Shiraz Dossa, In His Own Words

In December 2006, Shiraz Dossa, a tenured professor at Nova Scotia's St. Francis Xavier University, turned up at what was widely labelled a Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran, and caught shit for it from varius media pundits, including John Ibbitson and Rex Murphy, with Mr. Ibbitson demanding that Mr. Dossa be fired. Now Mr. Dossa has responded to his critics with a rather convincing piece in the Literary Review Of Canada. He defends both his trip to Tehran and his specialty, the study of how the Holocaust functions within Israeli and Western propooganda. My favorite bit:

"It was followed by a declaration of war on me by its “pundits” John Ibbitson and Rex Murphy, dilettantes extraordinaire on the Holocaust and the Middle East. Neither of these journalists has credibility in either field. Ibbitson hectored me in his usual CNN mode, got most things wrong and casually libelled me in the process.4 Since 9/11, he hasn’t let up on Islam or Muslims. Murphy, in his column “Eichmann in Tehran,” displayed his cerebral deficits and his ignorance of Islam, Iran and Hannah Arendt with enviable facility.5 Like Ibbitson, Murphy impresses those intellectually just a cut above the Trailer Park Boys. It is worth noting that these Christian boys have unlimited latitude in The Globe and Mail to trash Muslims even as they defend “civilization,” Israel and Jews."

Actually, I think this libels the Trailer Park Boys. After all, Julian and Ricky speak in clear, simple English, where it probably takes Rex Murphy forty five minutes to order a cheese-burger at MacDonalds.