A Little Perspective Please

An interesting thing about The Jewish Tribune's story about the death of Doug Christie, lawyer to Canada's far right, is that it isn't really about the death of Doug Christie.  Rather, it is about the reaction to Doug Christie's death by ex-CJC head Bernie Farber.  Anyone that knows Bernie knows that he likes to play things clean, keep it classy, and so forth, so it isn't surprising, and hardly a big deal, that he would have sent the dying barrister a conciliatory email.   Nevertheless Tribune correspondent Joanne Hill spends  300 or so words trying to make something of the issue, finally tracking down Frank Dimant, CEO of B'nai Brith Canada, for a negative quote.  Frank thunders stentoriously:

“hell would freeze over” before he would have sent “a get-well card” to Christie.

“Doug Christie was a despicable human being who delighted in tormenting Holocaust survivors during cross-examination....Christie went well beyond championing freedom of speech in the courtroom. He caused anguish to all those survivors who were forced to recall their own torment, as well as the suffering and deaths of their loved ones, during the Nazi regime. I can find no redeeming traits in a man who served as Zundel’s mouthpiece in the courts.”

Well, I'm not sure I would be able to point to  redeeming trait in Doug Christie either, though I generally think its best to keep things civil around the time of a man's funeral.  But its worth noting that other commentators, indeed other Jewish commentators, have been far more complimentary towards Mr. Christie than Bernie was.  Ezra Levant, for example.  His whole eulogy can be found here,  but highlights among the flowery BS include Ezra denying, against all the evidence, that Christie was personally anti-Semitic, and calling him "a passionate scholar of history", which is I suppose true at least insofar as Christie passionately believed that Hitler was "demonized" in the wake of that whole WWII thing.  So perhaps Ms. Hill and Mr. Dimant can throw a little outrage in Levant's direction.