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.  

CTS TV Dumps Charles McVety

BURLINGTON, ONTARIO – CTS (Crossroads Television System) regrets that Word TV will no longer be broadcast due to its lack of compliance with the CTS Code of Ethics to which Word TV agreed under contract.

Last week, its producer and host, Dr. Charles McVety erroneously communicated that CTS was being pressured to censor Word TV; these comments are inaccurate and misleading. The fact is that Word TV failed to keep its agreement to comply with the CTS Code of Ethics and indicated a refusal to comply in the future. Unfortunately, numerous attempts by CTS to work with Dr. McVety were unsuccessful.

What's the phrase--goodbye to bad rubbish. My own prediction: McVety winds up on Fox News North.

PS. Looks Frank Dimant and B'nail Brith are on-side with McVety.

B'nai Brith On HRC's: A Mixed Bag

Just a few quick notes on B'nai Brith's presentation to Richard Moon, the University of Windsor law professor who was appointed to make recommendations as to the direction the CHRC should take re Internet Hate Speech in Canada.

First, the good. B'nai Brith's practical recommendations are, for the most part, common-sense. For example, it does not seem fair that complaints can be pursued in multiple jurisdictions. As BB writes:

The ability to make several complaints at once in different jurisdictions against the same target means that the complaint power can be used as a way of harassing the object of the complaint. That avenue of harassment needs to be cut off. Complaints should be heard in one forum only. The appropriate forum should be the one with the most substantial connection to the complaint and the parties. No other jurisdiction should have the power to entertain essentially the same complaint.

Perhaps the question of awarding costs to successful defendants is a little more problematic , esp. in light of the Maclean's Magazine case where the refusal to negotiate with complainants, and the legal costs resulting from this refusal, can largely be seen as a stunt, a desperate attempt to bump up sales by embracing cheap controversy and pandering to Canada's far right fringe. Here and elsewhere, where the out-sized sums spent on defending a complaint amount to a kind of business investment on the part of the defendant, should such behavior be rewarded?

However, where I think the B'nai Brith report really disappoints is in the way it draws analogies between the complainants in the Macleans and Western Standard cases and some world-wild conspiracy on the part of "Political Islam"... the way it swallows the Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant koolaid, in other words.

Put briefly (and to give just a single example), whatever the ultimate strength of his case against the Western Standard, there is no question in my mind that Syed Soharwardy was correct when he wrote that the Western Standard "mis-used the Freedom of the press to create hatred against Canadian Muslims", and that his complaint was a response to this and not a move within some vast international conspiracy by Islamic militants.

And I think B'nai Brith Council David Matas, who wrote their presentation to Dr. Moon, probably should have made himself aware of the context around and fallout from Mr. Soharwardy's complaint, which included calls for Muslim Genocide on the Western Standard Blog, and generated a police investigation as well as eventual apologies from the WS editors. I realize that it would have been unpleasant for Mr. Matas to stick his head down that particular sewer, but I think it would have made him a little more aware of what was really at stake.

Read the entire report here.