By arthur Weinreb
Friday, March 4, 2005
In last week’s Saturday Star, reporter Michelle Shephard took an extremely sympathetic view towards Zaynab Khadr, the daughter of the late ahmed Khadr, patriarch of Canada’s first family of terrorism.
The article starts off by lamenting that Zaynab is "caught between two worlds"; in Canada where "she’s reviled for her strident views on the September 11 attacks and because al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was a guest at her wedding and in Pakistan where she is "too western and never fully accepted". There is no doubt that this is pretty tear jerking stuff.
actually law abiding Canadians are really not upset about the fact that Osama attended her wedding; what they are upset about is the fact that her late father ahmed was a high ranking member of al Qaeda and that her entire family, perhaps with the exception of her brother abdurahaman, agree with al Qaeda’s objectives of bringing down the West and killing "infidels", specifically americans and Jews.
Shephard bemoans the fact that of all the Khadr clan who go back and forth from Pakistan, Zaynab was the only one to be met at the airport upon her last return to Canada by the RCMP who had a search warrant and seized documents as well as her cell phone and laptop.
Shephard writes about how one of the reasons for her return is to be in a better position to lobby for the rights of two of her brothers including Omar who is detained at Guantanamo Bay. The Khadr apologist neglects to mention that Omar is detained for killing a U.S. medic, something that Zaynab said was no big deal.
The most egregious part of the article is where Shephard not only writes but states as a fact that "Her views have softened since she appeared in a 2004 CBC television documentary that profiled a fourth brother." In that documentary, Zaynab had said that americans "deserved to feel a pain similar to what they inflicted on others." So exactly how have the views of this sweet young thing changed? Now she says, "No on likes killing people. This is something I’m a hundred per cent sure, nobody likes killing people. But sometimes killing people can solve a problem, a bigger problem."
Zaynab Khadr hasn’t changed or softened her views; she merely softened the language that she used in conveying her belief that the events of 9/11 where 3,000 people died were justified. Shephard’s factual statement that Khadr has softened her views is disgusting and conforms to the anti-american and anti-Israel positions that her newspaper often takes. Michelle Shephard is nothing more than a propagandist for the Zaynab Khadr and her beliefs.