From: Eugene Harasymiw [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 7:49 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: "UN promotes systemic hatred of Jews, MP says" (April 2, 2002)

Dear Editor:

Liberal MP Irwin Cotler trots out some familiar and disingenuous arguments to bolster his contention that international law and human rights are now being used as a cover to unfairly criticize Israel. If, as Mr. Cotler claims, anti-Semitism is the motivation of critics of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians, then it would follow that Mr. Cotler's criticism of his own government is rooted in anti-Canadianism. Playing the well-worn Holocaust card, he wonders why there is no condemnation of "state-sanctioned incitement to hatred," sobbing that Israel is "the first country to be the object of a country-specific indictment while all other major human rights violations have enjoyed exculpatory immunity." (Decent of him to admit Israel commits such violations.)

Perhaps Mr. Cotler thinks no one noticed his own deafening silence when the Canadian government singled out one particular group for ethnic-specific indictment using bogus "war crimes" prosecutions, not one of which yielded proof of an iota of war criminality. This at a time when real, not imagined, war criminals and international organized gangsters enjoy exculpatory immunity and ripe old age in Canada, while his government concentrates on innocent octogenarians, thanks to the persistence of lobby groups Mr. Cotler leads and represents.

Eugene Harasymiw, LL.B.
Chair, Civil Liberties Committee
Alberta Ukrainian Self-Reliance League
Edmonton, AB
ph./fax: (780) 457-5170