===================================
Yesterday's National Post Editorial titled "Uninvited guests" takes a stand on the Christie Ban that is interesting. It has a couple of disparaging remarks about both Douglas Christie and Ernst Zundel.
This makes me sad to see, although I expected that sooner or later it was bound to happen. The "bless you!" reflex seems to be the requisite behavior asked of all mainstream media, lest anyone gets the mistaken idea that that even those whom society has labeled "undesirables" - akin to the "untouchables" in India - have feelings and a right to dignity. Like anybody else.
That having said, however, the editorial is is not so bad at all. Here's how it runs, in part:
National Post:
"The Speaker's office defended the ban on the grounds that Mr. Christie as a lawyer represents a notorious Holocaust denier, one Ernst Zundel, in a lawsuit against the Commons stemming from a ban imposed on Mr. Zundel himself last June. Don Boudria, the government house leader, said Mr. Christie is simply Mr. Zundel's "messenger," and that permitting him access to the Press Gallery would be tantamount to rolling out the red carpet for him.
No one is strongly inclined to do that; Mr. Christie might certainly choose a better class of clients (he also defended James Keegstra); and Parliament's privileges doubtless include the power to ban undesirables from its precincts. But such privileges, when exercised, invite examination. Are all undesirables banned (always excepting actual MPs)? Or only some? What criteria are used?
Zundelsite:
None of the media have criticized famous Canadian-Jewish lawyer Eddie Greenspan for representing famous wife murderer Buxbaum, or John Rosen representing sadistic torturer and killer of young women, Paul Bernardo, before they became the lawyers for the Simon Wiesenthal Center at the Zundel Tribunal hearings.
Ernst Zundel hasnt tortured anyone. He hasn't murdered anyone. Here merely asks: "Did Six Million Really Die?"
National Post:
Whatever his faults, the irascible Mr. Christie is neither a murderer nor terrorist, indeed a veritable lightweight when compared to two recently honoured guests to the Commons, Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator, and Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein. Mr. Castro is responsible for torture, terrorism, censorship, mass murder, and 40 years of dictatorship, and Mr. Adams held leading positions in the terrorist organization that is responsible for about two-thirds of the 3,300 political murders in Northern Ireland in the last 30 years. Yet they were warmly welcomed by the Commons.
Zundelsite:
So now we're getting closer to a "criterion." It bears repeating that not only is the "irascible Mr. Christie" no murderer or terrorist, neither is Mr. Zundel. In fact, in 40 years of living in Canada as a productive member of society, he has, according to a high-ranking Canadian bureaucrat in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, quoted by the Toronto Sun in 1993 when his application for citizenship was suspended, a record that is "flawless."
He holds controversial opinions. He says the Holocaust is one gigantic hoax.
National Post:
The pragmatic excuse is sometimes made that such guests have to be welcomed because it is they who have the power to negotiate ceasefires and peace processes. Very well. Let them be directed to obscure government offices where mutually convenient treaties can be hammered out without publicity. What is objectionable is that they should be treated as distinguished statesmen -- or even as the equal of democratically elected politicians whose torturing stops at the English language. The standing ovation that MPs, led by Mr. Parent, gave to Gerry Adams disgraced them and must have been a bitter blow to his victims and their relatives.
Inviting Zundel himself could scarcely have disgraced Parliament more.
Zundelsite:
Mr. Christie and Ernst Zundel did not want to speak in Parliament. They were denied a press room in the building which had been rented out to all comers for over a hundred years.
We thank the Post <letters@nationalpost.com> for having provided this useful comparison between who is welcome on Parliament Hill - and who is not. All the while, we're getting closer to understanding what is really playing in the Canadian Parliament. And where that poor country is heading.
This small editorial speaks volumes.
Thought for the Day:
"Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
(Thomas Jefferson)
Back to Table of Contents of the Jan. 1999 ZGrams