Lies as a pretext for war

According to a March 25 report by Tom Regan of the Christian Science Monitor, Canada's National Post sought confirmation of the veracity of the story from Rabbi Abraham Cooper, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies.

On the day Taheri's piece was published, the National Post cited Rabbi Marvin Heir, of the centre's LA office, as stating the proposed legislation to be "reminiscent of the Holocaust", adding that "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

Such attempts to compare a modern leader's pronouncements to the Nazi murder of six million Jews might be regarded as an insult to the dead and their traumatised survivors.

Certainly, this was how the New York-based magazine the Jewish Week viewed the situation. Its editor-at-large, Larry Cohler-Esses, reveals how Rabbi Abraham Foxman, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Centre, responded to an inquiry from Jonathan Turley-Ewart, deputy editor of the National Post.

Turley-Ewart's question: "As per our conversation, I'm looking at running this, but I have not been able to confirm its veracity. Particularly, I want to make sure that part saying Jews will have to wear a yellow stripe and Christians a red stripe is, in fact, true."

Rabbi Foxman's email response, delivered one hour and 14 minutes later, was simple: "Dear John. The story is absolutely true."

Since the lies were exposed, the National Post has issued a full retraction. Yet this episode illustrates how easy it is for lies and propaganda to be used as a pretext for war.