Right on schedule.
Barely four days after The Black Rod laid out the plan, chapter and verse, there it was in the pages of the Winnipeg Free Press, down to a T.
The proponents of the Gail Asper-version of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights have played their last card--- anyone who challenges them is anti-semitic.
"The war against the Holocaust" blared the headline over the op-ed by, guess who, Catherine Chatterley the "the founding director of the Winnipeg-based Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism."
It's unfolding exactly as we predicted:
* It's not hard to put two and two together, we wrote.
* Gail Asper doesn't want to accuse the Ukrainians of being anti-Semites, although she hasn't met them face-to-face, she added.
* Only "the uniformed" ask why the Asper human rights museum plans to highlight the Holocaust over all the other genocides in the world, said the Free Press.
* Catherine Chatterley, an "expert" on anti-semitism says people have to put aside their "collective grievances" and recognize the Holocaust as more important than other genocides.
* Should we conclude that if the uniformed continue to press their case, then it is because they have another agenda, another motivation?
Hmmm. Maybe a non-profit academic institute just like the one founded by Catherine Chatterley can help identify that motivation."
Chatterley, who actually wants people to know she teaches at the University of Manitoba, begins her tirade with a false premise, then uses it to propel her argument.
And we hire people like this to teach in our universities?
"Who would ever imagine that in 2011 Canadians would be arguing about whether or not the Nazi extermination of over six million European Jews deserves a permanent place in a national museum dedicated to the subject of human rights?"
Well, uh, nobody is arguing that. So what's your motivation in claiming something which isn't true?
"The level of open hostility directed specifically toward the Holocaust gives one the sense that the attack is politically motivated."
Straight out of the playbook. See above.
"As a Winnipegger, I have many friends with Ukrainian ancestry and they are all supportive of the museum and its Holocaust gallery. Actually, not a single person I know in Winnipeg or throughout the country, regardless of their ethnic background, resents the fact that there is a Holocaust gallery in the new museum."
False, once again.
Nobody is arguing against a place for Holocaust study in the new museum. Chatterley creates a straw man and knocks it down.
She fails to explain the straw polls in the Free Press and the Globe and Mail which, separately, showed that 75 percent of respondents preferred one exhibit which covers all genocides equally over one gallery that highlights a particular genocide permanently, while the others are grouped together in a separate exhibit (14 percent).
Nobody is arguing against a place for Holocaust study in the new museum. Chatterley creates a straw man and knocks it down.
She fails to explain the straw polls in the Free Press and the Globe and Mail which, separately, showed that 75 percent of respondents preferred one exhibit which covers all genocides equally over one gallery that highlights a particular genocide permanently, while the others are grouped together in a separate exhibit (14 percent).
"The Ukrainian Famine and the internment of Ukrainians are not being excluded but are in fact locked into the current museum plan, as promised by the founders."
No, Izzy Asper promised the Holodomor would be treated equally with the Holocaust.
"The protest of these groups clearly targets the Holocaust for having a prominent place in the museum and the Jews, who go unmentioned by name in every public letter, for dominating the CMHR with their own particularistic suffering during the Second World War. This is the real issue at work here and it's time to confront it publicly and to expose it, finally, for what it is."
For what it is? Say what?
The Ukrainian associations have been meticulous to avoid any mention of Jews, Jewish ancestry, the Jewish background of Gail Asper, Izzy Asper, Anita Neville, the publishers of the Winnipeg Free Press, the Mayor of Winnipeg or any other proponent of the CMHR.
They have bent over backwards to focus the debate on its merits and not as any disguised attack on Jews.
The Ukrainian associations have been meticulous to avoid any mention of Jews, Jewish ancestry, the Jewish background of Gail Asper, Izzy Asper, Anita Neville, the publishers of the Winnipeg Free Press, the Mayor of Winnipeg or any other proponent of the CMHR.
They have bent over backwards to focus the debate on its merits and not as any disguised attack on Jews.
It's Catherine Chatterley alone who has turned this into accusations of anti-semitism through her own twisted viewpoint of the facts. Far from being an independent academic, she demonstrates she's a shill for the Aspers and their supporters.
"Subjective feelings are influencing content and design choices rather than objective historical and legal reality and this does not bode well for the international reputation of this institution. This is something about which taxpayers and voters should be worried."
Again Chatterly ignores the truth.
The Ukrainian groups have argued for months for the creation of an independent exhibits review committee to replace the one handpicked by Gail Asper to further her agenda.
It's the mindless insistence that the planned extermination of Jews must have precedence over the planned extermination of Ukrainians, Albanians, Tutsis and others that should worry taxpayers who are spending $310 million on a building they never wanted and $21 million a year in perpetuity to promote the Asper name.
" The museum is dedicated to presenting the history of human rights law and activism and the reasons for its international development during and after Hitler's war."
Why would that be the beginning and end?
The Communists were engaging in genocide before the Second World War and mass murder after.
In fact, they were allies of Hitler prior to the invasion of Russia.
After the fall of Germany, the United Nations didn't stop the human rights violations of the Communists. It didn't launch prosecutions of those responsible for the Holodomor.
The bigger lesson for the world was why the Communists were protected by the intellectuals and the press before and after Hitler's war right up to the present day.
Surely that's of equal if not greater importance to study than how a madman tapped into the historic anti-Semitic views of old Europe.
"If it were not for the humanistic desire on the part of Jews -- particularly Holocaust survivors and their children -- to educate humanity about the evils of racism and the need to protect universal human rights through the study of the Holocaust, we would not have this new national museum. How on earth can this kind of generosity and goodwill be perceived as dominating and exclusive?"
Simple. Because they refuse to accept that there are views other than theirs in the world.
If you don't agree that the planned extermination of the Jews of Europe is the single most egregious genocide in the history of the world, then you're anti-semitic, declare the Aspers and the Sterns and the Silvers.
Well, we don't.
That argument may have won the day 60 years ago. But the world has shrunk since then. We now know more about genocides in countries around the world. Just because we captured the written records of the Nazis and got to interrogate the perpetrators of the Holocaust doesn't mean there's more significance to the Holocaust for the entire world.
To the victims of Hitler, sure. But there were genocides before the Holocaust and afterwards. You're not going to sanctify one ethnic group that refuses to accept they are not s-s-s-pecial.
If you want to argue that the Holocaust sparked the human rights movement, then we should focus on the men who made that happen, and not on the victims of a particular genocide. What motivated these men? Their education? Their life experience? In what countries? What finally coalesced in their lives that prompted them to take political action? And that can be done in the context of a gallery where all genocides are equal.
But Chatterley has an agenda to push. So she sees anti-semitism where none exists. She invents it.
"Even more troubling is how the UCCLA could mail an offensive postcard to Canadians across the country."
"The front cover of the postcard depicts a fat pig with a bullwhip overseeing an emaciated horse dragging a wagon.The image is taken from the 1947 Ukrainian edition of George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. In the story, the pigs are the Stalinist communist ruling class who enslave and dominate all the other animals but claim hypocritically that "All animals are equal." The back of the UCCLA postcard has a pig whispering into the ear of a sheep in a conspiratorial manner, "All galleries are equal but some galleries are more equal than others."
"Clearly, the pigs are supporters of the Holocaust gallery, which is characterized as a vehicle of domination, inequality, and exploitation. The imagery of the Jew as pig has a very long and well-established history in European anti-Semitism, and of course it is also a theme today in Islamic anti-Semitism (Jews are purported to be the descendants of apes and pigs)."
In attempting to demonize the Ukrainians, Chatterly validates the message of the UCCLA. The postcard uses the historic imagery of Communist ideology to ask why, in present day Canada, is the CMHR making the argument that all galleries at the museum are equal, except that one is set aside and more equal than the others.
That is exactly what Chatterly and the Winnipeg Free Press have proudly declaimed.
That is exactly what Chatterly and the Winnipeg Free Press have proudly declaimed.
"No scholar of comparative genocide believes all genocides are the same." Catherine Chatterley, April 2, 2011.
"Why does the Holocaust get a place in the front seat? Only the uninformed ask questions like that." Winnipeg Free Press, March 24, 2011.
Chatterly makes a huge and unsubstantiated leap of logic to equate a picture from 1947 to anti-semitic Islamists of 2011.
The reason is obvious. To squelch any criticism of the CMHR---just as the Communists squelched free speech in days of old.
And we let these people teach in our universities?
"Quite frankly, the fact that this kind of postcard was distributed in Canada in 2011, without shame or conscience, by an organization that claims to protect civil liberties, is astonishing. This alone demonstrates the clear need for this museum, its permanent Holocaust gallery, and for the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism."
We proudly reprint the postcard and will with every subsequent story to show we will not be intimidated by the Aspers, the Sterns, the Silvers and all the so-called proponents of human rights, except when they can use their power to stifle free speech, free thought and free expression.
The UCCLA explains the imagery it uses.
"The image in the ad, duplicated on the postcard, is from the cover of the 1947 Ukrainian-language edition of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Most copies were confiscated by the American Occupation authorities in Germany and turned over to the Soviets, along with hundreds of thousands of "Soviet Citizens" forcibly repatriated under the terms of the now-notorious Yalta Agreement. Many were survivors and witnesses to the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine, a tragedy now known as the Holodomor."
Text on back of postcard:
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is a taxpayer-funded national museum. Its 12 galleries should all be inclusive, comparative and thematic in their treatment of the many crimes against humanity that have befouled human history -- before, during and since the Second World War.
Instead, two communities are being given privileged, permanent and prominent exhibit spaces, elevating the horrors suffered by a few above all the others.
That's unfair. That's unacceptable. Partiality shouldn't be funded from the public purse.
Nothing about the postcard "demonstrates the clear need for this museum, its permanent Holocaust gallery..."
In fact, the response by Chatterley, a professed professor, demonstrates the need for study of how easily universities can be subverted by special interest groups to promote their private agendas; and how the mainstream media twists and misreports the truth to promote their own biases, all the while lecturing everyone on how trustworthy they are.
Next: Cry Panic.