Canadian presence at the Tehran Holocaust conference

A month has passed from the time of the infamous Tehran conference on the Holocaust, or rather the denial thereof. Yet only now did I become aware of the shameful fact that there was a Canadian among the speakers there. His name is Shiraz Dossa. On their program they identified him as being a professor at the University of Toronto, while in fact he has been part of the staff at St. Francis Xavier University in Antagonish, Nova Scotia, since 1988 - as his webpage there states. He claimed during an interview that he "did not know" the planned conference would be antisemitic. Nooo...! Really?

Judged by his writings he subscribes to some rather interesting points of view. He certainly makes sure that noone will mistake him for a liberal thinker. He believes that multiculturalism is just "liberal posturing", he professes, alongside Peter Fitzpatrick, that "liberalism is bound by its genealogy and its sense of history to debase the culturally Other"... and so on and on. He chalks up every ill that befell the world, ills which were perpetrated by self-proclaimed liberals of the times, to their being liberals and not to the fact that they were fallible human beings despite their supposed liberalism, claiming that they did wrong because of their liberalism not in spite of it.

But whatever his views, he is a Canadian, and he is entitled to have his views. These rights are accorded to him by the Canadian Charter of Rights, a document which holds up a liberal ideal for us, an ideal that for now isn't/cannot possibly be adhered to in its fullest, but is to be strived for. A liberal ideal that gives us the hope that one day in the future Canadian society may actually fulfill its lofty proposals. Yes, in spite of his opinion about us, he is being tolerated. We do seem to tolerate the intolerant.

What bothers me, though, that his presence in Tehran was ignored by the Canadian media, that there was no public outcry, only a polite acknowledgement, that we were not made aware more widely and more forcefully of his shameful presence there. Granted, he did not travel there on Canadian taxpayers' money. He was luxuriously wined and dined on Iranian government funds. But we, Liberal Canadians, cannot pass it off with a shrug when someone like Dossa takes it upon himself to represent us at an event which singles out another cultural minority present in our Canadian society, questioning and ridiculing its painful past. This constitutes a silent endorsement!

As will be the university's position if Shiraz Dossa will still be on their staff next year...

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While sifting through Iranian blogs that commented on the Holocaust conference, I found an entry by fellow Canadian blogger, Hoder, in which he expresses concern about the way Ahmadinejad seems to be "consolidating his power inside the system gradually, carefully and quite intelligently." This reminds me of an earlier entry of my own from way back in September, in which I made some semi-serious predictions about the directions Ahmadinejad's presidency may take if left unchecked...

Walid Salem, a Palestinian voice of reason

Today I discovered a remarkable Palestinian voice of reason in the ugly cacophony of animosity and violence. The article I found is Walid Salem's response to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's viciously anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli position - Mahmoud Ahmadinijad: Questions of Strategy. In it he questions the wisdom of Iran's quest for nuclear weapons and their calls for the annihilation of Israel, he questions the general strategy of the Arab world towards Israel and the Palestinians, and he calls on moderate Arabs to raise their voices.

The article becomes even more remarkable when we consider that Walid Salem spent altogether five years in Israeli prisons and yet, instead of harbouring anger in his heart and seeking revenge, he realised that the road to peace is not via violence but by reaching out to the Israelis from the streets, to build peace from the base and not from above between political leaders only. He is the director of Panorama, an organization dedicated to spreading democracy in Palestinian society, promoting cooperation between groups from both sides that support peace.