http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=7932
Iraq war linked with fight against anti-Semitism
By SHELDON KIRSHNER
Staff Reporter
Tony and Elizabeth Comper and, right, Winston S. Churchill
The ceaseless battle against anti-Semitism has been linked with the current allied struggle to bring democracy to Iraq.
In a recent speech marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in Europe, British author, journalist and former parliamentarian Winston S. Churchill, the grandson of the iconic wartime prime minister, warned that determination and endurance will be needed to counter anti-Semitism and the insurgency in Iraq.
“On both fronts, let us fight the good fight,” said Churchill, delivering the keynote address at The Canadian Society for Yad Vashem’s annual dinner, held at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel.
But no one should expect quick and easy solutions on either front, he suggested.
Citing czarist Russian pogroms and the Holocaust, Churchill – a Conservative party member of parliament from 1970 until 1997 – said that no group has historically suffered as much as the Jewish people.
Describing anti-Semitism as an “ugly cancer,” Churchill said that it can best be fought by non-Jews such as dinner honorees Elizabeth and Tony Comper, the founders of FAST.
FAST, an acronym for Fighting Anti-Semitism Together, was formed last spring. It is a coalition of non-Jewish business and community leaders dedicated to combating anti-Jewish animus in Canada.
The Compers are governors of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews. He is president and chief executive officer of BMO Financial Group, a major Canadian banking institution. She is a fundraiser, volunteer and former English teacher.
Churchill, who was born in 1940 when his grandfather was Britain’s prime minister and German aircraft were bombing London, began with the pointed observation that this is not a kinder, more tolerant era.
He cited the massacre of Tutsis in Rwanda and the mass murder of Muslims in Bosnia in the 1990s and, more recently, the slaughter of Christians in Sudan and Pakistan.
In a blunt warning, he said that the newest challenge facing the West today comes from extremist Islam, which has declared a global jihad and has already launched terrorist attacks in, among other places, Madrid, Bali and London.
He said the West desperately needs the help of moderate Muslims to cope with this threat.
Churchill noted that his grandfather was the first to warn of the dangers of radical Islam, when, in a 1921 House of Commons speech, he spoke of Wahhabism in the Arabian peninsula.
Wahhabists have exported their austere, intolerant brand of Islam to virtually every corner of the globe, and the “weak and supine” ruling House of Saud in Saudi Arabia has turned a blind eye to their activities, he charged.
Issuing an implicit criticism of Turkey’s application for admission to the European Union, he said that Turkish membership would vastly increase the EU’s Muslim population to 100 million.
Turning his attention to Iraq, Churchill said that nothing could be more disastrous if the United States, along with its ally Britain, adopted a defeatist and cowardly “cut-and-run” policy.
The West will pay “a terrible price” should it withdraw from Iraq before the insurgents are beaten back and democracy takes root, he declared.
In a rebuke of the United States, Churchill said that when nations go to war they should expect grievous losses. He compared the 2,000 casualties the United States has sustained in Iraq so far with the 55,000 British soldiers who were killed in a single day in the Battle of the Somme during World War I.
“Is the U.S. going soft? I pray not.”
Washington should aim at attaining victory in Iraq at all costs, he observed, reading several lines from one of his grandfather’s stirring wartime speeches.
***Pennsylvania Sept. 11 Memorial Redesigned (PA - 11/30/05)***
By JENNIFER C. YATES Associated Press Writer
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Designers of a Flight 93 memorial have made a bowl-shaped piece of land its centerpiece, replacing a crescent-shape design that some critics had said was a symbol honoring terrorists, officials announced Wednesday.
The new design for the memorial, to be built on the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, crash near Shanksville, features most of the details of the original, which victims' relatives helped select after a worldwide design competition.
But a round, bowl-shaped area would replace a "Crescent of Embrace," a crescent-shaped cluster of maple trees.
After the original design was unveiled in September, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., criticized it in a letter to the National Park Service director, saying many questioned the shape "because of the crescent's prominent use as a symbol in Islam - and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists."
Paul Murdoch, president of Paul Murdoch Architects, which designed the memorial, had called the criticism of the crescent an "unfortunate diversion," but said they were sensitive to the concerns...