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January 9, 2004
Local paper slurs Jews
Delta-based journal could face legal repercussions.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Legal proceedings may be in the offing after a local Muslim newspaper
published a diatribe of anti-Jewish stereotypes and accusations.
The article, which ran in the Dec. 19 issue of the Miracle,
blamed a litany of circumstances on "the Jews."
Titled "It wasn't Arabs," the article was written by Edgar
J. Steele, who runs a Web site called conspiracypenpal.com, where
he dispenses extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic views. Steele lives
in northern Idaho and calls himself a lawyer who is "noted
for testing the limits of constitutional law on behalf of politically
correct clients."
The article is a response to an e-mail Steele said he received,
from someone claiming to hate Arabs. The anonymous e-mail writer,
who Steele quotes, said of Arabs, "To my way of thinking they
are two-faced butchers. It seems as though most of the world's terrorists
come from their countries."
Steele's article, which was first posted on his Web site on Nov.
18, was reprinted in the Miracle, a small, mostly English-language
Muslim newspaper published in Delta. After quoting his Arab-hating
correspondent, Steele, who spells "Arabs" with an uppercase
A but "Jews" with a lower-case J, replies: "I got
a little carried away with my response, I confess.... It felt cleansing,
somehow, to list all the reasons why this person was wrong.... I
haven't the degree of antipathy you feel for Arabs, despite a couple
that I would willingly have dispatched, had it been legal. Nor do
I have any particular love for them, other than that normally reserved
for the underdog. Your hatred seems born of something quite apart
from personal experience."
Then the article proceeds into Steele's response – a list of
83 assertions about Jews, such as, "It wasn't Arabs who tried
to steal my law practice – it was a jew. It wasn't Arabs who
threatened to kill my children and wife – it was jews. It wasn't
Arabs who threatened to kill me – and continue to do so with
regularity – it was/is jews. It wasn't Arabs who screwed the
stockholders of the company I worked for in SF – it was jews.
It isn't Arabs who fill my email inbox with pornographic spam -
it is jews...." and so forth. But the perceived personal affronts
allegedly perpetrated by Jews against Steele, which include stealing
the balance of his "PayPal" account and trying to deny
him Internet access, give way to accusations of international conspiracies
of the sort anti-Semites have purveyed for decades or centuries.
Among them, that "the jews" started the first and second
world wars, caused the great Depression, killed U.S. president John
F. Kennedy and, of course, had Jesus Christ killed. The article
also asserts that Jews perpetrated the attack on the World Trade
Centre, forced Boy Scout troops to accept gay troop leaders, imported
large numbers of "Somalians and Bantus into American cities,"
run organized crime, import "tons of drugs into America every
day" and "literally own and run all of Hollywood's moviemaking
enterprise" and "all of America's mainstream media."
Steele adds that Jews forged Anne Frank's diary, are "lying
about and guilt tripping us with 'the holocaust' [sic]," lied
about Auschwitz's gas chambers, Treblinka's mass graves and doctored
photos to show smoke belching from crematoria.
Nusrat Hussain, editor of the Miracle, said the article was
sent to him by a regular reader of his paper and he chose to run
it because the anti-Arab statement at the beginning of the piece,
along with the subsequent 1,800 words of anti-Semitic attack, offered
two contending views.
"The attitude covered both sides," he said. "We try
to put [across] both sides of the picture. Of course, there are
limits."
Hussain acknowledged that, while the article contained a nasty screed
on Arabs in the first paragraph, Steele's anti-Jewish content may
have outweighed it.
"He was more forceful perhaps against the Jewish people,"
said Hussain. He encourages people to send letters to the editor
countering Steele's article, but has no plans to offer a retraction.
Nisson Goldman, chair of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region,
forwarded the article to his organization's lawyers and will consider
in the near future whether to seek criminal or civil legal proceedings
against the publisher.
On Tuesday, Congress opted to forward the article to the B.C. Hate
Crimes Team.
Canadian criminal law, as well as provincial human rights statutes,
address hate literature targeting identifiable groups. Non-criminal
actions can be initiated through various channels, including the
British Columbia Human Rights Commission.
Goldman said he was surprised at the blatant nature of the article.
"There's no attempt but to display the person's ferocious hatred
against Jews," said Goldman. "This is primitive. There's
absolutely no cover or excuse or hidden messages. It's just in-your-face."
Steele's article is available in PDF format from the Miracle's
Web site, www.miraclenews.com,
issue 82, page 12. Letters can be sent to Hussain at P.O. Box 182,
7101C – 120th St., Delta, B.C., V4E 2A9.
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouverite, a journalist and
commentator.
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