Some excerpts from the Ottawa Citizen, which I comment on farther below:

Wednesday 20 August 1997 Canada to hire top U.S. Nazi hunter Ex-official was severe critic of stumbling Canadian efforts Stephen Bindman The Ottawa Citizen The federal government is negotiating to bring in a top American Nazi hunter to boost its much-criticized efforts to deport suspected war criminals. Neal Sher, who headed the U.S. Justice Department's successful Office of Special Investigations (OSI) for 12 years until 1994, has been an outspoken critic of Canada's record on dealing with war criminals. Since its creation in 1979, the U.S. Nazi-hunting office has stripped 60 suspected Nazi collaborators of their citizenship and is still investigating another 300 cases. By contrast, Canada has denaturalized and deported only one accused war criminal.  A second, Latvian emigre Konrad Kalejs, was deported Monday night to Australia, but he was a visitor to Canada and not a citizen. Federal officials are still discussing a possible mandate for Mr. Sher as an adviser to the Justice Department's war crimes unit. "We have a high regard for Mr. Sher and his work," said assistant deputy attorney general John Sims.  "There have been discussions with Mr. Sher about the possibility of retaining him in some capacity, although it is but one of several options being considered for submission to ministers." As head of the $3-million-a-year OSI, Mr. Sher conducted the investigation of former United Nations secretary general Kurt Waldheim that led to the Austrian being barred from entering the U.S. Mr. Sher left the OSI in 1994.  He became head of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the chief pro-Israel lobby group in the U.S., and is now a lawyer in Washington, D.C. Jack Silverstone of the Canadian Jewish Congress said his organization has been asking the government for years to bring in outside counsel to the war-crimes unit, and applauded the choice of Mr. Sher. "Neal Sher is extremely knowledgeable on the matters and has demonstrated a lot of energy in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice," said Mr. Silverstone. [...] Canada's dismal record in dealing with Nazi war criminals has been the subject of much recent international media attention. CBS's 60 Minutes called their presence "Canada's dark secret" and said the government is only now beginning to own up to its "complicity and its shame." [...] Accused Nazis cannot be prosecuted in the U.S. for war crimes and the OSI has attempted to remove citizenship and deport suspects � the route now being used by Canada. In a recent article, Mr. Sher said Canada has "at long last joined the battle to bring the most heinous murderers to justice."  But he lamented the "less than aggressive effort" made by Canadian law enforcement in the past. "As the window of opportunity to bring Nazi criminals to justice slowly closes, those whose job it is to develop the cases and investigate the facts must use every tool at their disposal. "Imaginative law enforcement techniques, aggressive tactics and a fire in the belly are the elements that may bring long-needed justice to one of the saddest and most tragic episodes in all human history." On a television broadcast earlier this year, Mr. Sher said recent efforts by Canada's Jewish community on the war crimes front are the result of the "utter frustration, indeed desperation, that there understandably is." Mr. Sher said that several war crimes suspects fled the U.S. in the 1980s after the OSI became "very, very aggressive" and several came to Canada.  He said he met frequently with Canadian officials and handed them several cases "on a silver platter," yet nothing was done. "They came (to Canada) because obviously they felt they could live comfortably and without fear.  They figure nothing's going to happen," Mr. Sher told the PBS show The Editors in March.

My comment:

Neal Sher played a leading role in the Demjanjuk affair, although I have not gone back through Yoram Sheftel's book or other documentation to find out if he was one of the OSI officials cited for prosecutorial misconduct.  Nor have I had a chance yet to consult Will Zuzak's archives concerning the Demjanjuk affair � Will Zuzak writes:

I have archived a great deal of material on the matter at http://soma.crl.mcmaster.ca/ukes/demjanjuk/ In particular look at my two long critiques, DEMANUK.011 (Wiseman's report on the Demjanjuk case) and DESCHENE.005 (Deschenes' report): http://soma.crl.mcmaster.ca/ukes/demjanjuk/demanuk.011 http://soma.crl.mcmaster.ca/ukes/demjanjuk/deschene.005

Can anyone enlighten us as to the exact role that Neal Sher played in the Demjanjuk debacle, and what � if any � specific acts of misconduct he is guilty of?  We have some reason to expect that he is guilty of considerable wrongdoing � here is an excerpt from Roma Hadzewycz's interview of Yoram Sheftel as reported in The Ukrainian Weekly, July 21, 1996, p. 3, to which I have added the names of the speakers:

HADZEWYCZ: If you had the opportunity today to speak with the two former directors of the OSI, Allan Ryan ... What would you say to him today? SHEFTEL: I would tell him that he is a key player in, in my opinion, the worst cover-up in concealing evidence in a major case taken by an American public prosecutor in modern history after the second world war. HADZEWYCZ: And what would you say to his successor, Neal Sher? SHEFTEL: Exactly the same. HADZEWYCZ: Those two are equally guilty of this cover-up? SHEFTEL: I would say Allan Ryan more, because Allan Ryan was in charge of the OSI in August 1978 and through 1981 � this is the key, crucial time of the decision to prosecute or not to prosecute Demjanjuk.  And the decision to prosecute was made by Allan Ryan, who knew that Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible" and yet he prosecuted him for being "Ivan the Terrible."  Again, I don't know of a major case with such a deliberate cover-up as Allan Ryan, more, and Neal Sher, not much less, are responsible for.

However, the Federal Appeals Panel ruling of Nov 17/93 as covered by The New York Times (November 18, 1993) reports that the ruling singled out two lawyers for prosecutorial misconduct: Allan Ryan and Norman Moscowitz.  It is conceivable that Neal Sher was cited as well in the ruling of the Panel, but the above-mentioned New York Times article gives no hint of this.  In any case, Neal Sher was involved in at least the capacity of head of the OSI, though perhaps he was free of involvement in the initial stages of the Demjanjuk proceedings.  I do not know if Neal Sher was a member of the O.S.I. prior to becoming its head.

It might be useful at this point to cite a few passages from the U.S. Federal Appeals Panel ruling on the question of prosecutorial misconduct, as reproduced by The New York Times, in order to be reminded of just how damning that ruling was:

The attitude of the O.S.I attorneys toward disclosing information to Demjanjuk's counsel was not consistent with the Government's obligation to work for justice rather than for a result that favors its attorneys' preconceived ideas of what the outcome of the legal proceedings should be.

We do not believe their personal conviction that they had the right man provided an excuse for recklessly disregarding their obligation to provide information specifically requested by Demjanjuk ... the withholding of which almost certainly misled his counsel and endangered his ability to mount a defense.... The O.S.I. attorneys acted with reckless disregard for their duty to the court and their discovery obligations in failing to disclose at least three sets of documents in their possession before the proceedings against Demjanjuk ever reached trail.

Thus, we hold that the O.S.I. attorneys acted with reckless disregard for the truth and for the Government's obligation to take no steps that prevent an adversary from presenting his case fully and fairly.  This was fraud on the court in the circumstances of this case where, by recklessly assuming Demjanjuk's guilt, they failed to observe their obligation to produce exculpatory materials requested by Demjanjuk.

It is obvious from the record that the prevailing mindset at the O.S.I. was that the office must try to please and maintain very close relationships with various interest groups because their continued existence depended upon it.

An impartial observer might to tempted to conclude that anyone involved in any capacity with a proceeding characterized by a "reckless disregard for the truth" and which constituted a "fraud on the court" was not fit to serve as an adviser in any future proceedings of a similar nature.  In putting forward Neal Sher as an adviser to Canada's federal prosecutors, Jack Silverstone of the Canadian Jewish Congress seems not to agree.

But, on the other hand, yes � if the goal is only to improve Canada's deportation figures, then by all means let Canada hire Neal Sher.  He is clearly the man for the job.  We are indeed safe to assume that he has the requisite "fire in the belly."  And if Neal Sher has "fire in the belly," Allan Ryan and Norman Moscowitz have even more "fire in the belly" � so why not hire the three of them as a team?

But in contemplating the hiring of top gun Neal Sher, the Ottawa Citizen quite misses the point.  Canada has no lack of prosecutorial talent capable of hunting down war criminals.  What may be lacking, rather, is "fire in the belly" at the top � and by the top, I mean the very top.  Yes, it may ultimately be Jean Chretien who lacks that "fire in the belly" and who is failing to whip his federal prosecutors into exerting the requisite energy.

What to do?  Simple: Bill Clinton is used to running things from the top, and he does have the requisite "fire in the belly," as demonstrated by his Kyiv speech in which he instructed Ukrainians that 100,000 Jews and 10,000 others are buried in Babyn Yar.  As such figures bear no relation to reality, what else to attribute them to but "fire in the belly"?  And so, just as soon as Bill Clinton's term as president of the U.S. expires, Jack Silverstone of the Canadian Jewish Congress could negotiate a contract whereby Bill Clinton would run Canada for as long as it took to get the requisite number of war criminals deported.  Well, all right then � how about just hiring Bill Clinton as an adviser to Jean Chretien?  In view of the demonstrated intensity of Bill Clinton's "fire in the belly," Canada might look forward not only to matching U.S. deportation figures, but to blowing them out of the water.

But even the above further reflections still have not addressed the real problem � and that is that no matter how fired up the prosecutors, no matter how fired up their American-imported advisers, no matter even if fire-in-the-belly Clinton were running the whole show here in Canada � when you get right down to it, you still have this remaining obstacle which simply will not go away � and that is that you have to convince the judges, and they � most annoyingly � keep asking for evidence.  No evidence, no conviction; no evidence, no deportation.  What a pain!

The fear that the above reflections might bring us to is that Jack Silverstone of the Canadian Jewish Congress has no respect for the Canadian system of justice, and no respect for the people manning it, but rather demands from it a certain outcome regardless of whether that outcome meets Canadian standards or not; and in order to achieve that desired outcome, proceeds to attempt to introduce staffing changes into the Federal bureaucracy.  Next thing you know, he will be asking to import American judges who have proven their readiness to bring in decisions acceptable to the Canadian Jewish Congress.  Perhaps he would start by recommending Judge Julius Hoffman, responsible for the wrongful conviction for Nazi war crimes of Frank Walus, which conviction was subsequently overturned by a higher court.  The higher court held that the government's case against Walus had been "weak" but that "Hoffman's handling of the trial had been so biased that it could not evaluate the evidence properly" (Charles Ashman and Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 195).  Yes, here indeed is a fitting co-worker for Neal Sher.  Yes, with Neal Sher and Judge Julius Hoffman together � for starters � Canada might have a chance to begin some serious deportations.  But the Canadian citizen watching these deportations might well end up asking himself whether Jack Silverstone's vision for the direction that Canadian Justice should follow was (a) that it apply the law faithfully no matter what the outcome, or rather (b) that it bring in the desired outcome no matter what the law.

But the inadvisability or the impracticality of the options considered above for raising Canada's deportation rate to that of less backward countries does not leave us entirely without recourse.  There is one thing that we still are able to do.  It is simply to expand the definition of "war criminal" beyond that of "Nazi war criminal" and toward encompassing all those who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity anywhere and at any time and under any circumstances.  Actually, I doubt that this would require any expansion of definitions � probably the relevant legislation already encompasses all such crimes; thus, it might only be a matter of no longer applying the legislation in a narrow sense.  The chief advantage of this fresh approach would be that instead of investigating senile men for participation at a low level in crimes committed so long ago that the evidence against them is inconclusive, Canada could start investigating young criminals whose hands are still covered with fresh blood and where the evidence has not yet been swallowed up with the passage of time.

But does Canada harbor such criminals?  It is possible that it does.  And where might one begin looking for them?  Canada could start with immigrants from countries that practice war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Take Israel, for example.  This is a country in which snipers routinely execute and maim Arab children for throwing stones at them � have Canada's prosecutors investigated the war records of Israeli immigrants to make sure we do not have some of these snipers living among us today?

At year's end [1990], the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops since the beginning of the intifada was six hundred and nine, according to the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and the figure included a hundred and thirty-six children, forty of them under the age of twelve.  (Amos Elon, Letter From Jerusalem, The New Yorker, April 23, 1990, p. 96)

Who killed all these civilians?  Where are these killers today?  Might some of them be living among us, say in Canada or the United States?  And why do we not view them as war criminals to be hunted down and deported?  Imagine if Ukrainian guards had killed 609 Jews attempting to escape from Jewish ghettos during World War II � with 169 of them children, and 40 of them under the age of 12 � would this not clearly fall within the definition of war crimes or crimes against humanity?  Or imagine if in Ukraine today Ukrainians snipers had killed 609 Jews, 169 of them children, 40 of them under the age of twelve, who had been protesting, say, an inability to emigrate, and who had even been throwing stones.  What a field day the international press would have with this!  What barbarians the Ukrainians would be accused of being!  How instantly would the U.S. cut off aid!  And � most relevant to our discussion � how assiduously would Canadian federal prosecutors track Ukrainian immigrants in an attempt to hunt down all those who had participated in such atrocities, in such pogroms, in such genocide.

Of course we have been talking above about outright killings, but the numbers wounded by the Israeli military are vastly greater.  To get an idea of the ratio of wounded to killed, we might note the statistics reported for what may be a typical two days of intifada activity:

Israeli troops wounded 87 Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip yesterday, while Jewish settlers rampaged through parts of the West Bank of the Jordan River to avenge the killing of two Jews, Arabs said.  On Tuesday Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians and wounded at least 80 in clashes in the Khan Younis refugee camps in Gaza.  (Reuter, in The Globe and Mail, March 18, 1993)

And it isn't just Arab youngsters throwing rocks who are targeted by the Israeli military:

At one point along the north wall, I saw policemen firing rubber bullets at a crowd of middle-aged men and women chanting, "We want peace."  (Amos Elon, Letter From Jerusalem, The New Yorker, April 23, 1990, p. 93, the scene being a joint Arab-Jewish peace demonstration in 1990 in Jerusalem)

A recent Yesh Gvul poster showed a blood-red flower superimposed on the face of a small child blinded in one eye, presumably by a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank.  The inscription read, "Daddy, what are you doing in the occupied territories?"  (Amos Elon, Letter From Jerusalem, The New Yorker, April 23, 1990, p. 96)

Can we be sure that some of the policemen firing upon middle-aged men and women chanting "We want peace" do not today live in Winnipeg or Edmonton?  Can we be sure that the Israeli soldier who fired the bullet that took out that child's eye is not today living in Toronto?

The Israeli killings are not necessarily confined to Israeli territory, the West Bank, and the Gaza strip � an Israeli assassination team killed an Arab waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, mistaking him for a terrorist; and in Lebanon, Israeli killing turned into an indiscriminate slaughter:

A draft United Nations report charges that the bombardment of a UN peacekeeping camp in southern Lebanon by Israeli forces last month was calculated to ensure not only that the camp itself was struck but also that the shells would fall just in front of its entrance to ensure maximum civilian casualties.... [...] The UN facility, which served as the headquarters of a Fijian battalion of peacekeepers in the area, was destroyed by Israeli shells on 18 April.  It was crammed with Lebanese refugees at the time, of whom roughly 100 were killed.  It appears that when the bombardment started, most of the civilians were gathered just outside the facility's entrance.  (David Usborne, The Independent, in The Weekend Sun, May 4, 1996, p. A11)

Imagine if the government of Ukraine sent a team of assassins to Norway to dispatch some supposed enemy of Ukraine; or if Ukraine shelled a UN peacekeeping camp in some bordering country � say Moldova � and with the intention of maximizing civilian casualties.  How outraged the world would be and what a pariah Ukraine would be painted as, and how plausible that the Ukrainians responsible would be pursued, or at the very least denied entrance to most countries, or once having gained entrance, would be deported.  But Ukrainian war criminals are one thing, and Israeli war criminals, it seems, are quite another.

And it isn't just Israeli snipers shooting children from a distance, or Israeli gunners shelling civilians from so far away that they can't see them � it is no rare thing to find Israelis who have blood on their hands more literally:

Apparently the boy fell as he ran or perhaps was hit by somebody, and probably even a stone.  � Nahum Korman, an Israeli security officer facing manslaughter charges for allegedly beating an 11-year-old Palestinian boy to death, to the daily Yedioth Ahronoth (Time, November 11, 1996, p. 9)

Can we be sure that the above Nahum Korman has not been released and is not currently living in Toronto?  Does the Canadian government have a list of suspected Israeli war criminals who are persona non grata in Canada to correspond to its list of suspected Nazi war criminals?  Is Nahum Korman on that list?

The Zionists responsible for this slaughter have not only the deaths of Palestinians on their hands, but also the deaths of their own people:

As the Palestinian uprising entered its third year, the mood among young [Israeli] recruits might also be gauged by a sudden rise in the number of suicides.  Twice as many recruits killed themselves in 1989 as in 1988.  (Amos Elon, Letter From Jerusalem, The New Yorker, April 23, 1990, p. 96)

The most trying days for Peace Now came soon after the Lebanon War: in February, 1983, one of its leading activists, a young graduate student named Emil Grunzweig, was killed when a right-wing fanatic threw a hand grenade into an antiwar demonstration in Jerusalem.  (Amos Elon, Letter From Jerusalem, The New Yorker, April 23, 1990, p. 95)

Can we be sure that the right-wing fanatic who threw the hand grenade has not been released from Israeli prison and is now living in Halifax?

And neither are Palestinian deaths ones that occur exclusively in open-air confrontations.  No, some of them are the result of torture inflicted by Israelis within their prisons.  Arabs dying while under Israeli detention is a commonplace.  A recent TV documentary recounted how Israeli interrogators shake Arab prisoners to make their heads snap back and forth so as to induce brain damage.  Israel, in fact, might be unique among nations purporting to follow Western-democratic traditions in that it has legalized torture.

And it doesn't take murder or wounding or torture to constitute a war crime.  Other traditional Israeli activities may qualify as well:

"Demolition of family homes is a barbaric punishment," Professor Galia Golan, a Hebrew University Sovietologist and veteran Peace Now activist, told me.  "Administrative detention without trial is just as bad," she added.  "You are taken out of your bed in the middle of the night.  They throw a hood over your head and lead you away.  Then they throw you into an overcrowded cell for practically indefinite periods without being charged, without trial, without even being told what you are accused of."  (Amos Elon, Letter From Jerusalem, The New Yorker, April 23, 1990, p. 96)

Imagine such things happening in Ukraine, standardly, as a matter of government policy, against some weak and oppressed minority.  Imagine, for example, if Ukrainian Jews were routinely awakened in the night, had hoods thrown over their heads, and so on.

Israel is in contravention of international law also in some cases of expulsion, as the expulsion of 400 Palestinians in December 1992, and such expulsions too may qualify as war crimes or crimes against humanity:

None of the Palestinians expelled by Israel in December, 1992, was ever charged or tried, let alone convicted, in a court of law for the offences Israel alleges against them. MP Svend Robinson is right to tell Mr. Peres that Israel was again in contravention of international law by expelling the 400 Palestinians from its soil.  Article 49 of the Geneva Convention states that: "Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from Occupied Territory to the territory of the occupying power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive."  (Michael Lynk, Barrister and Solicitor, Ottawa, Letter to the Editor, The Globe and Mail, April 15, 1993)

And note, finally, that whereas Ukrainians participating in Nazi crimes did so typically to escape death, and continued participating under a continued threat of death, the participation of Israelis in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity must be considered to be voluntary, as the only consequence is a brief stint in jail, a consequence that more than one righteous Israeli has chosen to endure:

For the first time in modern history, the issue is not what is being done to the Jewish people, but what is being done in their name.  As an Israeli lieutenant colonel put it earlier this year, "When I read about (Austrian President Kurt) Waldheim in the papers, I worry how the future will interpret what I am doing in the territories today." A few Israeli soldiers have resolved that moral dilemma by refusing to participate in suppressing the uprising.  Meir Amor, a 33-year-old Jew of Moroccan background, a former career captain in the elite Golani Brigade, chose jail rather than serve in the West Bank or Gaza.  "I am not willing," he says, "to beat women and children.  I am not willing to oppress men.  It's not my job." For Mr. Amor the intifada is the Palestinian cry of freedom.  "If Golda Meir said there is no Palestinian people, two million have said with stones and fire, 'We are here...  We want to be free.'"  (Gabor Mate, Has Israel forgotten the golden rule?, The Globe and Mail, December 9, 1988, p. A7)

In short, one thing Canada might do in order to improve its dismal deportation record is to ask itself whether its attention has not been deflected in a direction in which war criminals are in short supply from a direction in which war criminals are in plentiful supply.  Perhaps � most relevant to this discussion group � Canadians are being invited to spend their time � on the one hand � hunting down a few aging Ukrainians who under threat of death may or may not have participated indirectly and at some low level in war crimes so that � on the other hand � Canadians will not notice that in their midst are many young Israeli war criminals whose participation was direct, recent, and voluntary.  Perhaps we are all merely the targets of a propaganda campaign aimed at inculcating the association "war criminal"-"Ukrainian," where in the absence of that propaganda campaign a disinterested perusal of current events would more readily suggest the association "war criminal"-"Israeli."  Perhaps we are being invited to learn the association "Jew"-"victim" so as to prevent our watching of the nightly news from creating the association "Jew"-"oppressor."

This, I ask you to consider, may be one reason (one out of three) why the Jewish agitation to discover war criminals � particularly Ukrainian war criminals � is so incessant and why, furthermore, it is not going to stop.