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Library of
United Talmud Torah school, Montreal, after Monday's attack
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With an 'Iraqi intifada' gathering steam and
Iraqi insurgent leader Moktada al-Sadr openly declaring an
alliance
with
Hamas and Hizbullah, the global war on terror is
becoming indistinguishable from Israel's anti-terror war. Yet while media reports on
terror attacks in Madrid, Istanbul, Bali and elsewhere
recognize Islamist perpetrators, reports on attacks on worldwide
Jewish targets regularly omit the Islamist
element.
On April 5, a few hours before the
beginning of Passover, a Montreal Jewish school was firebombed.
The
perpetrators left
a note on the school door and contacted a local TV
station, stating their attack was in response to
Israel's killing
of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. They added: "this is
just a beginning. If your crimes continue in the Middle East,
our attacks will continue."
Curiously, the content of these messages
- which ties this heinous act to Islamic terror in Israel
- was not reported in some major Canadian media outlets, such as
the
Toronto Star
and CBC. Though
local police have yet to confirm the perpetrators' message, this was
certainly a central aspect of the story that required
mention.
Moreover, HonestReporting is
disturbed by the fact that the Montreal attack received very little
coverage outside of the Canadian media. This, despite the
fact that this bombing was only the latest
episode in a troubling surge of
anti-Semitic acts in Canada: A Jewish cemetery was
vandalized and a synagogue was defaced with
swastikas last month
in Toronto,
and
B'nai Brith
recently reported a record 584
anti-Semitic incidents in Canada in 2003 - 27
percent more than in 2002.
This omission of a
global Islamic threat against Jews recalls the
controversy over the recently-released EU
report on European
antisemitism.
The EU report found a
sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts over the past two years, but
its authors surprised everyone when summarizing the source of
most attacks, stating: "The largest group of the perpetrators of
anti-Semitic activities appears to be young,
disaffected white
Europeans."
This summary contradicts the very
body of the report, which finds that most of the 193 violent
attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher shops,
cemeteries and rabbis in France in 2002 were actually
carried out by Muslims of Northern African
descent. European Jewish
leaders were shocked by the EU's 'white
Europeans' summary, as the
UK Telegraph
reported:
The
European Jewish Congress accused the EU watchdog of twisting
data from the 15 member states to suit its own ideological
bias, describing the report as a catalogue of "enormous
contradictions, errors and omissions."
"We cannot
let it be said that the majority of anti-Semitic incidents
come from young, disaffected white men. This is in complete
contradiction with the facts recorded by the police," it
said.
The reason for this 'data twisting' is
apparently the same reason for the shelving of another
anti-Semitism study by this same organization four
months ago - concern that Europe's large Muslim population
would be 'inflamed' by its findings. Needless
to say, local Muslim sensitivities should not
interfere with political accountability or accurate reporting.
The Montreal school bombing is the
latest effort of Islamists to strike Jewish targets worldwide:
from Jerusalem to Paris, Tuninia to Kenya, North America and
beyond. As this highly troubling terror wave grows, HonestReporting
encourages subscribers to contact your local editors,
encouraging them to publicize its growth and the Islamist source
of nearly all recent anti-Jewish acts worldwide.
Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle
against media bias.
HonestReporting
(Hat tip: Stefan Sharkansky)
