by Klaus Rohrich
april 12, 2004
What is it with Canadians that they have such an aversion to speaking plainly or truthfully? The recent arson of the United Talmud Torah day school in Montreal was an act of terrorism against a soft Jewish target. Certainly the note left at the front door of the school confirmed as much. It stated that "…this is just the beginning. If your crimes continue in the Middle East, our attacks will continue." Yet our politicians in condemning this cowardly act refer to it in terms of racism, rather than what it really is.
Prime Minister Paul Martin said "We must all utterly condemn this cowardly and racist act, and draw together to fight such an abomination which, like cancer, undermines the harmonious relations among diverse communities that make Canada an example throughout the world." Who wrote this stuff? It sounds like something the Stepford Canadians might say. Notice all the buzzwords? There’s racist, abomination, harmonious relations, diverse communities and the ever-popular allusion to Canada setting an example.
Jean Charest, Quebec’s Premier engaged in his own buzzwordfest touting racism and intolerance and urging Quebecers to ensure "this never happens again".
The only person that seems to have it right is Sidney Benudiz, the school’s director-general, who was quoted as saying "It’s an act of terrorism, plain and simple,"
If the Prime Minister and the Premier of Quebec really want Canada to set an example throughout the world, they might consider the possibility of rooting out all the terrorists that are using Canada as a home base. a recent report by the Rand Corporation, an american think tank, claims that a number of terrorist cells have established themselves on Canadian Soil, including Sikh extremists, Hamas, Tamil Tigers, The PKK (a Turkish Marxist group), as well as al Qaida.
Instead we mollycoddle suspected terrorists, the way Jean Chretien did in arranging for the release of al Qaida’s ahmed Said Khadr, better known as "al Kanadi" (The Canadian) among his terrorist friends, after he was arrested in Pakistan on charges of plotting to bomb the Egyptian embassy there. Khadr and his sons have played a large part in the propagation of terrorism around the world and those still living are now looking to come back to Canada.
It took a huge amount of political pressure to get the Government of Canada to finally declare Hamas a terrorist organization. Days previous to that declaration, Bill Graham, our Foreign Minister praised Hamas in the House of Commons for their humanitarian work. That’s akin to praising Revenue Canada for their contribution to our booming economy.
a very short time after the two planes slammed into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre, Jean Chretien, our then Prime Minister was assuring the world that the perpetrators of this act weren’t in any way connected to Canada. Big question is, how could he know if we didn’t even know the identities of the hijackers right away, and why bring it up, unless he was concerned that they were somehow connected to ahmad Ressam.
ahmad Ressam, you may recall, is the young algerian national who lived in Montreal on welfare, when he was caught attempting to cross the U.S. border near Seattle with a trunk full of explosives on New Year’s Eve, 1999. apparently he was on the way to Los angeles, where he had planned a Y2K fireworks display at LaX. What’s both funny and sad about the Ressam case is that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), was warned about Ressam’s plans to initiate terrorist attacks in america by the French Secret Service, and CSIS ignored the intelligence.
Maybe we should call suspected terrorists "racists" if we expect anyone in the government to stop them. I think your chances of getting deported from Canada are a lot better if you are a proven racist instead of a murderous terrorist. But then, this all plays into the multi-culti fetish the Liberals have imposed on this country. Racists are intolerable low-lifes because they’re, well, racists! Terrorists, on the other hand, could be expressing some legitimate political dissent through bombing and arson and therefore should be granted the benefit of the doubt as Chretien did with Khadr.
In a truly multicultural society, all points of view have legitimacy. So if you’re someone like Paul Martin or Bill Graham you might see certain terrorist acts as a legitimate form of political dissent. Ditto for the Sikhs in India, except there it’s religious differences, which incidentally, have resulted in action on Canadian soil as in the air India Bombing. The trial for those charged is doing its best toward bankrupting the B.C. government.
a multicultural society such as Canada risks having conflicts from foreign lands spill over into our country. Clearly Canadian Greeks and Turks do not like each other. Sikhs and the Tamil Tigers are using Canada as a base for financial and logistical support in maintaining hostilities in their homeland. and, as ahmed Ressam and ahmed Said Khadr have demonstrated, al Qaida is using Canada in their war against the West.
Having our government leaders put a "racist" spin on acts of terrorism frankly scares me, as it is a clear indicator that their thinking is still lodged in the September 10, 2001 mode. and while I don’t care about the personal fetishes of those in government, be they racism or sexism or ageism, terrorism is something that affects us all equally. Our elected officials should at least have the courage to call it by its name.