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Media Report

Anti-American Toronto Star's "tribute" to 9/11

by Arthur Weinreb

September 22, 2003

Much of the media dedicated a lot of time on September 11 to commemorate the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington two years earlier. The Canadian media was no exception. The Toronto Star, darling of the Canadian leftist elite, devoted an editorial, three columns, and 12 articles by 12 ordinary Muslim Canadians and the historic events that transpired on September 11, 2001.

Out of the four articles that were not penned by the ordinary Muslims, only Rosie DiManno’s article abstained from bashing George W. Bush and the United States. DiManno, who is known to stray from her paper’s official line from time to time, started off her column by reporting about the British Islamic group that celebrated the events of 9/11 and honoured the 19 hijackers who flew planes into buildings and fields. Instead of criticizing President Bush, a Toronto Star pastime, DiManno reminded her readers that the Americans did not fire the first shot in the war against terrorism. DiManno ended her piece by listing the names of terrorists that the United States have either killed or taken into custody. Rosie described these as successes that were "quite a bit more than has been alleged by those so bitterly in opposition to America that they barely even pay lip-service any more to those 3,000 dead." DiManno wasn’t speaking about the Toronto Star, but she could have been.

In another column by George Barthos, the Star’s foreign affairs editorialist wrote about how Canadians are handling the threat of terrorism so much better than the Americans are. Of course George--we weren’t the ones who were attacked. The column was replete with criticisms of George W. Bush for his seeing an ideological struggle against Islamic fundamentalism, his "disdain for the United Nations and international law," and his exploitation of 9/11 to depose Saddam Hussein by falsely linking him to Al Qaeda.

Haroon Siddiqui, the Toronto Star’s editorial page writer emeritus, wrote about Noah Feldman, a Jewish professor at New York University who holds the view that Siddiqui appears to accept, that the 19 hijackers were simply criminals. The column goes on to state how Muslims should be more active in distinguishing between Islamic and Islamist.

In its editorial, the Star gets right to the point by criticizing New Yorkers for being less trusting of immigrants and of "carrying the trauma [ of 9/11] with them." The editorial went on to say that: "the world must adjust, too, for the empty place in America’s heart has been filled with a coldness that has sent a chill around the globe." The United States is attacked and the Toronto Star criticizes it for being cold and making the rest of the world suffer. The piece then goes on to criticize Bush, whom the paper describes as "the ‘accidental’ president," and characterize him as stumbling, being an imperialist, running up a huge deficit, and causing two "axis of evil" countries, Iran and North Korea, to build up their arsenals of nuclear weapons. The editorial concludes by praising Canada for defending our way of life "without sacrificing our open, welcoming society." The Star uses the September 11 anniversary to build up Canada by tearing down the United States.

The 12 articles that were written by the so-called "ordinary Muslim Canadians" were essentially nothing more than a whine about how tough it is to be a Muslim in the post 9/11 world. One of the articles stressed that Osama bin Laden is a devout Muslim, and therefore couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the terrorist attacks. Several articles made it clear that Muslims, not any of the 3,000 dead, were the true victims of 9/11.

Twenty-four Canadians were among the approximately 3,000 people who perished in airplanes, the Pentagon, and in the World Trade Center towers. None of these Canadian victims were mentioned in any of the 16 articles that were devoted to 9/11. If anyone was wondering how any of their surviving relatives were doing, they were not going to find out from the Toronto Star. Even the CBC, that could never be described as pro-American, broadcast an interview with Erica Basnicki, a young Toronto woman whose father died in the World Trade Center.

It’s shameful that the newspaper that has the largest daily circulation in Canada couldn’t mention, let alone honour, the firefighters, police officers, Canadians, and others who perished in the burning infernos. Canadians should be embarrassed that a newspaper such as the Toronto Star couldn’t refrain from bashing our southern neighbour for at least one day.

Many of those who died on September 11, 2001 were wealthy middle-class white males; the only group of people that the Toronto Star does not classify as victims. It wasn’t really surprising that the paper portrayed Muslims as the real victims of 9/11.