Edmonton Strathcona New Democratic Party candidate Malcolm Azania has been unfairly targeted by the media and special interest groups.

A big deal was made over comments Azania made on an Internet chat room over 10 years ago. Frankly, his comments that Jews were White supremacists because they were White, were stupid. But that was over 10 years ago and he has apologized for them.

We have seen Jewish leaders make infinitely more outrageous statements and get away with them unscathed. Take, for example the inference made by B'nai Brith in a 2002 press release that Wasyl Odynsky, who was found innocent of any crime was a convicted mass murderer, or the president of the Canadian Jewish Congress referring to the Federal Appeals Court decision which reinstated Helmut Oberlander's citizenship because he was found innocent of any war crimes as "an insult to those who perished in the Holocaust and those who survived".

While Azania's comments about White supremacy were stupid, there are far greater implications to another charge slung at him. We refer to revelations that he, as managing editor of the University of Alberta's Gateway newspaper, approved a 1993 cartoon entitled "What if Christ was born in 1993?", which depicted Israeli soldiers menacing Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, and threatening to bulldoze their home. In 1993 Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, was located in occupied Arab Palestine - as it is today. The object of the cartoon was to make a statement on the repressive measures used by Israeli authorities in Palestine - measures which remain in place today. It was in no way intended to depict Jews as "Christ killers", a charge which Jewish leaders immediately flung in their successful bid to make the Gateway apologize. This just goes to show how a powerful special interest group can mount enough pressure to stifle legitimate expression.

We could say that Azania deserves support for being unfairly targeted. But we should also point out to those people concerned with health care, that the NDP has been the most consistent supporter of publicly-funded universal health care.