PING!
Posted on 06/08/2006 7:43:24 AM PDT by GMMAC
The Toronto Star's self-imposed blindness
Robert Fulford
National Post
Thursday, June 08, 2006
June, 2006, will always be remembered for the arrest of 17 suspected terrorists in Ontario. But we may also recall it as the time when Antonia Zerbisias accused Christie Blatchford of "hate speech."
Zerbisias, who writes a column about media in the Toronto Star, reflects the current cliches of the left with superb accuracy. She writes with a certain angry vigour, particularly when dealing with anyone who says a kind word about the U.S. government. But candid writing offends her if it comes from the other side of the argument.
That's how she came to deliver a libelous accusation against Blatchford, a National Post alum who now writes for The Globe and Mail.
An amazing number of people, from the cops to CBC news editors, have tried their best to ignore the fact that the 17 arrestees are accused of a plot to kill in the name of Islam. Police blandly informed us that the accused came from all sections of our society (the employed, the unemployed, students, etc.), but failed to note this one central fact.
Blatchford, in her familiar style, reacted with fury against this craven pusillanimity. She accused the police and others of "ignoring the biggest elephant in the room." As Blatchford said, Chief Bill Blair of the Toronto police even bragged about his force's refusal to say in public what the police (like everyone else) knows: "I would remind you," Blair said, "that there was not one single reference made by law enforcement to 'Muslim' or 'Muslim community'" during the post-arrest news conference on Saturday.
Blatchford said that any fool should be able to figure out what their religion is -- "They have first names like Mohamed, middle names like Mohamed and last names like Mohamed."
For this statement of truth, Blatchford was compared to a Nazi. Her Globe column was "a Christie-nacht screed against a single community, tantamount to hate speech," Zerbisias wrote.
The phrase "Christie-nacht" presumably struck the author as a brilliant bon mot. But in fact, the punned reference to the Nov. 9, 1938, Kristallnacht pogrom against Germany's Jews represents both a libel against Blatchford and a snide insult to the memory of those Jews who perished at Nazi hands. If anyone can claim fealty to the Nazis' habits of mind, it is the Islamofascists, not their enemies.
Yet as appalling as Zerbisias's column may be, she is actually on-message: Since news of the 17 arrests broke, her newspaper has been doing its best to convince readers that the greatest threat facing Canada isn't suicide bombers, but the stigmatization of the community from which they originate.
Thus, in the Star's lead editorial of June 5, the very first admonition was that we all "avoid prejudging members of south Asian or Arab descent." The headline "Mosque vandalized" was duly splashed across the top of the front page of that edition's GTA section -- as if broken windows were more worrying than a plot to bring down a skyscraper.
Meanwhile, Thomas Walkom -- a Star writer best known for a 2004 column comparing the U.S. President to Adolf Hitler -- has been deployed to assure Star readers the alleged terrorist plot wasn't all that serious. In a front-page column printed yesterday, he suggested the whole matter may be part of a subtle conspiracy to bolster support for Canada's Afghan deployment and beefed-up anti-terror laws.
Beside Walkom's article was a tear-jerking "news" story lamenting the fact that niqab-clad relatives of the accused were being "singled out" by courthouse reporters. Such media circuses are common at high-profile criminal trials. And, obviously, a woman draped head to toe in black is more likely than, say, a woman in halter top and jeans to be the mother of an accused Islamist terrorist. Yet the article leaves the impression that the media are harassing Muslims for the hell of it.
On page 10 of the same edition, a similarly themed article seeks to trace the militancy of young Canadian Muslims to "offensive remarks" and "taunts" endured in high school. In one student's telling, post-9/11 stereotyping is to blame for convincing Muslim students that "it's cool to be a terrorist." On the pages of the Star, no problem -- not even Islamist terrorism -- can't somehow be blamed on white racism.
The ramblings contained in one newspaper may not strike everyone as earth-shaking. But these things are part of a larger pattern. The media have tried desperately hard to avoid coming to grips with Islam in its many varieties, one or more of which involve violence. Like politicians, media people want above all to avoid appearing to discriminate against anyone's religion.
But this is not a quarrel between Presbyterians and Buddhists. Among religions practised in Canada in the 21st century, Islam is unique in containing an element that goes forth to kill in its name. It is a special case, and has to be discussed as such before we can even begin to understand terrorism.
Pretending that religion doesn't matter in a case such as this is a kind of self-imposed blindness. Many events around the world, 9/11 most notably, should have cured us of it long ago.
robert.fulford@utoronto.ca
© National Post 2006
PING!
Toronto (Red) Star = New Democrat (neo-Stalinist) propaganda outlet = Ally of convenience with al Queda.
The Toronto Star, a waste of good pulp.
The epitaph of Western civilization will be:
"We died rather than offend our killers."
I've read enough of the Canadian MSM to know they are bossom buddies to the quisling press in this country.
The left is so predictable. They pride themselves on being "independent thinkers", but the exact opposite is true.
RE:"Yet the article leaves the impression that the media are harassing Muslims for the hell of it"
I would like to see the media "harass" Muslims in the same way they "harass" our soldiers.
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