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Ed Morgan   Letter 03   06-Feb-2004   Fine words plus lousy deeds equals hypocrisy
"If Jews can not enter through those doors shoulder to shoulder with other minorities who have suffered with them, but instead are required to leave others behind, then can Jews, in good conscience, enter at all?" � Canadian Jewish Congress

06-Feb-2004

Ed Morgan
Chair, Canadian Jewish Congress (Ontario)
Faculty of Law
University of Toronto
84 Queen's Park
Toronto, ON      M5S 2C5


Ed Morgan:

In its "Factum of the Intervener" published on the Times.10 Magazine: Your Gay News Magazine of Choice web site, the Canadian Jewish Congress pens the following noble sentiments:

If the doors that have been closed to minorities in the past are opened only partially to allow some minorities in, then those who have opened the doors have perpetuated the discrimination against those left on the outside.  While the Jewish community obviously benefits from the protection afforded by the enumerated grounds of race and religion, it is uncomfortable for the Jewish community to be "distinguished" by being granted protection from discrimination while others who have shared experiences of victimization are not.  If Jews can not enter through those doors shoulder to shoulder with other minorities who have suffered with them, but instead are required to leave others behind, then can Jews, in good conscience, enter at all?
Times.10 Magazine: Your Gay News Magazine of Choice www.times10.org/factum.htm

These are very fine words indeed, and they do the Canadian Jewish Congress credit.  However, in the absence of corresponding deeds, and particularly in the face of opposite deeds, fine words go by the name of hypocrisy.

I await some data on the question of Canadian Jewish Congress hypocrisy from Chief CHRC Commissioner, Mary M Gusella, which data will test the hypothesis that expenditures in support of Jewish hate-messaging complaints exceed those of other groups � Muslims, Germans, or Ukrainians, for example � by a large ratio, perhaps even in the order of a million to one, as I have discussed in my letters to Mary M Gusella of 09-Jan-2004 Urgent call for disclosure of usage statistics and personnel data and 13-Jan-2004 Muslims are targets of hate propaganda too.  If any marked imbalance in the ratio of expenditures is detected, then the CJC might indeed be guilty of hypocrisy � guilty of treating itself to resources denied to others while proclaiming the equality of all.

In case of the discovery of, say, million-to-one ratios favoring Jews, the question might arise of whether Jews deserve the bulk of the CHRC's hate-messaging resources simply because they suffer the brunt of Canada's hate messaging.  To take a step toward answering this question, consider the consequences of any of the following statements being broadcast over prime-time television:

The above statements can be objected to on at least the following five grounds:

  1. Each makes reference to a non-existent institution.  Thus, Israel has no operating Sanhedrin, blacks have no Afro-American Confederation, homosexuals have neither a Gay Rights Congress nor a Gay Anti-Defamation League, and there is no more a Church of Ukraine than there is a Church of the United States.

  2. The allegation of a genetic predisposition could not possibly have come from a geneticist, or from any scientist with relevant expertise, or indeed from any responsible or informed person, and in the absence of attribution, can be taken to be fabricated.

  3. Especially if the allegation of a genetic predisposition were irresponsibly made and unpublicized, governments, churches, and representative bodies would not dignify the allegation by denying it, and in fact the alluded-to denial is never attributed to a specific person, or in any way substantiated.

  4. Before searching for a cause, genetic or otherwise, of a predisposition, it would be necessary to establish that the predisposition exists, which has not been done.  Thus, there is no evidence that Jews experience any attachment to usury (and thus it is foolish to attribute such an attachment to genetics); there is no evidence that blacks prefer enslavement and imprisonment (and therefore ridiculous to blame such a preference on genetics); there is no reason to believe that homosexuals are programmed to start epidemics (and therefore preposterous to locate the origin of this programming within homosexuals' genes); and there is no reason to suppose that Ukrainians are more anti-Semitic than any other people (and therefore wacky to attribute what has not been shown to exist by reference to some unspecified sequencing of adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine).

  5. While purporting to deny an allegation of a genetic predisposition, each statement implants in the minds of viewers what may be to them the entirely novel hypothesis that such a genetic predisposition may exist, and that its existence is already believed by some, though denied by the accused, whose denial however need not be taken seriously because of their obvious motive to defend themselves.  In other words, each statement is more an invocation than a retraction of a genetic curse.

In short, each of the statements above constitutes hate propaganda of a primitive variety.  If any such statement were ever offered as journalistic reporting on prime-time television, it would provoke an outcry, and it would be followed by a retraction, an apology, and the firing of whoever had the misfortune to utter it.

At least that's what would happen in the first three cases, but that is not what did happen in the last.  In fact, the only one of the four above statements to have appeared on prime-time television is the last.  It was broadcast by Morley Safer to 30 million viewers on his 60-Minutes story of 23-Oct-1994 titled The Ugly Face of Freedom, and in which Morley Safer did say exactly the following:

The Church and Government of Ukraine have tried to ease people's fears, suggesting that things are not as serious as they might appear; that Ukrainians, despite the allegations, are not genetically anti-Semitic.

And despite an avalanche of protesting mail and articles mainly from Ukrainians, and despite the ongoing complaint on the pages of the Ukrainian Archive and other web sites, that libel has never been retracted, and has not been apologized for, and Morley Safer has not been fired or demoted or in any way disciplined or reprimanded for saying it.  Morley Safer, furthermore, has steadfastly neglected to disclose the name of the geneticist or other authority, or any person whatever, who has made the allegation of genetic anti-Semitism, which leads to the inference that Morley Safer simply made it up, and that he is the one person in the whole world who brings the allegation.  And Morley Safer has also steadfastly neglected to disclose the names of the Church and Government officials who have condescended to deny the allegation of genetic anti-Semitism, leading to the inference that Morley Safer made that up too.

In elaboration of point 4 above, concerning whether any predilection to anti-Semitism had been established for which a cause might be sought in genetics or elsewhere, one could note the lack of support for the alleged predilection in the following words of I.M. Levitas, Head of the Jewish Council of Ukraine and Head of the Nationalities Associations of Ukraine:

I wish to declare to you officially: in the new Ukraine, there is no state-sponsored anti-Semitism.  Not long ago, a Jew fulfilled the obligations of the prime minister of Ukraine.  The mayors of Odessa and Vynnytsia are Jews.  The mayor of Cherkasy was a Jew.  There are six Jews in parliament.  Some Deputy Ministers are Jews.  It is such outstanding facts as these that convey the predominant attitude of Ukrainians to Jewish rebirth, to Jewish culture.
I.M. Levitas, Za Vilnu Ukrainu (For a Free Ukraine) 02-Dec-1994 www.ukar.org/jordan04.html

Or, to take a second example, one could also note the lack of support for the alleged predilection to anti-Semitism in the words of Moisey Fishbein, member of the Writers' Union of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Center of the International PEN-Club, and citizen of Israel, who begins his description of his unproductive search for Ukrainian anti-Semitism as follows:

"There's a hell of a lot of anti-Semitism over there!  There's so much anti-Semitism in Ukraine!" the telephone receiver was all but bursting.  It was the voice of an Israeli friend of mine.  The friend had not seen Ukraine for a quarter of a century.

"Where is anti-Semitism in Ukraine?" I ask, "In villages?  In cities?  On the streets?  In shops?  Where?  Where did you find it there?"
Moisey Fishbein, "Who is playing the anti-Semitism card," The Day, 28-Sep-1999 at day.kiev/ua/DIGEST/1999/36/den-pln/dp3.htm

And so the question of whether Jews receive the bulk of the CHRC's hate-messaging resources simply because they suffer the brunt of Canada's hate messaging must be answered in the negative, and must be answered with the further elaboration that in fact the reality is opposite.  Jews are the most protected of all Canadian groups, such that no prime-time broadcaster will ever be caught saying anything as preposterous and injurious as "The Sanhedrin and Knesset of Israel have tried to ease people's fears, suggesting that things are not as serious as they might appear; that Jews, despite the allegations, are not genetically attached to usury," and if he ever did say it, he would suffer severe consequences.  Jewish leaders exercise such tight control over what is said in mainstream broadcasting that they are even spared criticism for perpetuating and hyperbolizing Soviet WW II hate propaganda.  Ukrainians, in contrast, are the most vilified of all Canadians, the genetic anti-Semitism slur being only the tip of the iceberg.  By way of further example, you have already read � in my letter to you of 28-Jan-2004, Canadian Jewish Congress Fanaticism Infects the University of Toronto � documentation of the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv Pogrom Hoax, concerning which it must be underlined that no group in Canada other than the Ukrainian is being blamed for atrocities that are in reality fabricated, and no other group finds itself as powerless to get blame for these imaginary atrocities retracted.  Canada is the country where a Jew can boast with impunity of torturing and murdering a string of Ukrainians during WW II, and Canada is the country where a Ukrainian who while a teenager had been forced at gunpoint into donning a German uniform, and against whom no crimes are alleged, will be persecuted till the end of his days.  This is the unequal treatment that the CHRC should be working to correct, instead of exacerbating the inequality by placing CHRC resources at the disposal of those who would smother Ukrainian efforts at self-defense.

The Ukrainian Archive documents in the order of a hundred lies about Ukrainians that no one would dare utter against any other group, and least of all against Jews.  Therefore, if CHRC funding reflected volume of hate propaganda endured, then Ukrainian hate-messaging complaints would be supported by the largest per-Ukrainian CHRC expenditure, and Jewish hate-messaging complaints would be supported by the smallest per-Jew CHRC expenditure.  The fact that the reality is close to opposite suggests that Ukrainians are among those boycotting the Canadian Human Rights Commission hate-messaging unit, as I discuss in my 06-Feb-2004 letter to Mary M Gusella titled I join the boycott of the CHRC hate-messaging unit.

But to return to my main point � if the awaited Mary M Gusella data reveals that the Canadian Jewish Congress is something like the sole ethnic or religious group to receive CHRC support for hate-messaging complaints, then this would be indicative of the hypocrisy of the showy Canadian Jewish Congress statement quoted at the beginning of the instant letter.  The awaited Gusella data might indeed reveal that the Canadian Jewish Congress "leaves others behind," and that it does pass through doors which it cannot "in good conscience enter at all."  The awaited Gusella data might show that the CHRC doors are narrow, and that after entering, the Canadian Jewish Congress slammed them shut and locked them and threw away the key.



Lubomyr Prytulak

cc:

Irving ABELLA, National Honourary President, CJC, Department of History, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON  M3J 1P3
Bernie FARBER, Executive Director, CJC, 4600 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON  M2R 3V2
Mary M GUSELLA, Chief Commissioner, CHRC, 344 Slater Street, Ottawa, ON  K1A 1E1
Moshe RONEN, Chair Board of Governors, CJC, 4600 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON  M2R 3V2
Len RUDNER, Director of Community Relations, CJC, 4600 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON  M2R 3V2
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