EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy has issued a stark warning against growing nationalism, populism and anti-democratic forces across the EU, suggesting that the threat to peace in Europe remains a key issue.

“We have together to fight the danger of a new euro-scepticism,” he said in a speech in Berlin on Tuesday night (9 November).

“This is no longer the monopoly of a few countries. In every member state, there are people who believe their country can survive alone in the globalised world,” he continued.

“It is more than an illusion: it is a lie!”

The president was speaking in the German capital on the Schicksalstag, or ‘fateful day,’ the anniversary of five pivotal events in the nation’s history: the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the fall of the monarchy in 1918, but also the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Kristallnacht in 1938 and the execution of a leader of the 1848 revolutions in the German states.

Quoting wartime US president Franklin Roosevelt, he said that the “biggest enemy of Europe today is fear,” and that this ultimately could lead to war.

“Fear leads to egoism, egoism leads to nationalism, and nationalism leads to war,” he said. “Today’s nationalism is often not a positive feeling of pride of one’s own identity, but a negative feeling of apprehension of the others. Fear of ‘enemies’ within our borders and beyond our borders.”

“It is a feeling all over Europe, not of a majority, but everywhere present.”

In a wide-ranging speech, alighting on a range of aspects of the current state of the European Union, he cheered the day when the nations of the former Yugoslavia will join.

“To those who say that war is so far away in our past that peace cannot be a key issue in Europe anymore, that it does not appeal to the younger generations, I answer: just go out there [to the western Balkans] and ask the people there! And ask the young ones too!”

Beyond the EU’s economic and political structures, he said that Europe needed to look to its heritage, in particular, the values and virtues of Ancient Greece.

“To keep such European virtues alive, to transmit their age-old qualities to our children and grandchildren, that will be one of the great challenges for the future,” he said. “We have to be a union of values but also a union of civic virtues.”

He also touched on the current economic crisis, cheering the recent decision of European leaders to move towards common economic governance.

“One cannot maintain a monetary unity without an economic union,” he said, and went on to salute the “courage” of EU leaders in imposing austerity measures over the top of popular opposition.

“I, for one, have really been impressed over the last year by the political courage of our governments. All are taking deeply unpopular measures to reform the economy and their budgets, moreover, at a time of rising populism.

“Some heads of government do this while being confronted with opposition in parliament, with protest in the streets, with strikes on the workplace – or all of this together – and fully knowing they run a big risk of electoral defeat.

“And yet they push ahead. If this is not political courage, what is?”

He also went on to criticise the European Commission’s proposals for EU taxes. In October, the EU executive proposed a list of potential EU fund-raising mechanisms in an attempt to reduce the direct contributions national governments make to fund the workings of the bloc.

“I do not think that redesigning the way the EU get its revenue is a top priority,” he said, adding that the imposition of EU taxation would fall on some countries harder than others and that this would be unfair.

“The current system reflects as a rule the member states’ capacity to pay. Contributions are based on the gross national income and thus seen as fair … I am personally open to new ideas, but since most alternative sources of income would risk to hit member states unequally, this would weaken the fairness of the current system, its built-in solidarity.”

He did not however close the door completely on the idea. “So let’s be prudent, but let’s discuss it,” he said.

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Regional forces of subversion have linked up with local Islamists and are turning Yemen into a hub of instability.

The revelations this week of a sophisticated plot emanating from the Yemen-based al- Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula organization have belatedly refocused attention on this most backward and poverty stricken of Arab states. The sending of explosive packages to synagogues in Chicago is only the latest act of international terror to have emerged from Yemen in the last year.

Yemen today exemplifies the central malaise of the Arab world in particularly acute form. Throughout the Arabic-speaking world, failed development, a political culture in which extremist Islamist ideology thrives and Iranian interference and subversion from outside serve to create a breeding ground for political violence to grow and proliferate.

Only in areas where strong and shrewd (though unrepresentative) state regimes exist – such as Egypt, Jordan and, in a more problematic way, Saudi Arabia – is the lid uneasily kept on this boiling cauldron.

Yemen is one of the weakest of Arab state regimes.

As a result, regional forces of subversion have linked up with local Islamists and are turning the country into a hub of instability – playing host today to no fewer than three separate armed insurgencies.

Yemen is the poorest Arab country; 40 percent of its people live on less than $2 a day. The country’s steadily depleting oil reserves are unable to generate sufficient income for the government to maintain the tribal patronage system on which it depends. Gas exports are failing to make up the shortfall. Yemen’s water supplies are also dwindling.

The regime of President Ali Saleh is autocratic, inefficient and largely ineffectual. Its economic policies have failed to develop the country. It rules in name only over large areas of the country.

Poverty, illiteracy, extremism and discontent are salient aspects of today’s reality in Yemen. And like Afghanistan and Sudan before it, Yemen is becoming a key regional base for al-Qaida. Unlike in these other two countries, in Yemen this has come about not because of an agreement reached between the jihadis and the authorities; rather, the inability of the Yemeni authorities to impose their rule throughout their country, coupled with the close proximity of Yemen to Saudi Arabia – a key target for al-Qaida – has made the country a tempting prospect for the terrorists.

AL-QAIDA IN THE Arabian Peninsula is a relatively recent addition to the various networks laying claim to the name made famous by Osama bin Laden. It emerged at the beginning of last year, when the hitherto little-heard-of Yemeni franchise of al-Qaida merged with the Saudi franchise. The Saudi jihadis were facing an increasingly effective counterterror campaign by the authorities, and therefore decided to shift focus to lightly-governed Yemen.

Through its organizing of the failed attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in December 2009, AQAP made its bid for entry to the major leagues of the global jihad. Its guiding spirit, US born Islamist ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki, was in touch with US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the officer who murdered a number of his fellow servicemen at Fort Hood, Texas, a year ago.

The latest bomb plot now confirms AQAP’s status as the most powerful “branch” of al-Qaida outside of Pakistan and Afghanistan. There are those who believe that the Yemen-based network has surpassed Bin Laden’s group as the primary terror threat to the West in general and the US in particular.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, however, is only one of the insurgencies to have taken root in blighted Yemen.

In addition to its hosting of the most active element of the global jihad, the country faces a separatist campaign in the south. Yemen was only reunified in 1990, and has since suffered a brief civil war in 1994.

The separatist insurgency led by Islamist tribal leader and former Bin Laden associate Tareq al-Fadhli grew in intensity during 2009 and has continued this year, with stormy demonstrations and armed confrontations leading to deaths on both sides.

Probably the most militarily significant of the three Islamist insurgencies was that of the Houthi rebels in the Saada district in the north. The Zaidi Shi’ite rebels of the al-Houthi clan have been engaged in an insurgency against the Yemeni authorities since 2004. Quelling the uprising proved beyond the capabilities of the Yemeni government.

In late 2009, the Shi’ite Houthis extended their activities across the border to Saudi Arabia. Their close proximity to the Saudi border made them a useful tool for Iran to pressure Riyadh. Responding to rebel attacks late last year, the Saudis struck back with aircraft and helicopter gunships. Iran was closely involved in this Shi’ite insurgency, sending regular arms shipments to the Houthis and continuing to stoke the flames of the rebellion.

Saudi involvement and Western pressure led to a cease-fire between the government and the Houthi rebels being reached in February. This was reaffirmed at the end of August, though the underlying causes for the violence remain unresolved.

So the situation in Yemen is one of a near-failed state, notionally aligned with the West but currently unable to effectively impose security throughout its territory. As elsewhere in the region, the resulting vacuum has rapidly been filled by the various, virulent malignancies that affect the regional body politic.

As for the solution, there is no magic formula.

But US President Barack Obama can ill afford yet another ground deployment, with its inevitable cost in American lives. So it is most likely that increased investment in building up Yemen’s security forces on the ground, increased deployment of intelligence assets in the country and the occasional use of targeted missile strikes on al-Qaida’s infrastructure will be the preferred path.

Saudi intelligence is reported to have played a vital role in intercepting the packages. Saudi involvement also helped to end the Houthi insurgency, at least for now. The lesson here is that for all the problematic nature of regional regimes, the dangers of Iran and the global jihad thrive best where, as in Yemen and elsewhere in the region, strong central government has broken down.

The Ethiopian Jewish community celebrated the holiday of Sigd this week. The holiday is observed in Israel with a fast and a gathering in Jerusalem, during which religious leaders read from the Torah in Gez Amharic. The fast is then broken and celebrations begin with food and dancing. In Ethiopia, the holiday was a day of longing for Israel for the Beta-Israel community. They would ascend to the highest spot in whaterver area they lived and face Jerusalem, the symbol of heavenly holiness and longing for Zion to them and pray for redemption. The holiday, which hails from the days of Ezra the Scribe in Ethiopian tradition takes place 49 days after Yom Kippur as they counted that period instead of the days from Passover to Shavuot as does the rest of world Jewry.

Rabbi Chaim Druckman of the Or Etzion yeshiva took part in a Sigd celebration at the Or M’Ofir academy, which prepares Ethiopian-Israeli young men for their military service and for academic life afterward.

“Nothing expresses the eternity of the Jewish people like Ethiopian Jewry does,” Rabbi Druckman said. “The aliyah [immigration] of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel is a miracle of miracles, and the connection Ethiopian Jews have to the land of Israel, which is expressed through this holiday, is supernatural.”

Addressing his young audience, the rabbi said, “We are proud of you and we love you. You have a great mission to fulfill in the Ethiopian community, which throughout the years was dedicated to Torah and holiness. You must continue that chain. That is your mission – to lead. To lead the community to move forward with faith.”

Or M’Ofir, established in 1995, is part of the yeshiva system headed by Rabbi Druckman. The school teaches students Torah while preparing them for the army, and in addition, helps young men who have not completed their Bagrut (Matriculation) tests to do so, in order to prepare them for higher education after the army. Many other religious Zionist institutions, including youth villages, yeshivas and ulpenas as well as religious girls doing National Service in the area of absorption have taken an active part in Ethiopian Jewry’s integration into Israeli society.

Students at the pre-military academy put on a presentation in honor of Sigd in which they focused on the place Ethiopian immigrants hold in Israeli society. The presentation illustrated both the discrimination that many Ethiopian-Israelis face in the academic world and in the workplace, and the young students’ determination to overcome discrimination and take on leadership roles in society.

The central Sigd celebration took place in Jerusalem and INN reporter Ben Bresky photographed it for INN readers to see this ancient community celebrating the ingathering of the exiles.