Following last Thursday's Jerusalem bombing by the terrorist organization, Islamic Jihad, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said the "scenes of death and destruction ... evoke in Canadians our strongest feelings of anger and condemnation toward the cowardly perpetrators .... We must not allow the enemies of peace to succeed." At the same time, Islamic Jihad posted on its Toronto-based Web site a communiqué in Arabic celebrating the suicide bomber as a "martyr" and applauding what it called the "destruction of the restaurant and the killing of dozens of Zionists." Sixteen Israelis died, 100 were injured and many of the dead and maimed were children.

Mr. Chrétien was right to condemn the bombers, but he should do more. Canada, rightly, does not subscribe to free speech absolutism; there are hate speech laws, for example, although this newspaper disapproves of them. But if any form of speech should be stifled, it is the self-promotion, fundraising, recruitment and moral support of terrorism. The Islamic Jihad Web site is not just a mode of speech, it is part of the apparatus of murder.

The Islamic Jihad is one of many terrorist groups that benefits from Canada's weak anti-terrorism laws. The Irish Republican Army has used Toronto as a fund-raising and organization centre for years. Montreal was the home base of Algerian terrorists planning attacks on the United States. And the Tamil Tigers, described in a March, 2000, report for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service as one of the "most proficient and dangerous guerrilla/terrorist groups in the world," take Ottawa's lack of anti-terrorist resolve as an invitation to use Canada as a key prop to its campaign of murder and terror in Sri Lanka. The Tigers' Ottawa-based Web site offers links to the terrorists' press releases, radio shows and pictures. It runs an online store selling videos, books and audio tapes, which at least indirectly, support further murder. Canada is used and has been used as a soft touch for terrorists for too long. Our laws make it easy to launder money through charitable organizations. Our failure to investigate and prosecute terrorist activity has allowed them to live at ease among us, and when politicians are called to account for this, some of them have deflected legitimate inquiry with counter charges of racism and bigotry. It is time this stopped. There is no merit in gravely condemning "cowardly perpetrators" and the "enemies of peace" after they have committed some enormity overseas if, at all other times, our government's timorousness or indifference allows them to flourish in our home and native land.