February 20, 2000     Faxed to: (416) 383-2439

The Editor
National Post
300 - 1450 Don Mills Rd.
Don Mills, ON M3R 3R5

Dear Sir:

The sub-title of Moshe Ronen's "Not the sound of music" (February 18, 2000) asks: "Can anyone really doubt Haider crossed the line?" Mr. Ronen, head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, was fulminating about Joerg Haider's elevation to power in Austria via the coalition route, much to the chagrin of another dubious coalition -- international socialism and its morally bankrupt apologists.

Apparently, critiquing Haider and his Freedom Party has provided Mr. Ronen with an opportunity to deliver a key message. That is where he not only claims the Holocaust to be "the worst crime of the 20th century", but also declares that "anyone who does not say this clearly and unambiguously is unsuitable to be entrusted with any responsible public position, either national or international."

What Mr. Ronen and the CJC are doing is attempting, as a pre-condition and indispensable qualification for any person to hold or aspire to hold public office anywhere in the world, to impose subservience to the CJC's central article of faith. Just how does publicly making such a statement enhance a person's ability or potential to carry out public duties? They don't say.

Responding to what he termed "Europe's Haider hypocrisy", Charles Krauthammer, writing in the Washington Post the next day -- and these words are equally applicable to the nonsense spouted by the CJC -- "There is no cheaper way to burnish phony human-rights credentials than to come out resolutely against Nazism. Oh, the courage."

Is there any doubt the CJC has crossed the line?

Yours truly,

Eugene Harasymiw, LL.B.
President