Over the past few weeks a controversy has arisen in the United States over a January 26, 2005 article by Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay of the Washington Bureau of the Knight Ridder newspaper headlined "Activist critical of Jews was part of U.S. delegation to Ukraine." In it, quotations taken out of context from two commentaries by The Ukrainian Weekly's columnist Dr. Myron Kuropas, which appeared in that newspaper in 1996 and 2000 respectively, and a 1998 news story regarding a speech he gave in Toronto, which appeared in this newspaper, were dredged up. In the original story, Dr. Kuropas was identified as "a Ukrainian American activist who has accused Jews of manipulating the Holocaust for their gain and blamed them for Soviet-era atrocities in Ukraine." The story went on to say that the White House appeared to be embarrassed by inviting Dr. Kuropas to become a member of the official delegation to President Viktor Yushchenko's inauguration and quoted an unnamed official as saying that had they been aware of what Dr. Kuropas had written earlier, they never would have invited him.

Almost immediately, several U.S. politicians, major newspapers and other U.S. media outlets and interest groups pounced on the Kuropas issue, labeling him an "anti-Semite", castigating the Bush Administration for having appointed him to the delegation in the first place, calling upon the Northern Illinois University, where he serves as a part-time lecturer to fire him, and so on. Sad to say, there were a number of Ukrainian media outlets that jumped on the "Get Kuropas" bandwagon - both in Ukraine and in North America. Of these, the most disgraceful was the Op-Ed piece "Lessons from the recent controversy surrounding Myron Kuropas," by Max Pyziur, posted on the Brama website on Feb. 10, 2005. In it, Pyziur calls Dr. Kuropas an "anti-Semite", and charges him with "gross inaccuracies and bigotry." We'll get to that later, but first, since this newspaper figured in the original Knight Ridder report and this newspaper's editor was "quoted" in it, we would like to place both the original story and the "quote" in their proper context.

This is how the paragraphs relating to Ukrainian News were reported by Knight Ridder:

"The Ukrainian News, based in Edmonton, Canada, quoted Kuropas as saying in a March 1998 speech that Ukrainian 'good cops' should engage Jews in a dialogue on their common history, while Ukrainian 'bad cops' should 'go on the offensive reminding Jews of ... Jewish Bolsheviks without whom the murderous Soviet regime would have collapsed in its infancy.'

"'Let the Jews go on the defensive for a change. The crimes of their people cannot be explained away easily,' he was quoted as saying."

"Marco Levytsky, the author of the report and the editor of the Ukrainian News, said Kuropas never objected to the accuracy of the report."

The sections cited were contained in paragraphs 14 and 15 of the report and were lifted out of the original longer quotes. The paragraphs that immediately preceded these sections, noted that Kuropas said there are writers in the Jewish community who have taken an objective stand on Ukrainian issues, listing specific examples, then went on to name others who have tried to present crimes committed by individual Ukrainians as representative of the whole community. The focus of his speech was that while there are certain Ukrainophobic groups within the Jewish community, this is not representative of the Jewish community as a whole.

These sections were totally ignored by Knight Ridder.

Now, how did Knight Ridder get to quote the editor?

Jonathan S. Landay called the paper to ask whether a story published in Ukrainian News back in 1998 that his colleague, Warren P. Strobel, found somewhere on the Internet was actually published. When asked where on the Internet he found it since Ukrainian News does not have a website, he was unable to identify it.

After the editor of Ukrainian News checked his bound yearbooks he was able to confirm that yes, this story did appear and yes, it did state that Kuropas identified three specific Jewish groups as targeting Ukrainians.

The editor of Ukrainian News then told Landay to note that right in the second paragraph Dr. Kuropas is quoted as saying: "When I speak of 'the Jews', I don't mean all Jews, maybe not even most Jews." Landay replied: "Oh yes, of course."

Landay then asked Levytsky whether Kuropas at any time called the newspaper to ask for a retraction. The answer was no, why should he?

That's where the conversation ended. At no point where the specific quotes referred to ever mentioned.

Now, technically, one can state that: "Marco Levytsky, the author of the report and the editor of the Ukrainian News, said Kuropas never objected to the accuracy of the report." But that is a technicality. Anybody who knows anything about journalistic practice - both ethical and unethical - knows that the question was merely a ploy to allow the "reporter" to stick in a contrived piece of "news" in order to make the subject of his hatchet job look even worse. Neither does it state that the quote was made in response to a leading question. Instead the way the story was written gives the impression that Levytsky volunteered the comment. This is a manufactured piece of reporting and clearly shows that the intention of the writers was simply to do a hatchet job.

Another interesting question is how Knight Ridder came up with this 1998 story in the first place. It is on the web site of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, but the link had been removed. (It is back on and if anyone wants to view that story in its entirety, you can go to www.uccla.ca.) We found it by using a Google search with the words "Kuropas" and "Toronto". A Google search with the words "Kuropas" and "Jews" produces 540 results. Did the Knight Ridder reporters look through all 540 to pick these three? More likely they already knew which specific stories they were looking for. This gives credence to the assertion made by Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky in The Ukrainian Weekly of Feb. 06, 2005, when he stated:

"Given that Dr. Kuropas neither did nor said anything prior, during or after his participation in the delegation to the Yushchenko inauguration, how is it that he suddenly found himself in the glaring spotlight? The only possible answer is that some organization or person has a dossier on Dr. Kuropas and then some people decided that his participation in the delegation was an opportune time to teach Dr. Kuropas a lesson."

Now, one can raise the question of whether Dr. Kuropas' decision to focus this speech before the Ukrainian community in Toronto on the role certain Jewish organizations have played in promoting Ukrainophobia was wise.

The event that led to Dr. Kuropas' invitation to speak was the Canadian government's decision to begin proceedings to deport Wasyl Odynsky as a supposed war criminal under its denaturalization and deportation policy. The critical thing here is that under this policy a person does not have to be charged with any specific war crime and that is just one of the many very glaring abuses of basic civil liberties that are inherent in this policy. We believe that it is best for our community to focus directly on the civil liberties implications of this issue and not get sidetracked by who is behind it. It doesn't matter whether it is the Jewish or the Arab lobby that is responsible for this assault on civil liberties. The policy remains an assault on civil liberties, regardless.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that this policy has been pushed upon the Canadian government by certain Jewish interest groups - namely the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith.

It is also a fact that there are a number of people within the federal Justice Department who are repeatedly launching new legal measures against Odynsky, Katriuk and others in order to justify their existence and position at the public trough.

Like the individuals in Canada's Justice Department, there are many similar groups and individuals within the United States that have profited in a similar way. The Office of Special Investigations, which has been found guilty of committing "fraud upon the court" in the John Demjanjuk case, is one such example.

The issue of the "Holocaust Industry" was initially raised by Prof. Norman G. Finkelstein of the City University of New York and author of the book "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering". We would like to note that not only is Dr. Finkelstein Jewish, he is the son of a Holocaust victim.

One can disagree with Dr. Kuropas on the matter of his focus, or tone. But one cannot doubt the factual truth of the statements he makes. Indeed, Dr. Kuropas is quite meticulous about getting his facts straight.

And that is the principal issue here. Whether one agrees with him or not, nothing Dr. Kuropas has written has been factually incorrect. If people start labeling others as "anti-Semites", or "bigots" simply for stating the truth, then this is a serious threat to one of the most fundamental principles of democratic society - freedom of speech.

But these are among the charges that Max Pyziur laid on Dr. Kuropas in urging The Weekly to remove its columnist. Had such comments come from the mainstream U.S. media we would not be surprised. But seeing them on a Ukrainian community media outlet, which should know a lot better, is quite disturbing. We have to question the motivation for Max Pyziur's attack.

The thing that is most offensive about the Pyziur piece is that, since Ukrainian community journalists in North American often have to defend the community's name against unjust and inaccurate attacks upon its reputation, when one of our colleagues who does precisely that, is unfairly targeted by the national media - and Dr. Kuropas has been unfairly targeted - we should exercise professional solidarity and stand behind that person. We, most definitely, should not kick a guy when he's down.