Piss take

[Re: “Holistic healing or holy hokum?” News, March 25] The answer to the question posed in the headline for the article on Deepak Chopra is that he is the archetypal practitioner of Triple B spiritualism. That is, his Bullshit Baffles Brains!

Let us not forget that this is the man who would have us practise the Ayurvedic medicine belief that a sip of urine a day is good for whatever ails you.

>>A. Lawrence Healey

Mini-skirted
Mounties not hot

[Re: “The image-neurotic Mounties,” Insect, March 25] I’m appalled at this week’s Insect. When I watched the closing ceremonies, what shocked me the most is that women were, once again, relegated to sex bimbos in mini-skirts while the male RCMP officers were the big brawny hero types.

The RCMP is quite right to protest this awful, demeaning portrayal of their female officers. Women in the RCMP have to deal with so much more bullshit off the bat because they are women in a traditionally male job.

The closing ceremonies were indeed offensive, and promoted 1950’s gender stereotypes. It’s very disappointing, not to mention troubling, to see a legitimate complaint against sexism end up as the week’s insect.

>>Carolyn Zwicky-Perez

Raf exposes warts

[Re: “Raf a keen observer,” Letters, March 25] Raf is definitely the best writer at the Mirror. I was very annoyed by the first guy who wrote to complain about his column. He’s not just “a keen observer of society”— he chronicles human peculiarity and stupidity by making himself “exhibit A” and he’s not afraid to expose his own warts in the process.

This is something we see too rarely and it’s a real shame that the first letter writer mistook it for navel-gazing.

>>Lise Weil

The big lies

[Re: “The prophetic tradition,” Letters, March 18] First, let me congratulate the Mirror for the March 11 edition, which was completely free of this Middle East War. Alas, it only lasted a week and then the hate-filled letter from one Lina Magliola appeared to join those of the usual suspects.

Magliola joins the hateful or ignorant group that accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing.” That is wrong. Ethnic cleansing would have one eliminate, or seriously reduce, the population of a people. Assuming she is referring to Arabs, they constitute 20 per cent of the population of Israel proper and there are more of them now than there were in all of pre-partition Palestine. They have full rights of citizens, sit in the Israeli parliament, are judges and ambassadors and are disproportionately present as students in some universities. They also enjoy full freedom of worship.

Now, during the War of Independence (1948–’49), when Arab armies attacked the proposed Jewish and Arab states in Palestine, being badly defeated in the former and conquering and occupying what was left of the latter for 19 years, Arabs in what became Israel were told to flee and obeyed, went on their own initiative as happens in all wars, were expelled by victorious Israelis, or stayed. Those who left have been kept prisoners in camps by Arabs, neither allowed to become citizens of where they are nor resettle elsewhere, for 62 years. This particular crime has been committed against no other refugee population ever. Those camps are entirely in Arab countries, especially Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. The reason, of course, is that Palestinian leaders do not want a two-state solution—they want Israel and that will never happen nor will these people ever go back there except maybe as tourists.

Not one Jew remained in occupied Palestine from 1948–1967. Who is the ethnic cleanser, I wonder? Just the other week, an ancient synagogue was reopened in Jerusalem that had been destroyed by the Jordanians. But the Muslim mosques on the holiest site in Judaism remain in place.

Then there is the contention that Zionism does a great disservice to Judaism and Jews. On the contrary, it is best thing that ever happened to us. I imagine we are supposed to prefer the Inquisition or Arab dhimmitude.

As readers of this endless debate may have surmised, I have quite an admiration for the methods of the mercifully dead Josef Goebbels. It was he who realized that the bigger the lie and the more often repeated, the more the gullible masses will believe it. As a result, Germans who wanted peace welcomed the invasion of Poland to avenge invented “crimes” against ethnic Germans there.

Ms. Magliola and the Dirlik/Bombardier/Groves axis and their kindred spirits, rather than engaging in reasonable criticism, repeat the big lies of ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

I congratulate them on their strategy. It does work on the gullible masses. I hope Mirror readers are not among them.

>>Ken Frankel

Correction: The Front item on Earth Day, “Switch ‘em off,” on March 25 referred to the World Wildlife Federation. It is the World Wildlife Fund.

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