Politics

The Israel-Hamas War Will Reshape Western Politics

Published

11 months ago

November 1, 2023

It’s been a long time since the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians occupied such a central place in Western political attention and debate — certainly not since the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2009, arguably not since the second intifada ended in 2005.

In that fairly distant past, the politics of Israel-Palestine broke down into alignments that were familiar and decades-old. On the pro-Israel side in the U.S. were three broad factions: Zionist Democrats, centrist and liberal; neoconservative hawks; and evangelical Christians. As you moved leftward, sympathy for the Palestinians increased, with American progressives and European conventional wisdom finding common ground in their critiques of the Israeli occupation. Finally there was also a rightward form of anti-Israel sentiment, held by Arabist realists and Pat Buchananite populists and European reactionaries — but in the aftermath of 9/11, with neoconservatism ascendant, this felt increasingly marginal.

These broad groupings still exist — evangelicals are still very pro-Israel, the Democratic president is a Zionist liberal, the progressive movement is pro-Palestinian — but in the current crisis you can see a more complex alignment taking shape, with implications that extend beyond the Israeli-Palestinian question alone. Here, very provisionally, are some ideological trends and tendencies worth watching.

The radicalization of progressivism. Nobody who has lived through the last decade’s Great Awokening should be surprised that Western progressivism now has a more radical line on Israel than it did 10 or 15 years ago, especially given Israel’s own rightward shift in that same time. But the extent to which the rhetoric of “decolonization” turns out to naturally extend — or, maybe, naturally circle back — from cultural and psychological projects to literal support for armed struggle and tacit apologia for antisemitic terror still feels like an important unveiling, a revelation of radicalization’s implications, a doorway into a future much more violently divided than our own.

The emergence of an “Arab street” inside the West. In the post-9/11 era, we were accustomed to think of popular discontent inside Arab and Muslim countries as an important geopolitical force in its own right. But 2023 may be remembered as the moment when Arab and Muslim discontent began to really matter inside Western countries as well.

The recent protests in European capitals, especially, are less an extension of a radicalized progressivism than a straightforward expression of ethnic and religious solidarity with the Palestinians on the part of Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendants. And the tacit alliance between this diaspora and a secular, feminist, gay-affirming Western progressivism — “Islamo-gauchisme” in the French phrase — raises big questions for both progressives and conservative Muslims about who is using whom and how the Western left and Western Islam might ultimately co-evolve.

The unstable European relationship to Israel. In one sense, the mass movements protesting on Palestine’s behalf in European streets would seem likely to ratify the pre-existing anti-Israel tilt of many European leaders. But if Europe is moving rightward overall, becoming more doubtful about mass immigration, more fearful of Islamicization and terrorism and more protective of its native culture as it slides toward old age — well, then, you could easily imagine European sympathy for the Israeli position increasing, with fear of an Islamist enemy within driving identification with Israel abroad.

And indeed signs of this are visible already: The British writer Aris Roussinos recently observed that commentary in Britain now seems even a little more sympathetic to Israel than American commentary, while across the Channel, Emmanuel Macron’s attempts to rally a grand anti-Hamas coalition and his government’s ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations belong to a very different landscape from the world of 2005.

The dilemmas of progressive Jews and Zionist Democrats. If the pressures on European elites come from multiple directions, the pressures on American Jews and Zionists inside the Democratic coalition push just one way: toward the right. Progressive Jews who thought of themselves as pro-peace, pro-Palestinian and anti-Likud are going to have a lot of trouble feeling at home inside a progressive movement that seems conflicted or paralyzed when it’s asked to condemn Hamas. Zionist liberals who are closer to the political center can take comfort that their worldview is still shared by most of the Democratic Party’s politicians, including the Democratic president. But the leftward ratchet in Democratic politics has been a powerful force, and generational turnover means that progressive activists may get a chance to reshape the party in their own image before long. At which point, where might Zionist Democrats go, if not toward actual conservatism?

A reconstituted neoconservatism, a resilient Christian Zionism. One thing that liberal supporters of Israel will find if they move rightward, indeed a thing that some are already helping to create, is a new variation on neoconservatism. This isn’t the George W. Bush-era version, with its world-bestriding confidence in American power and its hawkish grand strategy. Rather, it’s a more inchoate alliance against whatever progressivism is becoming. Many of its members still feel uncomfortable associating with a Trumpist G.O.P., but they’re too intensely alienated from progressivism to belong to the left-of-center coalition any more. This makes it a movement more like 1970s-era neoconservatism — a mugged-by-reality halfway house for intellectuals unhappy with their options but trending clearly to the right.

The other thing that rightward-moving Zionists will find is resilient evangelical support for Israel, which has persisted through all the disillusionments of the last two decades, all the anti-idealism of Trump-era foreign policy. This enduring affinity, embodied for instance in the pro-Israel statements of the new speaker of the House, reflects not just dispensationalist expectations of the apocalypse (though those certainly exist) but a widespread, very American-Protestant sense of the links between the American Republic and the Chosen People, the New World and the Hebrew Bible, that go back to the foundations of our country.

It’s also a worldview that many American Jews, secular Jews especially, find peculiar or suspicious. The question is whether that suspicion will diminish if the Democratic Party no longer seems like a safe harbor for their Zionism.

The uncertain attitudes of the alienated right. One thing that’s kept many Jews from moving rightward till now, of course, is a fear of right-wing antisemitism, the kind of xenophobia that Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016 seemed to consciously stir to life. Trump’s actual presidency was pro-Israel, indeed often more pro-Israel than those of his G.O.P. predecessors, but along extremely transactional lines — witness Trump’s own initial reaction to the Hamas attacks, which was to gripe about the various ways that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had let him down. And an “America First” mentality, along with other forms of right-wing politics quite distinct from both neoconservatism and pro-Israel evangelicalism, clearly matters more to American conservatism today than 15 years ago.

Among my fellow conservative Catholics, for instance, there’s a longstanding anger at George W. Bush for invading Iraq and letting Middle Eastern Christianity be devastated by the ensuing wars and a sense that Israel was that foolhardy project’s accomplice. Among the would-be vitalists and Nietzscheans of the post-Christian right and certain other far-right influencers, there’s plenty of conspiracy theorizing and anti-Semitism. And then the Trump-era Republican coalition writ large includes a lot of nonreligious, disaffected, working-class Americans, for whom pro-Israel sentiments may come to feel, or feel already, like a luxury belief, a province of the elites whom they disdain.

My guess is that notwithstanding these specters on the right, over the long term you should bet on more rightward movement among American Jews, probably accelerated by the higher birthrates of the already more right-wing Orthodox. But mostly you should bet on unsettlement, on the right and left alike, as people come to terms with what the new debate about Israel and the Palestinians reveals about how much the Western world has changed already and how much more change lies ahead.

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Alberta Premier Smith aims to help fund private school construction

Published

5 hours ago

September 18, 2024

Anne Joseph

EDMONTON – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government’s $8.6-billion plan to fast-track building new schools will include a pilot project to incentivize private ones.

Smith said the ultimate goal is to create thousands of new spaces for an exploding number of new students at a reduced cost to taxpayers.

“We want to put all of the different school options on the same level playing field,” Smith told a news conference in Calgary Wednesday.

Smith did not offer details about how much private school construction costs might be incentivized, but said she wants to see what independent schools might pitch.

“We’re putting it out there as a pilot to see if there is any interest in partnering on the same basis that we’ll be building the other schools with the different (public) school boards,” she said.

Smith made the announcement a day after she announced the multibillion-dollar school build to address soaring numbers of new students.

By quadrupling the current school construction budget to $8.6 billion, the province aims to offer up 30 new schools each year, adding 50,000 new student spaces within three years.

The government also wants to build or expand five charter school buildings per year, starting in next year’s budget, adding 12,500 spaces within four years.

Currently, non-profit independent schools can get some grants worth about 70 per cent of what students in public schools receive per student from the province.

However, those grants don’t cover major construction costs.

John Jagersma, executive director of the Association of Independent Schools and Colleges of Alberta, said he’s interested in having conversations with the government about incentives.

He said the province has never directly funded major capital costs for their facilities before, and said he doesn’t think the association has ever asked for full capital funding.

He said community or religious groups traditionally cover those costs, but they can help take the pressure off the public or separate systems.

“We think we can do our part,” Jagersma said.

Dennis MacNeil, head of the Public School Boards Association of Alberta, said they welcome the new funding, but said money for private school builds would set a precedent that could ultimately hurt the public system.

“We believe that the first school in any community should be a public school, because only public schools accept all kids that come through their doors and provide programming for them,” he said.

Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, said if public dollars are going to be spent on building private schools, then students in the public system should be able to equitably access those schools.

“No other province spends as much money on private schools as Alberta does, and it’s at the detriment of public schools, where over 90 per cent of students go to school,” he said.

Schilling also said the province needs about 5,000 teachers now, but the government announcement didn’t offer a plan to train and hire thousands more over the next few years.

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi on Tuesday praised the $8.6 billion as a “generational investment” in education, but said private schools have different mandates and the result could be schools not being built where they are needed most.

“Using that money to build public schools is more efficient, it’s smarter, it’s faster, and it will serve students better,” Nenshi said.

Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides’ office declined to answer specific questions about the pilot project Wednesday, saying it’s still under development.

“Options and considerations for making capital more affordable for independent schools are being explored,” a spokesperson said. “Further information on this program will be forthcoming in the near future.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.

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Health Minister Mark Holland appeals to Senate not to amend pharmacare bill

Published

5 hours ago

September 18, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – Health Minister Mark Holland urged a committee of senators Wednesday not to tweak the pharmacare bill he carefully negotiated with the NDP earlier this year.

The bill would underpin a potential national, single-payer pharmacare program and allow the health minister to negotiate with provinces and territories to cover some diabetes and contraceptive medications.

It was the result of weeks of political negotiations with the New Democrats, who early this year threatened to pull out of their supply-and-confidence deal with the Liberals unless they could agree on the wording.

“Academics and experts have suggested amendments to this bill to most of us here, I think,” Independent Senator Rosemary Moodie told Holland at a meeting of the Senate’s social affairs committee.

Holland appeared before the committee as it considers the bill. He said he respects the role of the Senate, but that the pharmacare legislation is, in his view, “a little bit different.”

“It was balanced on a pinhead,” he told the committee.

“This is by far — and I’ve been involved in a lot of complex things — the most difficult bit of business I’ve ever been in. Every syllable, every word in this bill was debated and argued over.”

Holland also asked the senators to move quickly to pass the legislation, to avoid lending credence to Conservative critiques that the program is a fantasy.

When asked about the Liberals’ proposed pharmacare program for diabetes and birth control, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has often responded that the program isn’t real. Once the legislation is passed, the minister must negotiate with every provincial government to actually administer the program, which could take many months.

“If we spend a long time wordsmithing and trying to make the legislation perfect, then the criticism that it’s not real starts to feel real for people, because they don’t actually get drugs, they don’t get an improvement in their life,” Holland told the committee.

He told the committee that one of the reasons he signed a preliminary deal with his counterpart in British Columbia was to help answer some of the Senate’s questions about how the program would work in practice.

The memorandum of understanding between Ottawa and B.C. lays out how to province will use funds from the pharmacare bill to expand on its existing public coverage of contraceptives to include hormone replacement therapy to treat menopausal symptoms.

The agreement isn’t binding, and Holland would still need to formalize talks with the province when and if the Senate passes the bill based on any changes the senators decide to make.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.

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Nova Scotia NDP accuse government of prioritizing landlord profits over renters

Published

5 hours ago

September 18, 2024

Anne Joseph

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s NDP are accusing the government of prioritizing landlords over residents who need an affordable place to live, as the opposition party tables a bill aimed at addressing the housing crisis.

NDP Leader Claudia Chender took aim at the Progressive Conservatives Wednesday ahead of introducing two new housing bills, saying the government “seems to be more focused on helping wealthy developers than everyday families.”

The Minister of Service Nova Scotia has said the government’s own housing legislation will “balance” the needs of tenants and landlords by extending the five per cent cap on rent until the end of 2027. But critics have called the cap extension useless because it allows landlords to raise rents past five per cent on fixed-term leases as long as property owners sign with a new renter.

Chender said the rules around fixed-term leases give landlords the “financial incentive to evict,” resulting in more people pushed into homelessness. She also criticized the part of the government bill that will permit landlords to issue eviction notices after three days of unpaid rent instead of 15.

The Tories’ housing bill, she said, represents a “shocking admission from this government that they are more concerned with conversations around landlord profits … than they are about Nova Scotians who are trying to find a home they can afford.”

The premier’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Also included in the government’s new housing legislation are clearer conditions for landlords to end a tenancy, such as criminal behaviour, disturbing fellow tenants, repeated late rental payments and extraordinary damage to a unit. It will also prohibit tenants from subletting units for more than they are paying.

The first NDP bill tabled Wednesday would create a “homelessness task force” to gather data to try to prevent homelessness, and the second would set limits on evictions during the winter and for seniors who meet income eligibility requirements for social housing and have lived in the same home for more than 10 years.

The NDP has previously tabled legislation that would create a $500 tax credit for renters and tie rent control to housing units instead of the individual.

Earlier this week landlords defended the use of the contentious fixed-term leases, saying they need to have the option to raise rent higher than five per cent to maintain their properties and recoup costs. Landlord Yarviv Gadish, who manages three properties in the Halifax area, called the use of fixed-term leases “absolutely essential” in order to keep his apartments presentable and to get a return on his investment.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.

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