Don’t pick on taxi drivers

[Re: “Angel: Getting Foreign Doctors Working,” News, July 23] It was so very predictable that you would bring up and use as an inevitable punchline that tired old “foreign-trained-doctor-driving-a-taxi” cliché. Couldn’t you lazy journalists have tried being more original in denouncing what may well be a legitimate situation of concern here in Quebec by not additionally and gratuitously picking on taxi drivers and belittling their occupation?

Why do you resort to perpetuating this silly and unfounded myth? How many “lowly” taxi drivers have you encountered who are actually frustrated out-of-work doctors, engineers, architects, whatever other “respectable” so-called profession you care to name?

There really aren’t that many, a negligible amount I assure you. Most taxi drivers are happy being taxi drivers and, despite all the crap we have to put up with, would really not want to do anything else for a living.

>>R. BARBARO, TAXI DRIVER BY
CHOICE

Don’t pick on MJ

[Re: “Cashing in on cashing out,” News, July 16] “Mirror: Did it ever cross your mind that maybe (Michael Jackson) dying was the best thing that could’ve happened to this wreck of a creature?”

Halperin’s answer has class. Chris Barry’s question, on the other hand, and the way he expressed it, show why his e-mail nick (dimwit) is accurate.

>>ALEX SIMONELIS

Don’t make
nudity boring

[Re: “Healing in the nude,” People, July 16] Nudity, as much as our idealists would like it to be, is not neutral. The power of explicit sexuality can overwhelm any spiritual vision of nakedness, which someone like Joyce Strong may have.

To practise nudity randomly or without discretion is perfectly feasible in a world without sexual appetites—and who wants that?

Perhaps the human animal does “hide behind clothes,” but the human soul chooses clothing as a tactic, inasmuch as we decide on what degree of intimacy we wish to engage in. The civil difference between respect and indulgence, in general, is reflected culturally in how much or how little clothing we wear.

Basically, nakedness is not taken for granted. In other words, intimacy should be an option rather than tyrannically imposed by the so-called liberated. I sure don’t want to be liberated to the point where nudity actually becomes boring.

>>L.S. CATTARINI

Explaining Israel

[Re: “Settlers, decide,” Letters, July 23] Many people, including some Mirror correspondents, have no idea of what Israel is. Let me explain. Israel is primarily a sanctuary for Jews in a hostile world. Israel is more than a state. It is a state of mind. I believe that wherever there are Jews who really know who they are, there is Israel.

Congregation M’Vakshe Derekh in Scarsdale, New York says in its Web site, “We consider the Jewish national rebirth centred in Israel to be the greatest accomplishment of the Jewish people in our century and encourage all Jews to develop their ties with the State of Israel.”

I would add that so-called “anti-Zionist Jews” have turned against their own extended family and are, therefore, no longer part of it.

Furthermore let’s not hear any more nonsense about “settlers” in the “occupied territories.” The only places where Israelis settle is in Eretz Yisroel, the land of Israel. That includes the so-called “West Bank” which is really Judea and Samaria, which are geographically and historically parts of Israel.

Also, the Jews are the true indigenous people of Israel. Palestine is just a false name for Israel invented by the Roman Empire after the expulsion of the Jews from their homeland in 69 CE (AD) and used since that time out of ignorance.

The Brief History of Israel and the Jewish People explains: “Subsequently the Romans decimated the Jewish community, renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina and Judea as Palaestina to obliterate Jewish identification with the Land of Israel (the word Palestine, and the Arabic word Filastin originate from this Latin name).”

As for the “right of return,” Arabs have 21 countries to return to.

Jews have only one.

>>BARRY MERSON

Poetic fan mail!

you tow the line of the peladeaus
when the kattans gave birth to you from the village voice
you now tow to dirlik and patrice bombardier
like the germans did to goebbels
you are a tool of the forces of evil
you promote prostitution in your pages
you are a blight on christianity and judaism
you are a secular book of pure evil
pure evil

>>ANONYMOUS

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