I’d like to honour the memory of murdered Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi by discussing an issue of free expression here in Canada — an issue that is far less dramatic yet part of the same nexus. I mean the debate over allowing Canadian cable firms to offer the Arabic news station, Al-Jazeera.

The Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith oppose this. Our broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, is not being asked to license Al-Jazeera itself, just to let cable companies include it, if they choose.

CJC president Keith Landy says “the kind of stories that they carry could contravene the Criminal Code,” due to their racist and hate content. This is a gimme for the other side, since it amounts to prior restraint: condemn someone for what you think they will do rather than what they have done.

“Who can sit around listening to Al-Jazeera 24 hours a day to hear them advocate suicide bombings? Better to stop them now,” said B’nai Brith lawyer Marvin Kurz on CBC Radio. Those who care about free speech would probably prefer sitting around to imposing censorship in advance. So let me move to parts of the issue which are more confusing.

Mr. Landy and Mr. Kurz say Al-Jazeera referred to Jewish people as apes and pigs.

That sounds dreadful; could anything ameliorate it? But an Al-Jazeera producer says the phrase was in an e-mail from a viewer, read on a show a few years ago — not from an employee, many of whom hail from BBC, CNN or ABC. He says the station aims “to bring the world to the living room of the average Arab around the world. . . . We are not going to tell our guests what to say, there is no delay button on Al-Jazeera. What are you going to do: Hide from those views?”

Makes sense to me. If there is anti-Semitism out there, then put it in a context where it becomes an object of argument rather than an unchallengeable given.

How about the claim that Al-Jazeera encourages terror? Well, in the Arab world, different terrorisms contend: against occupying armies alone (Israel in Lebanon or Palestine; America in Iraq); or against civilians in illegal settlements; or against the foe’s homeland. Along with variant terms: jihad, resistance, martyrdom.

In the West, it all gets conflated as terror, and you may want to condemn them all, but I don’t think it hurts to be aware of the profusion. It might help you figure out what is going on.

Besides, anyone can hurl blanket charges — and do it sincerely. That doesn’t make them true. On CBC Radio, Mr. Kurz said Al-Jazeera is “governed” by the standards of the Mideast where blood libels and anti-Semitism are standard fare — a generalization as broad as any he accuses Al-Jazeera of.

What can you do except consider actual facts and context?

In a CBC-TV report, Gillian Findlay asked an Al-Jazeera host if he believed the Holocaust happened. When he waffled, she said, “I suspect you don’t believe in the Holocaust.” Let me pause over her phrase. It is not from journalism or politics, it is religious, it comes from the Catholic creed: “I believe in God . . . I renounce the devil . . . .” It seems to me the centrality — not just the reality — of the Holocaust is a kind of item of faith in the West, making it a moral lynchpin. If it weren’t, Holocaust deniers could be treated on the daft model of flat-Earthers, ridiculously wrong yet hardly a menace.

But there may be places where, while the Holocaust is not denied, it is not a moral centrepiece. What if her interviewee had asked Gillian Findlay, “Do you believe in the nakbah (the ‘catastrophe’ of 1948 for Palestinians and Arabs)?” Would she have known what he meant?

Similarly, she asked about an Al-Jazeera commentator: “Does he accept a Jewish state or not?” — another lynchpin in the Western credo on the region.

But he could have asked back: Do you believe in justice for the Palestinians? Merely by being there, Al-Jazeera makes Westerners aware of their preconceptions — and that they are preconceptions. We are faced with a worldview differently configured than ours, with which we must learn to get along — and may even discover something useful for ourselves.

In a way, angst over Al-Jazeera’s sinister potential resembles another loopy idea: the Jewish media conspiracy. It’s true some Jewish people — who were once scarce there — are now prominent in Canada’s media, such as the Aspers, the head of the CBC, or this paper’s editor. But they aren’t there because a shadowy group decided to install them and then use them to shape the news.

Still, being human, they share some things in common. Many of us grew up buying little leaf-stamps to plant trees in Israel, or had family who perished in the Holocaust, or get aggravated phone calls from relatives. We can try, and succeed, in being fair; but it’s also prudent to continue to broaden the range of voices that reach the public. That’s another reason to usher Al-Jazeera onto the media spectrum.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.