Prof. draws the battle line:
Opponents of the CMHR as a Holocaust museum are anti-semites
Right on schedule.
Barely four days after
The Black Rod laid out the plan, chapter and verse, there
it was in the pages of the Winnipeg Free Press, down to a T.
The proponents of the Gail Asper-version of the Canadian Museum for
Human Rights have played their last card--- anyone who challenges them
is anti-semitic.
"The war against the
Holocaust" blared the headline over the op-ed by, guess who,
Catherine Chatterley the "the founding director of the Winnipeg-based
Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism."
* It's not hard to put two and two together, we wrote. * Gail Asper doesn't want to accuse the Ukrainians
of being anti-Semites, although she hasn't met them face-to-face, she added. * Only "the uniformed" ask why the Asper human
rights museum plans to highlight the Holocaust over all the other
genocides in the world, said
the Free Press.
* Catherine
Chatterley, an "expert" on anti-semitism says people have
to put aside their "collective grievances" and recognize the Holocaust
as more important than other genocides. * Should we conclude that if the uniformed
continue to press their case, then it is because they have another
agenda, another motivation? Hmmm. Maybe a non-profit academic institute just like the one founded by
Catherine Chatterley can help identify that motivation."
Chatterley, who actually wants people to know she teaches at the
University of Manitoba, begins her tirade with a false premise, then
uses it to propel her argument.
And we hire people like this to teach in our universities?
"Who would ever imagine that in 2011 Canadians would be
arguing about whether or not the Nazi extermination of over six million
European Jews deserves a permanent place in a national museum dedicated
to the subject of human rights?"
Well, uh, nobody is arguing that. So
what's your motivation in claiming something which isn't true?
"The level of open hostility directed specifically toward the
Holocaust gives one the sense that the attack is politically motivated."
Straight out of the playbook. See above.
"As a Winnipegger, I have many friends with
Ukrainian ancestry and they are all supportive of the museum and its
Holocaust gallery. Actually, not a single person I know in Winnipeg or
throughout the country, regardless of their ethnic background, resents
the fact that there is a Holocaust gallery in the new museum."
False, once again.
Nobody is arguing against a place for Holocaust study in the new
museum. Chatterley creates a straw man and knocks it down.
She fails to explain the straw polls in the Free Press and the Globe
and Mail which, separately, showed that 75 percent of respondents
preferred one exhibit which covers all genocides equally
over one gallery that highlights a particular genocide permanently,
while the others are grouped together in a separate exhibit (14
percent).
"The Ukrainian Famine and the internment of Ukrainians are
not being excluded but are in fact locked into the current museum plan,
as promised by the founders."
No, Izzy Asper promised
the Holodomor would be treated equally with the Holocaust.
"The protest of these groups clearly targets the Holocaust
for having a prominent place in the museum and the Jews, who go
unmentioned by name in every public letter, for dominating the CMHR
with their own particularistic suffering during the Second World War.
This is the real issue at work here and it's time to confront it
publicly and to expose it, finally, for what it is."
For what it is? Say what?
The Ukrainian associations have been meticulous to avoid any mention of
Jews, Jewish ancestry, the Jewish background of Gail Asper, Izzy Asper,
Anita Neville, the publishers of the Winnipeg Free Press, the Mayor of
Winnipeg or any other proponent of the CMHR.
They have bent over
backwards to focus the debate on its merits and not as any disguised
attack on Jews.
It's Catherine Chatterley alone who has turned this into accusations of
anti-semitism through her own twisted viewpoint of the facts. Far from
being an independent academic, she demonstrates she's a shill for the
Aspers and their supporters.
"Subjective feelings are influencing content and
design choices rather than objective historical and legal reality and
this does not bode well for the international reputation of this
institution. This is something about which taxpayers and voters should
be worried."
Again Chatterly ignores the truth.
The Ukrainian groups have argued for months for the creation of an independent exhibits review
committee to replace the one handpicked by Gail Asper to
further her agenda.
It's the mindless insistence that the planned extermination
of Jews must have precedence over the planned extermination of
Ukrainians, Albanians, Tutsis and others that should worry taxpayers who are spending $310 million on
a building they never wanted and $21 million a year in perpetuity to
promote the Asper name.
" The museum is dedicated to presenting the
history of human rights law and activism and the reasons for its
international development during and after Hitler's war."
Why would that be the beginning and end?
The Communists were
engaging in genocide before the Second World War and mass murder after.
In fact, they were
allies of Hitler prior to the invasion of Russia.
After the fall of Germany,
the United Nations didn't stop the human rights violations of the
Communists. It didn't launch prosecutions of those
responsible for the Holodomor.
The bigger lesson for the
world was why the Communists were protected by the intellectuals and
the press before and after Hitler's war right up to the present day.
Surely that's of equal if not greater importance to study than how a
madman tapped into the historic anti-Semitic views of old Europe.
"If it were not for the humanistic desire on the part of Jews
-- particularly Holocaust survivors and their children -- to educate
humanity about the evils of racism and the need to protect universal
human rights through the study of the Holocaust, we would not have this
new national museum. How on earth can this kind of generosity and
goodwill be perceived as dominating and exclusive?"
Simple. Because they
refuse to accept that there are views other than theirs in the world.
If you don't agree that the planned extermination of the Jews of Europe
is the single most egregious genocide in the history of the world, then
you're anti-semitic, declare the Aspers and the Sterns and the Silvers.
Well,
we don't.
That argument may have won the day 60 years ago. But the world has
shrunk since then. We now know more about genocides in countries around
the world. Just because we captured the written records of the Nazis
and got to interrogate the perpetrators of the Holocaust doesn't mean
there's more significance to the Holocaust for the entire world.
To the victims of Hitler, sure. But there were genocides before the
Holocaust and afterwards. You're not going to sanctify one ethnic group
that refuses to accept they are not s-s-s-pecial.
If you want to argue that the Holocaust sparked the human rights
movement, then we should focus on the men who made that happen, and not
on the victims of a particular genocide. What motivated these men?
Their education? Their life experience? In what countries? What finally
coalesced in their lives that prompted them to take political action?
And that can be done in the context of a gallery where all genocides
are equal.
But Chatterley has an agenda to push. So she sees anti-semitism where
none exists. She invents it.
"Even more troubling is how the UCCLA could mail an offensive
postcard to Canadians across the country."
"The front cover of the postcard depicts a fat pig with a bullwhip
overseeing an emaciated horse dragging a wagon.The image is taken from
the 1947 Ukrainian edition of George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. In the
story, the pigs are the Stalinist communist ruling class who enslave
and dominate all the other animals but claim hypocritically that "All
animals are equal." The back of the UCCLA postcard has a pig whispering
into the ear of a sheep in a conspiratorial manner, "All galleries are
equal but some galleries are more equal than others."
"Clearly, the pigs are supporters of the Holocaust gallery, which is
characterized as a vehicle of domination, inequality, and exploitation.
The imagery of the Jew as pig has a very long and well-established
history in European anti-Semitism, and of course it is also a theme
today in Islamic anti-Semitism (Jews are purported to be the
descendants of apes and pigs)."
In attempting
to demonize the Ukrainians, Chatterly validates the message of the
UCCLA.
The postcard uses the historic imagery of
Communist ideology to ask why, in present day Canada, is the CMHR
making the argument that all galleries at the museum are equal, except
that one is set aside and more equal than the others.
That is exactly what
Chatterly and the Winnipeg Free Press have proudly declaimed.
"No scholar of
comparative genocide believes all genocides are the same."
Catherine Chatterley, April 2, 2011.
"Why does the
Holocaust get a place in the front seat? Only the uninformed ask
questions like that." Winnipeg Free Press, March 24, 2011.
Chatterly makes a huge
and unsubstantiated leap of logic to equate a picture from 1947 to
anti-semitic Islamists of 2011.
The reason is obvious. To squelch any criticism of the CMHR---just
as the Communists squelched free speech in days of old.
And we let these people teach in our universities?
"Quite frankly, the fact that this kind of postcard was
distributed in Canada in 2011, without shame or conscience, by an
organization that claims to protect civil liberties, is astonishing.
This alone demonstrates the clear need for this museum, its permanent
Holocaust gallery, and for the Canadian Institute for the Study of
Antisemitism."
We proudly reprint the
postcard and will with every subsequent story to show we
will not be intimidated by the Aspers, the Sterns, the Silvers and all
the so-called proponents of human rights, except when they can use
their power to stifle free speech, free thought and free expression.
"The image in the
ad, duplicated on the postcard, is from the cover of the 1947
Ukrainian-language edition of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Most
copies were confiscated by the American Occupation authorities in
Germany and turned over to the Soviets, along with hundreds of
thousands of "Soviet Citizens" forcibly repatriated under the terms of
the now-notorious Yalta Agreement. Many were survivors and witnesses to
the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine, a tragedy
now known as the Holodomor."
Text on back of postcard:
The
Canadian Museum for Human Rights is a taxpayer-funded
national museum. Its 12 galleries should all be inclusive, comparative
and thematic in their treatment of the many crimes against humanity
that have befouled human history -- before, during and since the Second
World War.
Instead,
two communities are being given privileged, permanent and prominent
exhibit spaces, elevating the horrors suffered by a few above all the
others.
That's
unfair. That's unacceptable. Partiality shouldn't be funded from the
public purse.
Nothing about the
postcard "demonstrates the clear need for this museum, its permanent
Holocaust gallery..." [as claimed by Chatterley]. In fact, the response by Chatterley, a professed
professor, demonstrates the need for study of how easily universities can be
subverted by special interest groups to promote their
private agendas; and how
the mainstream press twists and misreports the truth to promote their
own biases, all while lecturing everyone on how
trustworthy they are.