HELLO, DR. MAHATHIR, GOODBYE HERR ZUNDEL - George Jonas

Marvin Kurz is a busy lawyer. His response to a
column I wrote about Ernst Zundel's deportation last
week makes me suspect that whoever did the
summary of my piece for him won't be getting a
bonus. B'nai Brith's legal counsel must have been told
that I complain about the federal government misusing -- to quote his
column -- "security legislation
meant to combat terrorism as a means to persecute a mere anti-Semitic
hatemonger." Had Mr. Kurz
read my piece himself, I expect he would have noticed that what I complain
about is Canada's
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).

To underline the risk of relying on law students for summaries, I'll quote
the relevant paragraph from
what I wrote: "Whether [Federal Court] Judge Blais was right or wrong last
week when he found Zundel
a security threat isn't the important issue," I wrote. "The important issue
is what's happening to the
rule of law in Canada."

Mr. Kurz's response -- "Many Canadians privately cheered the Federal
Court's decision to finally deport
notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel" -- doesn't address this concern.
The fact people are cheering
Zundel's deportation is dandy; what's worrisome is the prospect of entering
an era in which the state
can detain and deport anyone it chooses by administrative fiat --
essentially without trial or defence --
to the cheers of many Canadians.

Including the cheers of Mr. Kurz.

People who applaud this state of affairs must believe they could never
become subject to it, otherwise
they'd sit on their hands. But "How could the law that caught Zundel ever
affect me?" Mr. Kurz might
ask. "First, I'm not a Holocaust denier. Second, I'm a Canadian citizen."

Those factors assure immunity from IRPA -- today. Tomorrow, who knows. When
a state can respond
with administrative detention to a breach of its shibboleths, there could
be any number of UN-inspired
and Canadian government-endorsed shibboleths for a Jewish human rights
organization or its lawyer
to run afoul of. And measures a state feels entitled to employ against
non-citizens may be extended to
apply to citizens before long. That's how tyrannies grow.

Figuring I may have insufficient regard for the pen of hatemongers as
opposed to the sword of
terrorists, Mr. Kurz explains that Holocaust-denying pamphleteers like

Zundel aren't fleas on the body
politic, but a cancer. He proceeds to argue with vigour that there's a
"nexus between hate propaganda
and terrorism." He's quite right, of course. In fact, the nexus goes even
deeper, for it's between
terrorism and ideas.

Not only are acts of hate often precipitated by expressions of hate;
they're precipitated by expressions
of opinion, including expressions of faith and sentiment. Sometimes such
expressions even
masquerade as historical analysis and social science. Marxism, a creed with
a clear nexus to the
murder of some 80 million people in 80 years, is a good example.

The problem with making a nexus to potential evil the test for
administrative detention is that it
exposes a society to having to incarcerate or deport Marxist scholars,
religious fundamentalists,
militant environmentalists, extreme nationalists, growers of marijuana,
animal-rights advocates, and
countless others whose ideas or sentiments have ever been linked to
terrorist acts. Many societies do
just that -- thereby usually inviting the very evils they hope to avoid --
but we in Canada used to pride
ourselves on being among the handful of free societies that don't.

Not anymore. Canada's withdrawal from the high water mark of classical
liberalism is turning into a
rout. The party leading the retreat continues to call itself Liberal,
showing how labels can survive
concepts.

It's amusing, in a grim sort of way, to see Mr. Kurz write: "The Canadian
government has had the
wisdom to implicitly recognize the connection between hate and terror" --
after listing a litany of hate
propaganda Canada's government carefully refrained from doing anything
about.

To cite some of Mr. Kurz's own examples: Did the Liberal government ever
send a diplomatic note of
dismay to Syria for producing a TV program based on a notorious
anti-Semitic tract called the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Did it ever protest Iran's TV station
Sahar depicting Israelis conspiring
to steal the eyes of Palestinian children?

Silly questions. What Canada did was offer a handshake, via its then-Prime
Minister, Jean Chretien, to
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for expressing, at the APEC
summit of October, 2003,
essentially the same sentiments as Ernst Zundel.

Dr. Mahathir told the cheering leaders of 57 Islamic nations that "today
the Jews rule the world by
proxy. They get others to fight and die for them." All Canada's PM, with
his "implicit recognition
between hate and terror," would have had to do was not shake the speaker's
hand. But why should
Canada's Liberal leader jeopardize his friendship with the anti-Semitic
International of today, when all
he needs to do is expel a moth-eaten relic of yesterday's anti-Semitism to
assure his government the
support of B'nai Brith and its counsel?

Hello, Dr. Mahathir. Good-bye, Herr Zundel.

One final note. Those who truly believe that the pen is mightier than the
sword prefer to counter the
pen of falsehood with the pen of truth. Those who don't, opt for the sword
of expulsion.

мй National Post 2005

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HELLO, DR. MAHATHIR, GOODBYE HERR ZUNDEL by George Jonas National Post March 7, 2005

HELLO, DR. MAHATHIR, GOODBYE HERR ZUNDEL
by George Jonas
National Post
March 7, 2005