboro trial unfolded against the backdrop of the rise of Nazism in Germany lent Jewish works more urgency in seeking solidarity across ethnic lines.

In the 1930s, the story of the Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama, was reported in newspapers around the world. From the American south to the Yiddish stages of Eastern Europe, news of the affair and the injustice that followed spread quickly. Many believe the high-profile series of events was an inspiration for the book and movie To Kill a Mockingbird.

The Scottsboro Boys case began on March 25, 1931, when nine young Black men and boys hopped aboard a Southern Railway train in search of work in Memphis, Tennessee. At some point a fight with whites on board erupted, and the Black riders forced some white travelers off the train. The ejected riders then claimed that they had been attacked, and two of the female white riders then asserted that they had been raped. An all-white jury convicted the nine, and all but the youngest, who was 12 years old, were sentenced to death. Numerous retrials followed, all resulting in guilty verdicts.

No crime in American history-- let alone a crime that never occurred -- produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as this one did. Over the course of the next two decades, the struggle for justice of the Scottsboro Boys launched and ended careers, wasted lives and produced heroes, opened southern juries to African Americans, exacerbated sectional strife, and divided America.

The Scottsboro Boys, thanks to the efforts of, among others, a New York Jewish lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, who later took over their defence and was himself under attack by antisemites, avoided execution. The fact that Leibowitz was Jewish and brought in by Communists certainly did not help his cause, nor that of his clients, once the retrial commenced. His style and bravado were not welcome in Alabama.

But he prevailed and they were all ultimately spared the death sentence. In the years and decades that followed, all of them had their convictions overturned or were pardoned. This included three posthumous pardons granted by the governor of Alabama in 2013, more than two decades after the last of them had passed away.

A cause celebre, Scottsboro has been the subject of countless articles and books, and this new one, about a Yiddish play that dramatized the affair, provides an interesting lens to how deeply it resonated with Jews in Canada, the United States and Europe.

Canada’s Trade Battle With the U.S. Intensifies

2026-09-16T05:16:00.534-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

The tariff battle with the United States continues. U.S. President Donald Trump castigated Canada in a news conference Sept. 2, alleging the U.S. loses anywhere from 60 to $100 billion a year in cross-border trade deficits.

He suggested that the U.S. has no need for trade with Canada. “They need us, we don’t need them. They’ve taken advantage of us for years, and it’s time to stop,” he maintained. Describing the trade relationship as “a very unfair deal,” Trump said he considered Canada harder to deal with than China or Vietnam.

U.S. Vice-President JD Vance on Aug. 24 claimed that “Canada and China have been the two worst countries when it comes to trade policy anywhere in the world. What a shame that is. China, you of course expect; they're our big economic competitor,” he said.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick accused Canada of walking away from the negotiations for political purposes. “It was manufactured,” insisted Lutnick on Aug. 27. “So there’s the sovereignty party trying to run, and they’re in the lead in Quebec and so this was Mark Carney manufacturing something that would try to keep them from winning, and then you have Alberta has an independence resolution.”

American columnist Victor Davis Hanson, on his Sept. 1 podcast on the Daily Signal conservative website agreed, suggesting Carney picked a trade war with Trump “because of the timing.” There are upcoming votes in Alberta and Quebec where they are “talking about more autonomy. In the case of Quebec, independence.”

Also, the U.S midterm elections are in November, and the Democrats “are unapologetic anti-American and pro-Canadian.” There are key Senate races in Maine and Michigan, right on the border, along with Wisconsin. And so, Hanson speculated, “what Carney was trying to do was to get people in the United States sympathetic to Canada.”

Canada’s economy remains divided by interprovincial trade barriers and conflicts between provinces. Notice that the premiers of Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, whose provinces are being hit the hardest by Trump tariffs, are all convinced that the thing to do is to slap giant countervailing tariffs and export taxes on the exports of Saskatchewan and Alberta, but not their own products. The fact that doing so promises to ruin those industries for generations afterwards is of little concern.

Canada doesn’t take comparative advantage of critical minerals and oil and gas but instead, those industries are strangled with endless taxation and regulation. The Liberals have spent the past decade trying to destroy the Alberta-based energy industry. Providing the means to extract and ship oil to market is nearly impossible.

“Countries rarely collapse because they lack potential,” writes David Suchanek, who teaches economics and international business at Appleby College in Oakville, Ontario. “They decay because potential becomes an excuse for tolerating mediocre institutions. Weak productivity growth, chronic permitting delays, fragmented regulation and interprovincial trade barriers routinely turn comparative advantage into comparative frustration.”

Stephen Nagy, in an article in the Aug. 28 National Post, “Canada Must Stop Being the ‘Ugly Ally,’” reminds us how in the Trudeau decade Canada’s relationship with its most vital security and trading partner was disastrously mishandled.

“We saw Trudeau explicitly campaign against ‘MAGA conservatism,’ while then Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly publicly mused about creating a game plan to deal with a hypothetical authoritarian shift in the US.” Following Trump’s 2024 electoral victory, Trudeau called Kamala Harris’s electoral defeat “a setback for women’s progress,” and suggested women’s rights were under attack by “regressive” and “reactionary” political forces.

The heavy-handed way the truckers were treated during their occupation of Ottawa during the COVID pandemic, including the freezing of bank accounts, also did not go unnoticed.

In Carney’s attempts at economic diversification, he is making deals with the likes of China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. All these countries are, of course, far from making even a pretence of democratic governance, but in the case of China, that nation is a world power and the most important economic and geopolitical rival to the United States.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has named Dominic Barton, Canada’s former ambassador to China, as the new board chair of a reconfigured Invest in Canada initiative, a move which will please Beijing. During his years in the executive suite of Brookfield Asset Management from 2020 to 2025, Carney went out of his way to praise Chinese President Xi Jinping.

But anyone who thinks Washington, be it under Trump or a future Democratic administration, would allow a truly close Canadian “strategic partnership” with Beijing is dreaming. It would make a mockery of NORAD and turn the 49^th parallel inro an American border with a country that had come under Chinese economic – and perhaps political – sway.

As Conrad Black has written, in “Carney’s Big Chance,” National Post, Aug. 29, Trump considers that “we have been an incoherent nationality whose modus operandi has been a dishonourable freeloading on the Americans for national defence, and absolute commercial dependence upon the United States as if we were states of the American Union, while only masquerading as an independent country.”

Canada has been able to indulge in these activities precisely because it borders the United States – a country that, until Trump came along, paid it little attention.

The Rise of the Anti-Immigrant German Right

2026-09-03T06:20:14.052-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

On Sept. 4-5, 2015, Angela Merkel, then the German Chancellor, opened the floodgates of the country by allowing some million refugees into the country. Most of them were fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

This all followed the publication of a photo of the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi, a two-year old who drowned and was washed up on a Mediterranean beach (a picture which some observers considered staged).

“We can do this,” she famously assured Germans. She was wrong. A decade of chaos, including periodic terrorist attacks, has been the result. Germany, even in its most urban and populated areas, went from a safe nation with high levels of social trust and generous social safety nets, to something rather different. Some 25 years ago, the concept of ungovernably dangerous areas was simply unheard of. Not anymore.

This has given rise to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, now leading in national polls, and on the cusp of taking power in Saxony-Anhalt in that state’s Sept. 6 election. The state government is currently run by the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), as it has been for most of the time since 1990.

The AfD, Germany’s largest opposition party, was founded in 2013 as an anti-euro party that then shifted direction to focus on reducing migration. It challenges the consensus on migration, nationhood, Europe, and identity. Germany is bracing for three state elections, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin on Sept. 20 alongside that of Saxony-Anhalt.

Located in the former Communist East Germany, Saxony-Anhalt is a conservative and underappreciated region marked by depopulation, industrial decline and rural traditionalism. The AfD has long polled more strongly in eastern Germany than in the former West Germany.

“We will form the government in Saxony-Anhalt,” the party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, predicted in an interview with broadcaster ZDF Aug. 23. A recent Infratest dimap poll showed the AfD with 41per cent support, a result that would double the party’s vote share compared to the last election in 2021, and well ahead of 24 per cent for the conservative Christian Democrats. The Left Party is at 13 per cent, while the Social Democrats are at between six and seven per cent.

This would be enough for an absolute majority of seats in the legislature and allow the AfD to form a government without coalition partners. This is important, because Germany has a cross-party consensus to uphold a firewall or Brandmauer against any parties to the right of the conservative Christian Democrats. This means no party would form a coalition with the AfD, which is almost always necessary to rule under Germany’s electoral system. Even when the AfD came first in the 2024 elections in Thuringia, a state neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt, with 33 per cent of the vote, the centre-right CDU, which came second, chose to form a government with parties to its left, sending the AfD into opposition despite being the largest party.

Ulrich Siegmund, the leader of the AfD in the state, told broadcaster Deutsche Welle that he wants to create a “domino effect” with a “historic” victory. The country’s domestic intelligence service has labeled his AfD’s regional chapter as “right-wing extremist,” which he dismisses as politically motivated.

The AfD has unveiled an ambitious 100-day government program, including tougher deportation policies, changes to welfare provision for asylum seekers, cuts to funding for NGOs and party foundations, and reforms to public broadcasting.

They also fear ethnic Germans are slowly being replaced by other groups. Nearly a quarter of former East Germans have moved west or abroad since German reunification in 1990. In those five states, the population has fallen by 16 per cent (excluding East Berlin). Saxony-Anhalt recorded the most dramatic decline at 26 per cent. That’s left behind a region that is now Germany’s oldest, with an average age of 48.3 years. Its birth rate among the lowest, with many communities watching traditions slowly disappear.

“Germany suffers from massive depopulation,” their manifesto states. “What in political debate is referred to as ‘demographic change’ is nothing less than the aging and extinction of the German people.” The text claims that the “ruling parties” know the extent of the problem but are lacking “the political will or the courage to enact the measures that would be necessary to reverse the trend.” The number of people without German citizenship has more than doubled since 2015.

On immigration, the party has limited room to manoeuvre at the state level, since this is largely the federal government’s prerogative. But it would use Saxony-Anhalt’s four of 69 votes in Germany’s upper house, the Bundesrat, to lobby for radical change at the national level as well as enacting state-level measures like refusing to take an allocated share of asylum seekers even if they have entered Germany through a safe state. There is also a frequent use of the term “remigration” to describe the party’s aim to reverse the mass migration Germany has seen over the last decade or so.

As early as 2010, Thilo Sarrazin, a German economist and author, published Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Abolishes Itself), a critique of post-war immigration policy. By leaving Germany’s demographic anxiety entirely to the AfD, the mainstream parties are losing a lot of ground.

Israel and Hezbollah

2026-09-02T07:55:30.325-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

During Operation Rising Lion in 2025, the Iranians discovered that the proxies they had built up

for years failed to provide the assistance expected of them. Hezbollah, their most important ally, refrained from opening a front against Israel.

But in the current war, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Naim Qassem responded to pressure from Tehran and carried out his threat to open fire on Israel. It sent tens of thousands of Israelis in the Galilee into shelters several times a day. This time Hezbollah proved effective. What now?

On June 26, after a series of five bilateral meetings hosted by the United States, representatives of the Israeli, Lebanese, and U.S. governments signed the Trilateral Framework Agreement, declaring their shared “ambition to end conflict between them, ensure the sovereignty and security of both countries, and establish peaceful neighborly relations between the two countries.”

Israel and Lebanon agreed to a framework which would include the disarming of Hezbollah, the phased withdrawal of Israel from areas conquered over the last three years of war, and the deployment of the Western supported Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to the areas evacuated by Israel. So far, three “pilot zones” have been established, in the areas of Faroun, Srifa and Zawtar al-Gharbiya. “It’s the beginning of the beginning. There’s a lot of work ahead,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after the signing ceremony. That’s an understatement!

Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun, a Maronite Christian, made his first ever White House visit on July 21. The Washington meeting with President Donald Trump, the first for a Lebanese president since 2009, was meant to move forward on the project to sever Lebanon from Iran’s orbit, disarm Tehran’s proxy Hezbollah, and pave a way toward Lebanon-Israel peace.

Aoun recalled that the army’s collapse in 1975 led to the emergence of militia groups, a civil war and the Palestinian takeover of the country’s south, which was used to launch attacks on Israel.

But there remain legitimate doubts about Beirut’s willingness to follow through on promises to disarm and dismantle Hezbollah. The last round of such efforts in late 2025 failed. Lebanese leaders have promised to disarm Hezbollah multiple times over the past thirty-five years, without success. The United States has sent the LAF more than $3 billion in aid since 2006. And yet two decades later, Hezbollah is still armed and still on Israel’s northern border.

“America needs to support the LAF,” Aoun told Trump. “Without the LAF,” he continued, “everything will collapse.” And as he told a group after his meeting with Trump, the aid must be “immediate and unconditional.” Could the army plausibly disarm Hezbollah? Since 2022 Washington has been paying LAF salaries directly, yet there has been no change.

The LAF is generally thought to consist of about 50 per cent Shia Lebanese among its rank and file, and around 30 per cent in its officer corps. Such a force would split along sectarian lines were it to be deployed against Hezbollah. Until Hezbollah’s control over the Shiite community weakens, it remains unclear whether the army can perform the task.

Anyhow, eliminating Hezbollah is virtually impossible, because its very existence is just part of what makes Lebanon an ongoing failed state. Hezbollah is not merely a military organization. It is the product of a particular geopolitical environment, a particular historical experience, and a particular understanding of survival.

Over the past four decades, it has evolved into a political party, social welfare provider, military force and ideological movement deeply rooted in Lebanon’s Shia communities. While military action can weaken it, the social and political foundations that sustain Hezbollah are much harder to remove.

The people who demand Hezbollah’s disarmament often begin with an idealized image of Lebanon rather than the Lebanon that exists. They imagine a state capable of protecting all its citizens equally and defending its borders independently. That is very far from reality.

Modern Lebanon was constructed around a delicate sectarian formula that sought to balance competing communities rather than forge a single national project. Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing arrangement was formed under the National Pact of 1943 and the Taif Agreement of 1989. Different factions cultivated different external patrons, be they France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Syria. Political identity often became intertwined with foreign sponsorship and external alliances. The result was a state that never succeeded in creating a unified national consciousness.

For much of the country’s history, the Shia Muslims were widely regarded as the country’s most politically and economically marginalized community. They were often viewed with suspicion by the authorities and lacked the institutional recognition enjoyed by other religious communities.

So, for the Shia population, Hezbollah is not merely a political party or an armed movement. It is an insurance policy against annihilation. The Shia community in Lebanon looks around the region today and sees opponents everywhere — not just Israel, but Sunni Muslim militants ruling Syria, Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia as well – states that consider Shia Islam a heresy to be extinguished. (Lebanon’s own Sunnis also fit that description.) Under such conditions, disarmament begins to look like suicide.

President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Syria might get involved in Lebanon again is ridiculous. Any Syrian intervention under its new Sunni rulers would allow Hezbollah to claim credibly that Lebanon faces a new external threat. Whereas many Lebanese question Hezbollah’s claims that it is protecting Lebanon from Israel, there would likely be greater agreement that a Syrian incursion merits resistance. Many Lebanese would view it through the lens of Syria’s 29-year occupation of Lebanon, fuelling concerns about a return of Syrian influence over the country.

Since the fall of the Assad regime, Hezbollah has portrayed the new government in Damascus as a jihadi organization that seeks to carry out sectarian massacres against the Shias. This has actually increased Hezbollah’s legitimacy within its own support base – those who already view Hezbollah as a resistance movement that seeks to fight against any external actor.

Nonetheless, in the recent conflict Israel has significantly weakened Hezbollah. The organization since the Gaza war began has lost most of its long-range and heavy missiles, and about 8,000 of its fighters and commanders have been killed, out of roughly 30,000.

But Hezbollah has not been decisively defeated, nor will it be. The problem is that when a state is faced with an armed force on its soil that doesn’t want to disarm, the usual recourse available to the state is coercion. The Lebanese state has neither the will nor capacity to do so and is no longer sovereign, in any meaningful sense.

As long as the conditions that created Hezbollah remain intact, the expectation that it will voluntarily surrender its weapons will remain a fantasy. It is up to Israel alone to keep Hezbollah north of the Litani River, where the group’s short-distance missiles and drones cannot reach Israel’s population centres.

A and J Days in Today’s Toronto

2026-08-27T07:27:43.711-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Shalom, Fall 2026

In spring I presented a paper on Khaim Zhitlovsky, a major proponent of secular Jewish diaspora nationalism and Jewish nationhood, at the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies annual conference at York University in Toronto. It was a wonderful time and very enjoyable. There were academics from across Canada and the United States.

We remained in the city for another four days: I call them “A” and “J” days. On the two A days we met with old academic (hence the A) friends from graduate school days in London, and former University of Prince Edward Island professors now in Toronto. They were all quite pleasant, but nothing was ever mentioned about antisemitism in Canada or the dire position in which Israel finds itself. As if these problems didn’t exist.

The two J (for Jewish) days were spent with my sister and her husband; my nephew, wife and their child; some cousins; and other Jewish friends. On those occasions we – no surprise -- talked about virtually nothing but Jews and Israel. It’s as if we inhabited two parallel universes in Toronto.

This is part of a larger picture. Nearly one-third of Canadians believe that antisemitism or anti-Jewish attitudes are becoming more acceptable in the country, according to a new poll published in an article by Ari David Blaff in the June 17 National Post.

The Leger survey, conducted on behalf of the Association for Canadian Studies, found that 31 per cent held that view, while the highest level of agreement was concentrated among university students (37 per cent), men (38 per cent) and Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 (35 per cent). English speakers were more than twice (35 per cent) as likely to agree with the statement as opposed to just 16 per cent of Francophones.

And the large number of antisemitic attacks and protests in Toronto, including gunfire, has been widely reported and is well known to all.

Our academic friends know we are Jewish, of course, and I’m sure they assumed we had very strong opinions about Canadian Jews and Israel. Did their feelings about the current situation differ? No doubt they were disturbed by the antisemitism – but they probably gave it little thought. As for Israel, I suspect they had stronger opinions – and probably negative ones? Best not to mention them. After all, we were all longtime colleagues and didn’t meet to engage in arguments.

We have all read all too many accounts of Jews who after October 7, 2023 were “ghosted” (that is, dropped) or even politically attacked by people whom they considered good friends. Others had their feelings simply ignored or minimized. This didn’t happen in our case – probably because we live far from Toronto and wouldn’t be seeing our friends for years at a time. But the lack of any overt concern over our emotions was not very reassuring, and I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive. Ours is unfortunately, typical, it seems. I suspect this kind of thing is being repeated across the country.

David Fleischer, in a June 18 Canadian Jewish News article, “It Seems Like No One Else Cares Very Much: a Toronto Jew Reflects,” in exasperation wrote that “I was tempted to make a list of every person and organization that has let me down since Oct. 7.” On our own “J” days, we heard similar stories from our Jewish friends and relatives. To use a Yiddish expression, we have “put it under our hats” – that is, taken notice of it and what it may entail. Nothing very good, I’m afraid. It is, to use an Israeli expression, the “situatsya.” It is the way we live now.

Communist Parties in India Continue to Lose Elections

2026-08-27T07:11:19.961-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

Communist parties in India are losing ground in electoral politics, despite growing radical student protests, which recently saw the resignation of an education minister. The crisis is undeniable. The communist movement that once shaped national political discourse has been reduced to the margins electorally.

Communists were a major force in national politics. In 1996, Jyoti Basu, a founding member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), one of India’s three main communist parties, who was at the time West Bengal’s chief minister, even came close to becoming India’s prime minister as head of a coalition government. But his party rejected the offer, a decision Basu would later describe as an historic blunder.

The communists continued to shape politics in Delhi so deeply that in 2008, when they withdrew their support from former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s government, it was enough to push Singh into a confidence vote before he finally prevailed. At the time, the parties held 62 seats in the 543-seat lower house of parliament. They are now down to eight.

Today’s India is a very different place. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is reshaping the political landscape and has moved the political spectrum to the right. Since the 1990s, the rise of Hindu nationalism and market liberalisation has produced a religious, political and economic onslaught that squeezed the left from all sides. The communists have struggled to counter a politics increasingly organised around caste and religion rather than class.

Their social base has eroded. Organised labour was always a minority in India's vast informal economy. Welfare politics increasingly shifted from class mobilisation to direct cash transfers and identity-based coalitions. And contemporary electoral politics is now shaped by huge financial resources, corporate backed media propaganda and patronage-based campaigning.

Also, for the first time since 1957, India no longer has a single communist-led state government. West Bengal is gone. Tripura is gone. Kerala, too, has delivered a setback. At their peak, India’s various communist parties ruled states stretching from West Bengal to Kerala and Tripura. They impacted the lives of more than 100 million people through trade unions, peasant organisations, student wings and disciplined cadre networks.

West Bengal, in India’s east, has more than 106 million people. About 70 per cent are Bengali Hindus; neighbouring Bangladesh is a Bengali Muslim nation. The Left Front, organized by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), governed the state continuously from 1977 to 2011, one of the world’s longest-running elected communist administrations.

Tripura is a very small state east of Bangladesh. Its 3.6 million people are ethnically heterogenous, divided into 19 tribal communities, but 85 per cent are Hindus. In Tripura, the Left Front, which included both the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India, ruled for 35 years in all, including an uninterrupted 25-year stretch before its defeat by Modi’s BJP in 2018.

Kerala followed a different trajectory. The narrow state sits in India’s far southwest along the Arabian Sea. Its 36 million Malayalis speak Malayalam, the official language. Half are Hindus, one quarter Muslims, and about 20 per cent Christians.

Since 1957, when the state voted for one of the world’s first elected communist governments, power alternated between the Left under the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress Party, making the communists a durable force but never a permanently dominant one.

Last April’s election in West Bengal saw the defeat of the incumbent All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). The BJP won the election in a landslide and formed the government for the first time in the state. The Communist Party (Marxist) was reduced to one seat.

The BJP victory ranks among the most significant breakthroughs of Modi’s 12-year reign. It’s not merely the defeat of a three-term incumbent, but the completion of the party’s long march into eastern India. “Winning Bengal is a big victory for the BJP, a land of promise that has long eluded its grasp,” remarked author and journalist Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. Unlike the BJP’s rapid rise in Tripura, West Bengal was never a lightning conquest.

The election saw violence as well. It stems from the state’s entrenched “party society,” explained Zaad Mahmood, who teaches political science at Kolkata’s Presidency University. Coined by political scientist Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, the term captures how party affiliation became embedded in daily life and livelihoods.

“In the last decade or so, we’ve seen more atrocities around political identity than caste or religion,” Mahmood told the BBC, arguing that in many rural areas survival itself is tied to party loyalty, making any change in power feel existential.

Kerala also went to the polls in April. The election resulted in a historic landslide victory for the Congress Party-led United Democratic Front (UDF), completely unseating the ruling Left Democratic Front, which included the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India.

In Tripura, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was the dominant political force for decades, heading a Left Front coalition. In 2013, they secured 50 out of 60 seats Yet they lost power to the BJP in 2018 and have since then remained in the opposition. In 2023, they won just 11 seats.

It’s become clear that other divisions are bigger issues than those of class. So for communists in India’s states, the slide continues.

Canada is in a Huge Mess

2026-08-27T07:09:48.756-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Charlottetown Guardian

I’m not going to wade into the weeds of the current trade war between Canada and U.S. President Donald Trump, because hundreds of articles from across virtually every newspaper in Canada (and some in the United States) have already dealt with it. My interest is in the political implications.

To quote the title of a famous book about South Africa: “Cry the Beloved Country.” Canada is in a mess; everyone now sees that. When I grew up in the 1950s and sixties, that was not the case. The old “Dominion of Canada” had a fairly solid national identity. It was, for all its faults, a serious country.

Not anymore. Over the following half-century it has become, under a left-liberal political hegemony, little more than a “protection racket” that benefits its academic, cultural, economic, and intellectual elites, who dominate the CBC, universities, film production and so on, few of whom could compete competitively and economically otherwise. Canada has been able to indulge in these activities precisely because it borders the United States – a country that, until Trump came along, paid it little attention.

But the empire that America built following the Second World War has now been unravelling. Trump is the result, not the cause. The U.S. can’t afford political and economic free riders anymore. And who blew the whistle on this? Why, none other than the prime minister who hastened our decline over the past decade!

After Trump won the 2024 election, Justin Trudeau flew down to Mar-a-Lago and suggested that Canada could not survive economically without the United States. What Trudeau likely didn’t expect was Trump’s retort that in that case, “maybe it should just become our 51st state.” He’s in effect seen us as a “parasite” country.

Don’t forget that Trudeau had himself said that “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.” We do not even pass the most rudimentary test of a nation as those that are united by common descent, history, culture, or language.

At this point it’s best to quote an article by Carson Jerema, “Mark Carney’s Path From Here is Surprisingly Obvious,” published on-line in the National Post August 22:

“Living next to the most powerful and richest nation in history, which was somehow uniquely benign, and, until now, largely friendly, allowed successive politicians the luxury to delude themselves into thinking Canada was morally superior. The U.S. spends money on the military and is the home of ravenous capitalism, while Canada is a nation of health care, peacekeepers and multiculturalism.

“This country’s entire national mythos since the 1960s has only been possible because the Americans had not been a genuine military threat since at least the Civil War, and possibly not since the War of 1812.

“Additionally, given how wealthy the U.S. is, there has never been much pressure on Canada to ensure it is a business friendly country. No matter what happens, the massive market to the south allows us to have a minimum standard of living almost by osmosis. When twinned with the fact that Canada’s inherent French-English divide absorbs unending federal resources, you have the makings of an unserious country unconcerned with national defence and generating wealth and opportunity for citizens.

“So, instead of permitting competition and foreign investment, Canada protects cartels, often for regional political reasons, in banking, airlines, telecommunications and agriculture.

“Instead of leaning into Canada’s comparative advantage in critical minerals and oil and gas, those industries are strangled with endless taxation and regulation that can only be described as predatory.”

How many countries elsewhere in the world have had the luxury of endless squabbling over bilingualism, identity, immigration, provincial-federal issues, relations with indigenous peoples, and so forth. Are we European, North American, multicultural, settler-colonialist, and so on. Like the Chesire cat, we have been disappearing into a political fog.

As Scott Gilmore, a former Canadian diplomat, warned us, in an April 19, 2018 article, “Canada is Not a Country,” in Maclean’s magazine, “And when our storm arrives, we may discover that Canada was never really a country after all.”

Our “benefactor” to our south has itself run into major economic trouble and decided it can’t afford to carry us any longer. Our elites hope to see a friendlier Democratic Party president after 2028. But that may not happen. A Republican like JD Vance will be even less compassionate. And even a Democrat knows charity begins at home.

Where Does Oman Stand in Current American-Iranian War?

2026-08-20T07:01:29.188-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

The Sultanate of Oman has rarely captured the world’s attention, but it has become a key player in the struggle over the Strait of Hormuz, the major waterway handling about one-fifth of worldwide oil and liquefied natural gas shipments to world markets. They come from the Gulf states of Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Most of Oman lies across from Iran on the Gulf of Oman, but its Musandam Peninsula, separated from the rest of the country by the United Arab Emirates, looks like a spear facing the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow channel, approximately just 50 kilometres wide at the narrowest point, is therefore jointly controlled by Oman and Iran.

Oman is considering joining Iran in collecting a toll for ships navigating the Strait, creating a bilateral Iranian-Omani governance structure. On August 5, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported that in early April Tehran and Muscat began talking about the future of the Strait. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Sultan Haitham bin Tariq on April 26 to talk about security concerns. Delegations continued to travel to each other’s capitals.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry five days later declared that the Islamic Republic and Oman were developing mechanisms to monitor the safe passage of shipping through the Strait, while maintaining that continued American violations of an earlier Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) prevented the strategic waterway from being declared safe.

Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said that the discussions between Tehran and Muscat were progressing, with the two sides having reached an understanding on a traffic map through the Strait. He added that compensation for maritime services would ordinarily be expected. “As a rule, when you provide maritime services, you should definitely receive compensation for it,” he said.

The negotiations with Oman were therefore focused specifically on establishing a safe shipping route, while the question of fully opening the Strait remained linked to the broader military situation. Baghaei stated on August 5 that “our country’s relevant authorities are considering its several dimensions --technical, legal, security, and ecological.” Environmental fees are Iran’s euphemism for tolls. Baghaei also cautioned that an agreement with Oman alone will not secure navigation through the Strait, and there remain “other factors” that make things. He referred to the naval blockade against Iran and “other invasive and threatening actions” by the United States.

Nour News, close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reiterated Baghaei’s point in an editorial. It argued that the agreement with Oman concerns only operating the waterway and will not alone result in a reopening of the Strait. Unmolested transit through the Strait will depend on factors such as unfreezing Iran’s financial assets.

Nour News also reported that, over a specific period, Iran will operate the entry of ships through the northern corridor into the Persian Gulf, and Iran and Oman will co-direct their exit through the southern corridor. “After the specified period, the transit of ships through both northern and southern corridors will stop, and all transits will pass through the middle corridor.” The tolls received from the vessels will depend on various factors, such as the type and value of the service” provided by Iran and Oman. These services include insurance, refueling, environmental services, and other naval support.

Tasnim News, close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, published an editorial arguing that the United States cannot militarily restore the previous status quo in the Strait of Hormuz. “Minesweeping, escorts, and retaliatory effects are not synonymous with returning to normal maritime conditions,” as delays, high insurance rates, and low traffic during the brief ceasefire revealed. The article demanded that the U.S. and others accept the reality of Iranian-Omani sovereignty over the Strait.

Oman belongs to the Gulf Cooperation Council alongside Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, but unlike those countries, it espouses neutrality. That’s why it refused to join the Saudi-led coalition to fight the Houthi rebels in Yemen. This allowed it to enjoy a peaceful border on its western flank. Oman has even allowed Iran to supply the Houthis in Yemen by using Omani territory.

Oman has had warm relations with Iran. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi deployed his military to put down the Dhofar rebellion in 1971, saving Sultan Qaboos, who was only a year into his rule. The 1979 Iranian revolution did not shake the relationship. The sultanate has acted as a mediator between Iran and the United States.

This was made possible mostly because of the Omani neutrality that, as far as Iran was concerned, was different than the hostility exhibited by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. So Oman has also been the Gulf country least affected during the current war, with attacks few and far between.

“Oman’s model has always been triangulation, where they keep open channels to Tehran, Washington, and the Gulf simultaneously,” according to analyst H.A. Hellyer of the Royal United Services Institute. “What shifted is Washington’s tolerance for an interlocutor who won’t sever the Iran channel.”

President Donald Trump has threatened that if Oman tried to control the Strait of Hormuz alongside Iran he would “blow them up,” while U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned he would sanction Muscat if it helped impose a tolling system in the waterway. We shall see.

Turkey's Rising Power Worries Israel

2026-08-19T06:46:14.913-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

It has long shared intelligence with Iran, and it remains the only NATO country to have refrained from sanctioning Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It is, along with Qatar, the main international sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its Palestinian branch, Hamas. Its poor human rights record consistently stir unease among NATO allies.

This is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. He wants his country to become the preeminent power in the Middle East. If Iran emerges from the current war with Israel and the United States weakened, whether politically, economically, or militarily, Turkey’s relative influence in the broader region will increase. Ankara has already consolidated significant influence in Syria and Azerbaijan, and it continues to pursue strategic connectivity projects across the South Caucasus.

Since Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2003, relations have steadily deteriorated. The Hamas victory in a legislative election in Gaza in 2005 felt in Ankara like a personal win for Erdogan, who had advised Hamas on its electoral strategy.

Three years later came the Mavi Marmara incident. A Turkish ship chartered by the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) attempted to break Egypt and Israel’s blockade of Gaza. The vessel was boarded by Israeli commandos, resulting in nine deaths. Erdogan accused Israel of “state terrorism” and appealed to the “international community” in a speech to the Turkish parliament. Things kept going downhill and are now worse than ever.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan recently remarked that “the Israeli authorities are a burden that humanity can no longer bear.” Fidan’s words came in a TV interview July 2 following Israel’s recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide: “Israel is not just Turkey’s problem, nor is it just the issue of our president, he said. “But everyone knows it, feels it, whispers it in hidden corners, and occasionally speaks openly. This is what we must call it.” True, he stepped back from those remarks in a later interview, contending that Turkey and Israel aren’t destined for conflict. Was this second comment perhaps made at Donald Trump’s urging?

After Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Erdogan emerged as one of Israel’s most outspoken international critics, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of committing grave violations during the Gaza conflict and intensifying Ankara’s diplomatic support for the Palestinian cause. Israeli officials have interpreted this rhetoric as evidence that Turkey increasingly views itself as a political counterweight to Israel across the region.

Already in December 2023, Erdogan had compared Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, and Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip to those of the Nazis. In March 2024, he referred to Netanyahu and his government as “modern-day Nazis” and called for bringing these “murderers” to justice under international law.

He subsequently accused Netanyahu of committing “genocide” in Gaza, claimed that his actions “would make Hitler jealous,” and even described the situation in Gaza as “worse than Nazi camps,” while portraying the West as standing aside and enabling the continuation of the “brutality.” In a speech posted on X on March 30 this year, Erdogan called on “Allah” to “damn Zionist Israel.”

The narrative accusing Israel has become a structural component of Turkey’s domestic political discourse. What is new is not the use of extreme imagery and Holocaust terminology, but the role they play. Unlike in the past, the rhetoric is no longer merely an expression of political anger or protest; it has become a component of Turkish policy, intended to lay a normative foundation through which Ankara seeks to deny Israel the moral legitimacy of its actions.

Turkey portrays Israel not as a state confronting a grave security threat from a murderous terrorist organization but as an entity that has crossed the bounds of humanity, committing crimes it equates with those perpetrated by the Nazis. This framing intentionally downplays the severity of Hamas’s actions and prepares the ground for collective action against Israel, including exceptional punitive measures against it. At the same time, it depicts any Western hesitation or lack of restraint regarding Israel as a moral abandonment of Gaza’s residents, expanding responsibility and blame to the international community beyond Israel itself.

On November 7, 2025, the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office announced the issuance of arrest warrants against 37 Israeli figures, including Netanyahu and other senior officials, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Although these domestic warrants lack practical enforcement, their significance lies in the ongoing legal threat they create. They limit the movement of senior Israeli officials, discourage other countries and institutions from engaging with Israel, and enhance the criminal framing of Israel in the international arena.

Its identity as a Muslim state and a NATO member, but critical of the liberal-Western order, has allowed Turkey to position itself as a leading moral voice, strengthening its regional and international standing. In addition to the importance the Turkish government attributes to the Palestinian issue and the broad support for the Palestinian position among the Turkish public in general, and Erdogan’s electoral base in particular, this issue serves as a platform for positioning Turkey as a voice challenging the West and speaking on behalf of “the oppressed in the world.”

Erdogan’s tenure has seen a systematic shift toward Islamization within Turkey. His government has expanded religious education, restricted alcohol sales, and promoted conservative social policies. These measures, coupled with the suppression of secular institutions, align with his stated goal of raising a “pious generation.”

Erdogan, from his comments, seems to consider himself the rightful leader of the entire Muslim world. In the interim, he evidently sees himself as the Middle East’s next great power broker, claiming leadership while chaos reigns.

Already entrenched in Syria, steadily expanding an indigenous defence industry capable of producing sophisticated drones, naval vessels, and eventually advanced fighter aircraft, while seeking a foothold in Gaza, Ankara increasingly appears intent on filling the regional vacuum Iran leaves behind. Tehran sought to surround Israel with a Shi’ite ring of fire. Ankara appears willing to create a Sunni one.

Brazil’s Forthcoming Election Bears Watching

2026-08-13T06:13:29.431-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John-Telegraph-Journal

Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, on July 25 formally launched his bid to challenge President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) in ‌October’s presidential election, gaining support from Argentina’s President Javier Milei, an AI-generated message from his jailed father, and ‌a video address from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Bolsonaro, the candidate of the right-wing Liberal Party (PL), who is 45 years old, is the son of the disgraced former president, who is in jail after receiving a 27-year prison sentence for trying to overturn the result of the 2022 election. As for Lula, this will be the 80-year old’s seventh presidential campaign since he first sought Brazil’s top job in 1989, when he was 44. He is the standard-bearer of the Workers’ Party (PT), which founded in 1980.

Many on the right wanted Tarcisio de Freitas, the current governor of Sao Paulo, to run, but Jair Bolsonaro wanted his own son instead, and de Freitas respected Bolsonaro’s wish.

Flavio Bolsonaro began by pledging tax cuts and a tougher stance on crime and stressed his commitment to carrying forward his father’s political legacy. But his campaign has been filled with turmoil so far. He has been heavily involved in the Banco Master scandal, in which leaked audio messages revealed that he was receiving millions of reais, Brazil’s currency, from businessman Daniel Vorcaro, the bank’s major shareholder, to finance a movie about his father. The revelation shocked many allies.

The scandal, involving investigations into financial fraud, emerged in late 2025 with the launch of Operation Compliance Zero by the authorities and the liquidation of the financial institution, as well as Vorcaro’s arrest. It has been described as the country’s biggest ever banking fraud scandal.

The country’s recent past has been tumultuous. In 1961 Brazil’s voters elected left populist president Joao Goulart, but he was deposed by a military coup in 1964. A military dictatorship followed, marked by fierce anticommunism enforced with secret police, torture centres, and disappearances. I visited Brazil in the mid-1970s, when the army officer Ernesto Geisel was running the country. In 1985, the dictatorship finally gave way to civilian control and popular elections. But democracy remains a fragile shoot. Hence the important of this October’s presidential election.

Lula has many enemies, including the current leaders of the United States and Argentina. He and Trump don’t like each other, and that’s an understatement. Lula has argued that his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro’s 2022 bid to cling to power after his election defeat was reminiscent of Trump’s bid to remain in power in 2020. Tensions intensified after Flavio Bolsonaro took part in a pro-Trump Conservative Political Action Conference held in Texas on March 28.

The U.S. imposed a 25 per cent tariff on most imports from Brazil July 15, arguing that Brazil’s trade practices on a range of issues from digital trade to illegal deforestation were unfair. The tariffs affect about $6.6 billion in exports to the U.S.

Brazil has formally requested consultations at the World Trade Organization over the new U.S. tariffs on Brazilian exports, insisting the measures violate international trade rules under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Lula has called the tariffs interference in the election.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio maintained that the blame lay with Lula and his administration. He clamed that Lula’s economic policies are bad for Americans and bad for Brazilians. “For the past year, Lula has put his own ego ahead of making a deal for the welfare of the Brazilian people.”

Brazil on July 24 denied visa requests for two officials in Trump’s administration who planned to travel to the country to cast doubt on the integrity of its electoral system, according to Brazilian officials. A State Department spokesperson rejected any suggestion of a “ploy” to undermine Brazil’s elections.”

Now, the Trump administration has revoked the visa of Brazil’s top diplomat in the United States. The visa of the Brazilian ambassador, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, was canceled Aug. 4 in response to her country’s decision to stall the approval of President Trump’s newly appointed ambassador to Brazil and refuse entry to the other U.S. diplomats.

Another right-wing leader is also at loggerheads with Lula. Brazil’s foreign ministry summoned Argentina’s ambassador after inflammatory remarks delivered by Argentinian President Javier Milei about Lula, during the national convention of Brazil’s Liberal Party (PL), which nominated Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo July 25.

Milei denounced what he called the “tragedy of socialism” in Latin America, singling out Lula and Minister Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Federal Court for intense criticism.

The Argentinian leader hailed Flavio Bolsonaro as the “only candidate who can stop Lula.” Milei was also angry at not being allowed to visit Jair Bolsonaro in prison. “I was not allowed to visit my unjustly imprisoned friend,” remarked Milei, a declared ally of the Bolsonaro family.

It escalated further when Brasilia on Aug. 5 requested the recall of Argentina’s ambassador and reduced diplomatic representation to Charge d’Affaires level after Milei called President Lula a thief.

Brazil has tremendous institutional problems, ranging from vote buying, organized crime, and systemic inequality to a very dysfunctional judicial system. Yet with Bolsonaro and Lula as the main candidates, regardless of who wins, this is unlikely to change.

Nicaraguan Revolution Betrays its Supporters

2026-08-06T09:37:07.555-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

In April 1987, when I was working as a journalist in Washington, an idealistic young American engineer, Ben Linder, was killed in Nicaragua by the Contras. They were the Reagan-sponsored forces fighting the left-wing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSNL) rebels. The Sandinistas were trying to overthrow Anastasio Somoza, the brutal right-wing dictator whose family had controlled the country for four decades.

Linder was one of the so-called “sandalistas,” a sarcastic term for American leftists helping the revolutionaries, who indeed triumphed two years later. I wrote a piece about him, as did many other newspaper reporters.

Inspired by the Cuban Revolution, the FSNL was founded in 1961. It attracted public support in the United States by presenting itself as a “coalition of the oppressed.” Left-wing magazines in the 1990s proclaimed Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua as a newly liberated country, and an example to others in central America.

The Sandinistas under leader Daniel Ortega have ruled the country ever since, but not in the way Linder and others would have imagined. Reality has a way of upending dreams.

On July 19, the Nicaraguan president, who rules with his wife and “co-president,” Rosario Murillo, told the country that he will not hold any further elections, to prevent the opposition from coming to power.

Ortega made the announcement during the official ceremony marking the 47th anniversary of the 1979 victory. “We will work with the National Assembly and the relevant institutions on laws, because we need laws that build a wall, a barrier, against the coup plotters and the traitors who sell out their country,” he declared. He promised that the days of “parties backed by the Yankees” were over.

“With this decision, Ortega and Murillo have sealed the country’s transition to a full-fledged family dictatorship,” observed Tiziano Breda, Latin America senior analyst at the NGO Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. They had already pushed through a constitutional reform that extended by one year the presidential term due to end in 2026.

The elections were due to take place next year, but Ortega gave no details on whether they would be cancelled or whether the opposition would be barred from taking part. During the 2021 election campaign, the regime outlawed parties and jailed all opposition presidential hopefuls. International groups described it as a farce. Ortega claimed he won 76 per cent of the vote.

Ortega and Murillo are afraid that the slightest political opening could create the conditions for dissent to manifest and threaten their grip on power. Therefore, instead of staging a rigged election, they have opted to eliminate electoral competition altogether.

In 2018, the regime carried out a violent crackdown on dissenters that killed more than 350 people, wounded hundreds, jailed thousands and forced nearly one million Nicaraguans into exile. The government in 2025 expanded its repression to include even some government supporters.

Last August, lawyer Carlos Cardenas and opposition figure Mauricio Alonso died in custody, according to the media outlet Confidencial. At least six other political prisoners have died in custody since 2019.

The constitution now allows authorities to revoke the Nicaraguan nationality of people deemed responsible for “treason.” At least 452 Nicaraguans have been arbitrarily deprived of their nationality, leaving many stateless; authorities have also seized their assets. Over 200 members of the Catholic clergy have been forced into exile, deported, or denied re-entry since 2022.

On July 13, the UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua denounced the government’s sudden revocation of credentials for numerous lawyers and notaries, warning the move effectively erased a vital part of the nation’s legal profession overnight and stripped citizens of their right to legal defence.

“Over the past week, corroborating evidence has mounted, providing reasonable grounds to believe that the Nicaraguan Government is systematically stripping numerous lawyers of their legal licenses,” stated Jan-Michael Simon, its chair.

The UN group also condemned the death of prominent indigenous Miskito leader Brooklyn Rivera while in custody. At the time of his arrest in September 2023, he was a deputy in the National Assembly for the Indigenous political party YATAMA.

The latest measures come on the heels of a sweeping purge of the judicial system that has been underway since October 2023, when police took control of the Supreme Court of Justice. Since then, eight magistrates have resigned or been forced out, and more than a thousand judicial employees have been dismissed.

The constitutional reforms in 2025 stripped the judiciary of its status as an independent power of the State; they redefined the judiciary as an “organ” that the presidency “coordinates” and reduced the Court from 16 to 10 justices, all appointed by co-presidents Ortega and Murillo.

After President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela was captured by U.S. forces in January, and as the Trump administration increases pressure on Cuba, two countries that have been allied with Nicaragua, Ortega’s government has become even more restrictive.

Felix Maradiaga, a presidential hopeful who was jailed in Nicaragua from 2021 to 2023 before being expelled to the U.S., saw Ortega’s comments as “a confession of fear. Ortega publicly acknowledged what has always been his true intention -- to prevent his tyrannical project from being subjected to any form of democratic competition,” Maradiaga told Reuters.

Like so many others betrayed by previous revolutions across the world, what would someone like Ben Linder think about Ortega now?

Why do First Nations Fear an Independent Alberta?

2026-07-30T06:48:13.596-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

The annual general assembly of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) passed an emergency resolution on July 16 to protect treaty rights from threats posed by the Alberta separatist movement.

It states that no province has the legal authority to alter, reduce or extinguish treaty rights, or the constitutional relationship between First Nations and the Crown. Former national chief Matthew Coon Come declared that Quebec chiefs, who faced a provincial separation referendum in 1995, stand in solidarity with Alberta chiefs. “Their fight is our fight,” Coon Come declared. “Their struggle is our struggle.”

AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak also spoke out at the meeting against separatism. “They’re not taking any land with them,” she warned. “That’s going to stay right here with First Nations people. This is our country and we say what happens.”

In May, the federal government launched 30-day consultations with Indigenous peoples and others, on proposed regulatory changes surrounding approvals for major industrial projects. Legislation would be tabled following the consultation period. This provides an implicit virtual veto power to First Nations.

Nepinak took aim at the federal government’s desire to fast-track approvals for major projects, insisting that economic development cannot come at the expense of First Nations’ rights. “I think if any project is going to move forward anywhere in this country, speak to First Nations people.”

No matter how the Alberta referendum vote on independence goes on Oct. 19, Chief Kelsey Jacko of Cold Lake First Nations said communities will be ready to protect their treaties, which pre-date the creation of Alberta as a province. “We’re going to be fighting in court,” Jacko said.

This poses an interesting question. Indigenous treaty rights do predate the creation of Alberta. But in many cases, they also predate the formation of Canada. They are, as many point out, with “the Crown.” In other words, to the time when the lands north of the United States remained under the control of the British Empire.

But why, if Alberta – and for that matter Quebec – seceded from the Canadian federation, would Indigenous peoples feel threatened? Would those new countries, as successor states, not inherit the same treaties? Also, as we know, many consider Canada a settler-colonial enterprise guilty of genocide against First Nations. So why even take sides between “Albertans” and “Canadians,” who are equally guilty, in this conflict? Why protect a state responsible for such crimes?

On the face of it, one would think this doesn’t make sense. Clearly there’s more involved.

With the passing of the 1982 Canadian constitution, Indigenous rights are inherent and, in many cases, legally paramount. Since then, First Nations in this country have expanded their understanding of these, to the point where they are acquiring a form of “dual power” alongside and within the political system of Canada. It has become the case that major decisions, especially economic ones, cannot proceed without the approval of the native people involved.

There have been other examples of this around the world: Fiji, where ethnic Fijians controlled their own political organs in the Great Council of Chiefs, separate from the overall ones for all citizens, including themselves. This is becoming the case in New Zealand, where Maori in Aotearoa -- their pre-conquest name for the country -- are acquiring collective rights alongside the political rights of all others. In effect, they have dual political rights within two different political systems alongside each other. Other citizens are represented only by one.

Most Canadians seem to have forgotten that the Charlottetown Accord, which failed to gain acceptance in 1992, would have created an “Aboriginal right to self-government” enshrined in the Canadian constitution. It would have recognized Aboriginal governments as a third order of government, analogous to the federal government and the provinces and constitutionally autonomous from them.

The prior Meech Lake Accord also suffered defeat, in June 1990. Almost simultaneously, a major conflict known as the Oka Crisis erupted in Ontario. It was a standoff between Mohawk protestors, Quebec police, the RCMP, and the Canadian Army, that lasted 78 days. It was sparked by the proposal of development of a golf course on their Kanesatake lands, which included an Indigenous burial ground.

The dispute, which included two fatalities, was the first well-publicized violence between First Nations and provincial governments in the late 20th century. A political shot across the bow, it was traumatic in its effects -- a turning point for the Indigenous movement in Canada and a wake-up call for other Canadians.

The Canadian federation is now a multi-ethnic state, unlike in 1867, when it was created by “two founding nations, English and French,” in four provinces. (No other groups, including, notoriously, the many First Nations, were involved.) And in such entities, minority ethnic peoples have more say than in states based on ethnicity or religion.

The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Empires in the First World War resulted in the creation of nationalistic states, all of which proved difficult, and sometimes disastrous, for minorities. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia also created internal wars, and many remain ongoing.

Should Alberta or Quebec become homogeneous sovereign republics, they might even jettison the rights of Indigenous people in a new constitutional order. This is clearly what the AFN and other native groups fear.

Erdogan’s Turkey is a Rising Power

2026-07-23T07:17:37.287-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

If Iran emerges from the current war with Israel and the United States weakened, whether politically, economically, or militarily, Turkey’s relative influence in the broader region will increase.

Ankara has already consolidated significant influence in Syria and Azerbaijan, and it continues to pursue strategic projects across the South Caucasus. It has also been very active in the debates over the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza.

The recent NATO summit in Ankara marked an important moment for Turkey’s role within the alliance. It came after years of strained relations between Ankara and several of its NATO partners, especially the United States, following a period marked by disagreements over regional security, defence procurement and foreign policy.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan hopes to soon reach an agreement with Washington on lifting U.S. sanctions that were imposed on Turkey that followed its purchase of Russian S-400 missile defence systems. As well, Ankara desires to acquire advanced F-35 fighter jets.

In 2020, Washington imposed sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), following Turkey’s acquisition of the S-400s. It also excluded Ankara from the F-35 stealth fighter jet program. The U.S. Congress passed a law requiring Turkey to dispose of the S-400s before it could rejoin the F-35 program.

The Turkish daily Hurriyet reported July 10 that Turkey could soon announce it would sell the S-400s to a Gulf country to persuade Washington to supply it with F-35s. Before President Donald Trump’s arrival in Ankara, Fidan traveled to Moscow, where he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin to gain their approval.

Turkey is now seeking Russia’s consent to transfer the S-400 air defence system, an effort aimed at clearing the way for the purchase of the airplanes. Currently, Ankara does not use the system despite having it in its inventory.

Meanwhile, Turkey has reportedly paused its planned purchase of 40 American F-16s and the modernization of 79 existing aircraft while reassessing its long-term fighter strategy. The costly program is now considered a lower priority compared with Turkey’s domestically developed KAAN fighter, and the F-35 acquisitions, according to Hurriyet.

Over the past decade, the United States and Turkey have differed sharply on some major issues, including the U.S. partnership with Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces against the Islamic State organization in Syria. Turkey purchased the S-400 system from Moscow during a period of estrangement from its NATO partners, which began during Barack Obama’s presidency and deepened after a failed coup attempt against Erdogan in 2016. That frustration became part of Ankara’s justification for turning to Russia. But the Syrian problem has lessened with the creation of the new, generally pro-Turkish, Sunni Arab government in Damascus following the 2024 fall of Bashar al-Asad.

Some Mediterranean states are not happy with the possibility of Turkey’s potential acquisition of new military hardware. Greek Defence Minister Nikos Dendias on July 9 said Athens “would not welcome” Turkey receiving either F-35 fighter jets or engines for its next-generation Turkish KAAN combat aircraft. Advanced American weapons should never be used against fellow NATO allies.

Greece cannot dictate the defence procurement decisions of third countries, but it has both the right and the obligation to present its security concerns to Washington, particularly given Turkey’s longstanding declaration that any unilateral extension of Greek territorial waters in the Aegean Sea would be considered a casus belli.

This news also worries Israel, whose own relationship with Turkey has been rapidly eroding since the start of the Gaza war, given Turkey’s continuing support for the Palestinian Sunni Islamist group Hamas after October 7, 2023, and its official suspension of trade with Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a number of American and Israeli television networks that history “teaches that when one regional power declines, another rises. Our task is to make sure Israel continues rising faster than anyone else.”

This explains why Netanyahu launched a public campaign against Trump’s apparent willingness to sell the fighter jets to Turkey, which is the very state now furiously jockeying to replace Iran as the Middle East’s dominant power. Selling F-35s to Ankara reflects a growing conviction in Israel that Turkey is shaping up to be Israel’s principal long-term challenge.

Turkey, Netanyahu contends, “has aggressive aspirations” and “is not a force for peace and security.” F-35 planes in its hands would “destroy the power balance” in the region

Erdogan dismissed objections by Greece and Israel to a potential F-35 sale, saying there was “no place” for such opposition. “Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis should not have made the mistake of opposing Turkey’s purchase of the aircraft,” he replied. “We have the right to acquire aircraft and defensive equipment, and we are holding talks on this matter.”

Turkey has the second largest army in NATO and a burgeoning defence industrial base. Turkish defence and aviation exports broke records last year, exceeding $10 billion. All of this has won admiration from Trump.

“I haven’t totally made up my mind, but my inclination is to say, look, he’s done everything, he’s helped us in so many different ways,” Trump said of Erdogan during a news conference at the NATO summit. Trump repeatedly praised Erdogan, calling him “really a great man” and “a great leader.” Greece and Israel won’t be able to prevent the deal.

Will the Democratic Socialists of America Control the Democratic Party?

2026-07-22T07:23:29.810-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

On June 23, radical Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates backed by New York mayor Zohran Mamdani won multiple Democratic Party primaries in New York City and elsewhere in the state. They also were victorious in other parts of the country.

The socialist victories in New York far surpassed anyone’s predictions. Who, three years ago, could have predicted that a Muslim anti-Zionist would be elected mayor of a city with 900,000 Jews and would lead insurgents to victories in that party’s primaries in 2026? Yet here we are.

Marxist Third Worldist ideology has moved out of the universities into the polling booths, after campus activism, divestment campaigns, and social media have reinforced an anti-Israeli framework for years. The DSA’s platform states it plainly: It pledges “support for Palestinian self-determination against Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.”

The mayor, a long-standing DSA member, worked overtime to appear at countless campaign events for a trio of candidates he dubbed “the Team”: Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Brad Lander. The last two unseated incumbent Democratic congressmen. Mamdani has assembled a coalition in New York City that is capable of elevating like-minded candidates to office.

In the Seventh Congressional District, which straddles northern Brooklyn and southwestern Queens, an open primary to replace retiring progressive Rep. Nydia Velázquez saw State Assembly Member Claire Valdez’s’s defeat Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. She was even further left than Mamdani himself. In the end, it was not even close: Valdez prevailed with 56.1 per cent of the vote to Reynoso’s 35.8 per cent.

In 2019, Valdez joined the DSA after seeing the rise of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and state senator Julia Salazar, both of whom were elected with the DSA’s help. Valdez emphasized her anti-Israel activism as a key part of her campaign. At events, her staff handed out signs that said “Free Palestine.” She launched her campaign alongside Mahmoud Khalil, a key anti-Israel leader at Columbia University that the Donald Trump administration has tried to deport.

Valdez referred to Israel’s war against Hamas as a “genocide” as early as October 13, 2023. She lambasted police for restraining anti-Israel mobs chanting “Globalize the Intifada” and waving Hezbollah flags outside a Brooklyn synagogue last June. “New Yorkers don’t just have the right to protest the sale of stolen Palestinian land — they have a responsibility to,” she declare. She has repeatedly criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She also boasted on social media of having “wiped my hand on the American flag.”

In the Thirteenth Congressional District, covering the upper Manhattan neighborhoods of Harlem, Washington Heights, and Morningside Heights and parts of the West Bronx, Darializa Avila Chevalier won a much more startling victory over Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a five-term incumbent Democratic Party power broker and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Espaillat’s campaign was heavily backed by AIPAC. Chevalier defied expectations and won by gaining 49 per cent to Espaillat’s 46 per cent. She told the crowd at her watch party that she had fought against the “Democratic machine.” Espaillat lost despite the backing of Democratic leaders in Congress and the state, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and Julie Menin, speaker of the New York City Council.

When Chevalier, draped in a keffiyeh, first announced her candidacy in November of last year, few outside her immediate circle knew her name. But her message was clear: she presented herself as an organiser working to unite families torn apart by the immigration system and against “what we all know is a genocide in Palestine.”

Chevalier has publicly proclaimed her hatred for Israel, the United States, and “Western civilization” as a whole. She has called for the abolition of prisons, open borders and an end to deportations — even for people convicted of violent crimes. As a student at Columbia University, she was involved in Students for Justice in Palestine. In 2024, she returned to her alma mater to help organize an anti-Israel encampment that was ultimately disbanded by the police.

She co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest: “We are Westerners fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our intifada is an Internationalist one,” it states.

The day after the October 7 attack, Chevalier attended an anti-Israel demonstration in Times Square. “I can only say I have been advocating for the human rights of Palestinians for my adult life,” when asked about her attendance at the rally. Chevalier has said that her conversion to Islam was inspired by the Israel-Hamas war. Mamdani celebrated her win, describing Chevalier as a person “of clarity, of conscience and of conviction.”

The war was also on the minds of voters in former Comptroller Brad Lander’s race against another AIPAC-funded incumbent, Rep. Dan Goldman, in New York’s Tenth District, covering lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn. Both are Jewish, but Goldman has been a steadfast friend of Israel while Lander is the quintessential anti-Zionist and a key faction of his coalition was anti-Israel. It was a contest that laid bare the party’s divisions over the Israel-Gaza war.

At his son Marek’s bris, Lander gave a speech lambasting Israel. “We pray fervently that by the time you read this, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the settlements, the house demolitions, the violence will be history,” which was later reprinted in a 2003 book titled Wrestling with Zion. Lander enjoyed the night’s biggest victory, winning 65.8 per cent of the vote to Goldman’s 34 per cent. Many Democrats have suggested that Lander has proved useful to Mamdani and other leftists who have been accused of antisemitism for singling out the Jewish state for opprobrium.

In the run-up to Election Day, a chain of Brooklyn coffee shops called Poetica posted that it would have barred Goldman entry had they recognized him during a recent visit to their storefront. “We don’t serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers,” Poetica declared. “Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away.”

At the state level, seven of the eight candidates endorsed by the DSA for the New York State legislature also won their primary elections. One of them is Aber Kawas, a Queens-based community organizer. If she, as expected, wins in November, she will be the first Palestinian woman elected to state office in New York history.

“Were defeated congressmen Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat insufficiently anti-Trump?” asked Will Rahn, a senior editor and writer for The Free Press, rhetorically, in a June 26 column. “Of course not. They lost because they aren’t anti-Israel enough. ‘Free Palestine’ is now the binding issue on the left, the only thing that actually matters.” No matter who you are, how you identify, or what causes you’ve championed, if you refuse to fall in line on Israel, you risk being ostracized from communities you’ve long called home.

For most of the postwar era, support for Israel was one of the least controversial positions in Democratic Party politics. That consensus has not merely weakened; it has collapsed. Once viewed as a righteous anti-colonial cause, Zionism has been reframed by radical thinkers as the ideology of a colonial oppressor of stateless Palestinians. Opposition to Israel is now the litmus test in Democratic Party politics. “There’s a cliff, and we’re heading towards it,” warned Daniel C. Kurtzer, a Princeton University professor who was ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush.

The DSA has now built an entire ecosystem that runs parallel to the official Democratic apparatus, equipped with their own consultant network, endorsing organizations, donors and even billionaires who back them.

A generation after Pat Buchanan was denounced as an antisemite by all proper liberals for saying things like “Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied territory,” will the left now embrace him as a “premature antizionist”? Even satire can’t match this.

Think about it: Since October 7, Israel has done what every other country viciously attacked by implacable enemies throughout history has done: It has lashed back in a defensive war. This is a policy that any state that cared for the life of its citizens would have to adopt.
Yet Israel has become the “omnicause.” That’s why antisemitism and antizionism are two sides of the same coin: hatred of Jews. Jews around the world aren’t being attacked because of Israel. Israel is itself being condemned because it’s Jewish.

American Jews have been blindsided by this, as the French writer Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, senior envoy for Europe at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells us in a brilliant article, “Stand Up,” Tablet, July 6, 2026. “When anti-Jewish hostility arrives wrapped in the language of liberation, antiracism, decolonization, and human rights –when it emerges among allies, colleagues, students, professional peers, or other minority communities — the disorientation is deeper. It is inside the world in which one has built a life. It speaks in familiar accents. It borrows cherished values.”

In “A Profound Question Haunting Jews Today,” New York Times, July 6, 2026, Nicholas Lemann, the former dean of the Columbia University Journalism School, agrees. He writes that for half a century or more, American Jews could achieve, “through being successful, culturally Jewish, Zionist, liberal and not especially observant,” a status that elsewhere has persistently eluded them.

“This set of certainties has evaporated. Today, Israel is the pariah nation of the world, and ‘Zionist’ has become an epithet, something it’s unacceptable to be, at least in progressive circles,” where most Jews have usually found themselves.

So, are the Democrats going to become America’s anti-Israel party? And then what?

From Maoism to Trump, Albania Has Travelled a Long and Crooked Road

2026-07-16T06:06:01.677-03:00

By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

A friend recently joked that he never thought he’d ever see the words “Albania” and “democracy” in the same sentence. What a long ideological journey that poor Balkan country has travelled over the past 40 years.

Since May 31, protesters have been setting off every single day from Skanderbeg Square in Tirana to take part in what has been dubbed the “Flamingo Revolution.” They complain that their government is selling the country out to foreign investors and luxury developers. They accuse Prime Minister Edi Rama and his government of cronyism and corruption, with many claiming that for a long time now, the Albanian government has been making decisions against the interests of Albanian citizens.

It’s the first time in his nearly 13 years in power that Rama, leader of the Socialist Party, has been under serious pressure. But he has made light of the protests as a problem, insisting, rather, that they are “a beautiful example of freedom, of democracy in action.”

So what’s this all about? The demonstrations were first sparked by anger at the planned construction of luxury resorts in a stretch of the Adriatic coast home to rare animals like flamingoes and the Mediterranean monk seal. This has become Albania’s largest civic protest movement since the fall of communism.

The development project was first announced in 2024 and initially drew complaints mostly from environmentalists. The controversy only gained international visibility after it became associated with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, whose company, Affinity Partners, along with investors from the Gulf states, announced plans to invest more than US$4.6 billion into developing a luxury resort near the city of Vlore on the Narta Lagoon and protected wildlands in Zvernec.

Kushner and Ivanka Trump also want to turn Sazan Island, which belongs to a national park, into a smaller coastal enclave for the wealthy. Tourism has become an increasingly important part of Albania’s national income.

The protestors assert that Albania has been ruled since the collapse of Communism 35 years ago by self-serving politicians who give state contracts to their friends in business and pay little attention to the economic and other grievances of ordinary citizens.

Olsi Nika, who heads the environmental group EcoAlbania, maintains that the current political system has alienated Gen Z-ers. “The majority of the protesters are young people who were raised with a progressive European mentality,” he explained.

Protesters have chanted, “Rama to jail, Berisha to jail.” Rama has been in and out of government since 1998, while Sali Berisha, who leads the Democratic Party, the main opposition group, was president of Albania from 1992 to 1997 and prime minister rom 2005 to 2013. Berisha was until last November under house arrest because of corruption charges. In last year’s parliamentary elections, Rama’s Socialists beat Berisha’s Democrats, winning 83 seats to his 50.

“At the core of this protest is not just environmental issues,” according to Gresa Hasa, a doctoral researcher at the University of Graz. “This is a fight for freedom and democracy, and a future where the resources and the state works for all of us and where we are not excluded from our own beaches and public spaces.”

Rama stated at a meeting of his Socialist Party’s parliamentary group on June 20 that the opposition has come from a broad constellation of external actors, including Trump opponents, anti-Israel groups and what he calls state-sponsored “digital mercenaries, including those from Iran.”

Iran, he suggested, has been stoking the protests to get back at Albania for sheltering an Iranian opposition group, the Mujahadeen Khalq. Officials have also contended that the tourist industry in neighboring Greece, eager to avoid competition from Albania, has egged on and even funded the protesters.

To call all this a sea change is an understatement. Under its extreme Maoist version of Communism, the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania was hermetically sealed off from the outside world. It was ruled from 1944 to 1985 by Enver Hoxha, who broke with the Soviet Union after 1956 over what he saw as Nikita Khrushchev’s insufficient commitment to Stalinism.

The paranoid Hoxha even built pillboxes all over the country – more than six hundred thousand dome-roofed foxholes were installed literally everywhere. They were less a genuine attempt to fortify the country against invasion and more about permeating Albanian society with a siege mentality. Albania’s increasing isolation, from neighboring Yugoslavia, the USSR, and eventually China, led to mounting economic difficulties and the collapse of the Communist state in 1991.

Albanians, totally naive politically and economically as a result, saw a period of rapid, chaotic privatization of state-owned industries as part of a transition to capitalism, marked by graft, speculation, and disastrous pyramid schemes. Hoxha had confiscated all private property after he took power. When Communism ended, this left Albanian courts forced to adjudicate rival property claims by former owners and their descendants, causing immense problems.

These legal gray areas have made it easier for Rama to court “strategic investors” like Kushner with the promise of both cheap land and cheap workers. But the European Parliament on June 17 urged Albania to suspend construction in the protected area. This is important, since Albania hopes to join the European Union. Might the words “Albania” and “democracy” eventually belong together? Hard to tell.