Reported Sightings of Antisemitismus this week




> Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the heads of UN member states:

"The dignity, integrity and rights of the European and American people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a minuscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner."


> Toronto won't allow comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler:

Marty Peretz reports:



The Toronto City Council has banned an exhibit comparing the anti-Jewish rhetoric of Adolf Hitler with the anti-Jewish (and anti-Israel) rhetoric of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I don't exactly know what was in the exhibition. But this prohibition seems to me to be prima facie both disgusting and dangerous. "Disgusting" because it puts up Toronto itself as a barrier to discussion of one of the crucial issues of our time, which is the tie between fascism and Islamofascism. "Dangerous" because it shows how fragile is the right to free expression even in free societies such as Toronto.



Is anyone surprised? Does anyone but a few Jewish organizations raise the alarm? Don't be ridiculous. In Canada, whose government did less than other Western countries to help Jewish refugees between 1933 and 1948?

"The authors point at Frederick Charles Blair, the head of immigration in the Mackenzie King administration for actively limiting Jewish immigration from the top. They also claim Blair had the full support of Mackenzie King, prime minister during the war, Canada's high commissioner to Britain Vincent Massey and both Anglophone and Francophone elites in general.
The title is based on an anecdote given in the book. In early 1945, an unidentified immigration agent was asked how many Jews would be allowed in Canada after the war. He replied "None is too many". (wiki)

> Winnipeg-area Liberal candidate Leslie Hughes- an antisemitic truther?

Winnipeg-area Liberal candidate Leslie Hughes was forced to explain why she wrote about conspiracy theories alleging the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and that Israeli businesses had advance warning to vacate the premises.

The remarks surfaced a day after she joined Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion in a major public outreach to Canada's Jewish community.

“I find any interpretation of my journalism as anti-Semitic personally offensive and I heartily apologize for that perception,” she said in a statement released late Thursday. (here)

Her bizarre apology nicely disemboweled by Terry Glavin, here .

I keep wondering why mediocre, verbally-incontinent politicians take such a dim view of voters' intelligence and ability to connect words to their meanings.