On Tuesday March 28, the citizens of Israel voted in what was arguably one of the most important general elections in the nation’s history. With a record low voter turnout, the centrist Kadima Party secured a plurality with 28 of the 120 seats in the Knesset (Israeli parliament). Kadima, led by Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, was widely expected to win, but its base of support has narrowed sharply over the past few months. Kadima founder and then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was incapacitated by a massive stroke on January 4 and remains in a coma, and while Olmert initially maintained and exceeded Sharon’s poll numbers, Kadima’s popularity has fallen since then. Despite their victory, Tuesday’s results were particularly disappointing for Olmert and his allies, as voter-intent polls in January showed Kadima winning over 40 Knesset seats, and polls from earlier this week suggested that Kadima would win 34 seats.

The Israeli Labor Party, under its new leader Amir Peretz, earned 20 Knesset seats. The Likud Party, Labor’s traditional rival and Israel’s largest party before its former leader Sharon broke away to found Kadima in November, won only 11 seats. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who masterminded the internal Likud rebellion that forced Sharon and others in favor of the continued removal of Jewish settlers from Palestinian lands to leave the party, had the dubious distinction of leading Likud to the worst showing in party history. The religious (Orthodox Jewish) Shas Party won 13 Knesset seats and Israel Beiteinu, a socially conservative party whose support has traditionally been limited to Jews of Russian ancestry, won 12 seats. Surprisingly, a the Gil (Pensioners) Party, which has little political ideology except increased spending on senior citizens, won 7 seats.

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On Wednesday night, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered severe cerebral hemorrhaging. At Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, Sharon was placed under general anesthesia, and he underwent a six-hour life-threatening operation, as well as a follow-up operation Thursday morning, to stop the bleeding. These procedures appear to have been successful, but doctors are keeping Sharon in an induced coma. Sharon’s vital signs are stable, but he has experienced brain damage, the amount of which cannot be verified until he is conscious.

Professor Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the hospital’s director, has refuted rumors that Sharon is dead, and has pointed out that Sharon’s pupils are responding to light, suggesting that some (perhaps much) brain function remains.

Upon Sharon’s anesthetization, his governmental powers were transfered to Finance Minister Ehud Olmert, who will serve as Interim Prime Minister of Israel, possibly until Israel’s March 28 election. Sharon had a minor stroke on December 18 (apparently caused by a congenital heart defect), and he had been scheduled to undergo heart surgery today to prevent further such strokes. He had planned to temporarily transfer power to Olmert and return to work following the surgery, but it is now uncertain if Sharon will ever be physically and mentally capable of serving in public office again.

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I have to admit that I was skeptical when the Irish Republican Army announced on July 28 that its leaders had “formally ordered an end to the armed campaign” and instructed its military units to “dump arms”. While the Northern Ireland peace process sounded like it was on the right track, this declaration was hard to take at face value given that only seven months earlier, the IRA was implicated in a massive bank robbery. However, as the BBC reports, the independent committee overseeing the disarmament announced today that the IRA has completed its weapons decommissioning..

This important step cannot even begin to redress the tragic history of violence, repression, and recrimination in Northern Ireland. Protestant voters in Northern Ireland have made it clear that they will not simply trust the IRA to be on its best behavior. The rise of the Reverend Ian Paisley as the Unionist leader demonstrates that the Protestants are unwilling to continue to cooperate with the IRA and its political wing Sinn Fein without receiving something substantial in return. Unionists are right to be concerned that the IRA has not eliminated all of its military capabilities (the IRA destroyed the arms that it has stockpiled over the years, much of it purchased from the Libyan government, but IRA members can still construct improvised explosives or purchase new weapons). However, the IRA and Sinn Fein should be commended for taking a large step in the direction of peace. With luck, the disarmament of the (comparatively smaller) Unionist military outfits will follow later this autumn. Regardless of one’s sympathies regarding this contentious issue, everyone should be striving for a day when the question of Northern Ireland’s status can be resolved without the use of paramilitary groups. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in response to the disarmament report,

Today may be the day that peace replaced war, that politics replaced terror, on the island of Ireland. It is what we have striven for and worked for throughout the eight years since the Good Friday Agreement. It creates the circumstances in which the institutions can be revived.

Perhaps Blair is a little overly optimistic, but hopefully, he is not too far off the mark.

I have great respect for Richard M. Daley, the Mayor of Chicago, unless and until he is directly linked to criminal activity. In contrast, I don’t like Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL, and House Minority Whip). His voting record is extremely partisan, even for a party leader. Durbin’s predecessor, the late Senator Paul Simon (not to be confused with the musician Paul Simon), had pronounced libertarian leanings and immense political courage to back up the often-strident leftist positions he took. While Durbin never misses an opportunity to oppose “Republican” ideas such as tax reform, Simon made an effort to learn about and even intelligently debate flat taxes and value-added taxes. Durbin just takes the party line and shoots down ideas like these; unlike Simon, it’s actually his job to intimidate Democratic senators who are willing to cross party lines for the benefit of the American people. I won’t discuss Durbin’s comments on the Senate floor comparing US soldiers to some of the Twentieth Century’s most heinous mass-murderers, and his subsequent apology, except to raise two small points: 1) As my friend Max brought to my attention, Daley had a large role in persuading Durbin to apologize. 2) No one knows better than Daley that Illinois is scandal-ridden enough and doesn’t need to be the center of nationally rancorous issues such as Durbin’s comments.

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