Bigoted assholes?

[Re: “Damn Right,” Oct. 4] In rightly condemning U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s assistant Debra Cagan’s alleged blanket statement, “I hate all Iranians,” Scott Saxon wrongly asserts that, “It’s the sort of blanket statement that makes everyone think all Americans are a bunch of bigoted assholes.” 

So, is Scott Saxon suffering from a case of foot-in-mouth disease, or is it just a case of rather too cheeky tongue-in-cheek? Saxon’s own “blanket statement” about “all Americans” makes him appear to be something of a “bigoted asshole” himself. How does Scott Saxon’s apparent anti-American bigotry reflect on The Montreal Mirror?

>> Robin Edgar

Neglected natives

[Re: “Candles for native women,” Sept. 27] Excuse me for not wading into the highly charged, everlasting Israel-Palestine debate. I’m responding to the Front article, “Candles for native women.”

It is very true that native women, as well as native men, face a lot of discrimination in the Canadian justice system and that a disproportionate number of them end up being incarcerated. In many cases, it is just poverty being criminalized.

Since the settlers colonized the Americas and Australia, dozens of aboriginal languages have gone extinct, and many others are seriously endangered or facing extinction. Interestingly, November is designated Native History Month in North America, but it gets very little attention. Why is Native History Month not given as much publicity as Black History Month (celebrated every February)? The media needs to do a lot of soul-searching on this.

>> Manish Patwari

What is Zionism?

[Re: “Lessons for aliens,” Letters, Oct. 11] There are many people who have no idea what Zionism is. Let me explain it to you in simple terms: Zionism is Judaism in action. There are those, usually the same ones, who have no idea what Israel is. Let me explain that, as well, in simple terms: Israel is primarily a sanctuary for Jews in a world filled with anti-Semitism. The traditional Jewish prayer book, the Siddur, refers to the State of Israel as “The first flowering of the redemption of the Jews.”

It should also be understood that Jewishness is to be found in the Jewish people, the Jewish religion, Jewish culture and the Jewish state. It is anti-Semitic to be hostile to any of these indivisible aspects of Jewishness.

Israeli parliamentarian Natan Sharansky says that there are the three D’s of contemporary anti-Semitism. They are demonization, delegitimization and double standards. These are to be found all around us and are constantly promoted by self-proclaimed “human rights activists” who work for the human rights of everyone except Jews.

British Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks says of anti-Semitism, “at times it has been directed against Jews as individuals. Today it is directed against Jews as a sovereign people. The common factor is that Jews, uniquely, are denied the right to exist in whatever form their collective existence currently takes.”

I will also add a brief history lesson. Throughout the centuries and millennia, societies and institutions that have been hostile to the Jews all have one thing in common: they have all ended up in the garbage can of history. Let today’s enemies of Israel and the Jews be aware of this ongoing trend.

I will conclude with a quote from Professor Alan Dershowitz who says, “This is not 1935, and we are not weak and powerless. We are entitled to fight back.”

>> Barry Merson

Shirley Groves accurately describes CanWest Global (owned by the ultra-Zionist Asper family) as habitually inverting the Israeli-Palestinian reality by portraying those resisting occupation as aggressors and those committing it as victims. Revealingly, the Asper Foundation paid for a Canada-wide speaking tour of a racist and homophobic creep called Joseph Farah, who proclaimed that “there are no holy Islamic sights in Jerusalem” and referred to the “so-called Palestinians.”

Denying the Islamic connection to Jerusalem as well as the Palestinian national identity is vile historical revision on par with that of a David Irving, but it did not prevent David Asper from introducing Farah as “an inspiration to us all.”

So next time you come across anything on the Middle East from CanWest Global, just remember that it is as “objective” as would be the reporting on Nazi-Germany from a media outlet “inspired” by the equivalent of Holocaust deniers.

>> Carl Aboud

Since the mainstream media will not publish the truth, I am very grateful to have the Mirror as an alternative source through which the truth about the Palestinian situation and Canada’s role in supporting war crimes and violations of fundamental human rights can be revealed. And hopefully thereby changed as a result of pressure by citizens who want to see their country live up to its reputation as the humanitarian, fair and just country it used to be.

>> Mira Khazzam

You’re all a bunch of fucking assholes. Muslims Do Run Your Rag. Fuck you & Fuck Off & Die.

>> Bossman

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