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A peaceful way to snuff out terror
By Gil Troy
Canadian Jewish News
May 25, 2005
Ken Basnicki of Toronto, was the 48-year-old financial marketing director for a Canadian software company when Al Qaeda terrorists murdered him – and thousands of others – on Sept. 11, 2001.
His widow Maureen and his daughter Erica, now 25, understand that terrorism does not just affect others. It has ruined too many Canadian lives already. Dr. Yehezkel Goldberg, originally from Toronto, was a social worker extraordinaire, a beloved angel of mercy helping many needy clients, when a Palestinian police-officer-turned-suicide-bomber from Yasser Arafat’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade killed him and 10 others on a Jerusalem bus last winter.
His widow and seven children have to go through life wondering if any Canadian money helped kill their Canadian father, either through tax-deductible contributions that illegally funded terrorists, or Canadian governmental funds diverted from Arafat’s Palestinian Authority to the Fatah terrorists who dispatched the suicide bomber.
These and other terror victims demand justice, not vengeance. They are pursuing a novel method to achieve it. In April, the Canadian Coalition Against Terror asked Parliament to allow terror victims to sue the organizations supporting terrorists and the rogue governments that fund them. The bill would amend the State Immunity Act to say that if any of the 35 groups that Canada has designated as terrorist entities kill Canadians and it can be proved that they received funding from governments, a Canadian civil court could hold those governments financially liable. The bill would also add a provision to the Criminal Code’s anti-terrorism provisions to allow Canadian victims or their survivors to sue terror groups in Canadian courts.
This clever legislation aims to choke off the money that sustains terrorists. If governments such as Iran and Syria suffered financially for supporting these mass murderers, if Palestinian Authority leaders feared paying millions of dollars in damages for supporting terror, they might stop financing terror. Moreover, if a Canadian court saddled terrorist groups – or their money-men – with huge liabilities, it could constrain some terrorists, or their Canadian fellow travelers.
The proposed legislation would encourage civil suits against terrorist groups and rogue governments financing these murders. Ultimately, victims or their survivors would have to make the case in court.
These last few years have shown that the fight against terror must be proactive. The terrorists should be on the defensive, not we, their innocent targets. Passivity and neutrality are often substitutes for moral blindness. To ignore the problem puts us all at risk.
Nevertheless, many Canadians are ambivalent about mobilizing the military might of the West against these brigands who have declared war on the West – and all of “crusading” Christendom, if you read Osama Bin Laden’s fatwas.
But wherever we stand on that difficult question, we should all unite in declaring zero tolerance for financing terror. Here is an opportunity to demonstrate that the debate is merely tactical, not about the legitimacy of targeting terrorists. All of us who are committed to the rule of law – and who believe in peace, order, and good government – should applaud the Canadian Coalition Against Terror for devising a clever, constructive and peaceful way to fight terror.
Shortly after Sept. 11, a CBC radio interviewer challenged me about my call for an aggressive policy of zero tolerance for terror. “If we’re too aggressive, won’t the terrorists target us?” the interviewer asked. Of course, we knew then – and certainly know now – that “we “ in Canada and throughout the West were already targeted. The Basnickis and the two dozen other Canadian families with loved ones murdered on 9/11 know that. The Goldberg family in Toronto and Jerusalem feels that daily. The hundreds of Canadian families whose lives were ruined in the Air India disaster understand that. We owe it to our fellow citizens, we owe it to ourselves, to be as aggressive as possible in rooting out this rot, in pushing Canada to pursue the 35 terrorist entities – and their immoral government funders.
Twenty years ago, Elie Wiesel protested then U.S. president’s Ronald Reagan’s plan to visit a German military ceremony with SS graves by warning that in extreme situations, when human lives and dignity are at stake, neutrality is a sin. Here is our chance to stand and say “No to terror.” Neither we nor our political leaders can afford to be neutral.
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