The Prime Minister's policy on the funding of an arts program can never be compared to the perpetrators of one of history's most heinous crimes. Surely, the attempt to annihilate an entire people is beyond such facile and frankly insulting analogies.

Invoking the name of Adolf Hitler is merely a pathetic attempt to raise an issue's profile. It may even work in the short term, but eventually it will be seen for what it is; a miserable attempt at self-promotion. Falling back on the Hitler and Nazi comparison shows a dismal lack of civility and an even more sorry understanding of history and our potential for evil. The Canadian public is smarter than this and inevitably will be turned off by such absurd analogies.

In Yiddish we have a term for such shamelessness, a shande.

Bernie M. Farber, chief executive officer, Canadian Jewish Congress, Toronto.

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