A lot of people, at least in this town, will be watching to see how Prime Minister Chretien handles the case of the ambassador of Lebanon. It seems the envoy, Raymond Baaklini, who is posted at Ottawa, gave an interview to the Montreal-based Arabic-language newspaper Sada al Machric, in which he said the “Zionist party” in Canada had the “number one role” in forcing Ottawa to outlaw the anti-Jewish terrorist organization known as Hezbollah (one of whose members the other day was quoted as saying that he wanted more Jews to move to Israel so Hezbollah wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of hunting them down in other countries). He suggested the Zionists control 90% of Canada’s press and take instructions and help from many Zionist organizations either in Canada or abroad. When asked by the National Post what he meant by his comments in the Sada al Machric, Mr. Baaklini replied: “I wanted to say exactly that 90% of the mass media in Canada is controlled by Jews or Zionists, and those Jews and Zionists, they are also supported by other organizations in the States.” One of the reasons the matter is resonating is the uproar that occurred last year when Mr. Chretien gave a speech to an international conference of French-speaking nations while the leader of Hezbollah was actually sitting in the front row. America’s deputy state secretary, Richard Armitage, no Middle East hawk, calls Hezbollah the “A-team of terror.” Yet Canada didn’t put it on its list of banned terrorist organizations until B’nai Brith Canada took the issue to court. A good test of Mr. Chretien will be whether he can deal with purveyors of anti-Semitism in the diplomatic corps in his own capital.