The road to shame: Canada and Durban II

I welcomed Canada's decision to absent itself from Durban II here. However, I am still not convinced that Canada will follow through on her commitment. Here is why:

The Canadian Arab Federation has come out strongly against the Canadian government's decision, supported by the NDP, to not participate in any way with the upcoming UN-sponsored Durban II conference on racism. The position of the Conservative government, supported by the NDP, is that Durban II is shaping up to be an exercise in the most vile and repellent anti-Semitism, as was experienced by the Canadian delegation that attended the Durban I conference in 2001.

The CAF has every right to take a different position. But to call Jason Kenney an Islamophobe who is contemptuous of Arabs and of Islam?

But then CAF president Khaled Mouammar, who has all sorts of links with the Liberal Party, declares anyone who sympathizes with Israel to be guilty of complicity in war crimes.

(Read the rest on "Angry in the great white north")

I'm posting this comment in service to my Canadian readers, especially those who think they can prevaricate about their moral commitments, making soothing noises in both directions. The day of reckoning is drawing near when they will find that if they take a stand against antisemitism, they will be branded Islamophobes. Somehow, I don't quite see them taking a stand against antisemitism. Bystanders become addicted to their indifference.

On a personal note, I find it ironic how the bystanders are the ones most likely to quote Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous homily . What they can be thinking of beats my intelligence. When you choose to remain neutral, even in the face of obvious perversion of truth and common sense, speaking to both terrorists and victims as though they were on an equal footing to be reasoned with, they in actuality eschew personal responsibility. They rightly deserve Dante's scorn.