Curve was wrong to let dancers perform
As part of the organising group for Friday's demonstration against Israeli dance company, Batsheva, I would like to ask your readers to consider whether they want our flagship cultural institution Curve to be part of an Israeli government-financed marketing initiative?
Batsheva are clearly part of the Brand Israel campaign which aims to put a pretty face on Israel abroad.
The decision of Curve director, Fiona Allan, to invite Batsheva to Leicester is highly questionable.
Many other theatres of similar standing around the UK did not feel the need to join in.
Our protest was part of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign to pressure Israel and raise awareness of the continuing repression of all aspects of Palestinian life, including cultural and artistic life.
What a shame that Curve does not understand that cultural acts are not neutral; that it missed an opportunity to take a stance against the continuing abuse of Palestinian human rights by Israel; that it didn't have the courage to lead by example.
As Batsheva danced on Friday, Israeli bombs were dropping on Gaza, and they are still. Curve had nothing to lose and everything to gain by helping us stop them.
Jane Foxworthy, member of Leicester Palestine Solidarity Campaign
It's Satan running the show on earth
I have read, with interest, many letters discussing the existence of God, the activities of His followers and various associated issues.
I was particularly interested in a letter by Don Tallis ("Diversity exists without Divinity", Mailbox, August 15).
He closes by posing the question: Why does a benevolent God allow disasters, tragic events and the deaths of innocent children?
I will not insult anyone's intelligence with the "God moves in mysterious ways" cop-out.
Having been a Bible student for 29 years, it is clear that God always makes clear His will and purpose. We need to bear in mind that according to 1 John 5:19, it is Satan who is currently running the show here on Earth.
The scriptures also makes it very clear that we are living in what the Bible calls the last days.
The good news is that God will shortly bring an end to the wicked system.
All that has happened throughout mankind's history thus far has come about because God's right to rule was challenged by Satan.
How will this change come about? Well, I'm sure we've all said the Lord's Prayer, where we ask for God's Kingdom to come.
It is that kingdom that will remove Satan and his cohorts along with all the wickedness and wicked people from the face of the Earth.
All of this information and so much more is available to us all in God's handbook for life, the Bible. All scriptures cited are from the "amplified Bible".
I realise that there are so many questions that people may have, on a multitude of subjects. God's word contains the answers.
So, next time someone offers you a free home Bible study, why not accept the offer?
I did and now have a wonderful hope for the future, despite how bleak things look at the moment.
I hope this answers Mr Tallis's question.
Keith Coleman, Worthington
This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury (but not on its website):
No evidence of historical Jesus
Mark Jacques's puerile simile comparing the questioning of Christ's existence to being on the same level as a Holocaust denier (Mailbox, July 19) shows just how low he is prepared to sink when rubbishing anyone who dares to question the faith that he so obviously regards as undeniable fact.
The substantive evidence for the Holocaust - the gas chambers, the mass graves, the spoken and written testimony of the survivors, camp officers and guards - is beyond doubt.
There is no substantive evidence to prove that Christ ever existed.
The only thing to even suggest his existence are the stories written about him in the New Testament, which was not published until 400 years after his supposed death, by which time there was no one living to give eyewitness testimony anyway.
Throughout history, writers have chronicled the events of the places, people and events that tell humanity's story.
Strange, then, that contemporary historians living in the places where Christ is said to have lived, preached and travelled, mention nothing of his existence, let alone the effect that his actions are said to have had in riling the authorities of the time leading up to his crucifixion.
When the Christian theologian and writer F W Farrah (1831-1903) read through these writings, he expressed his surprise and dismay when he wrote: "There is no statement in all history that says anyone ever saw Jesus or talked with him.
"Nothing in history is more astonishing than the silence of contemporary writers of contemporary writers about events relayed in the four Gospels."
Astonishing? I'll say it is.
If Jesus did walk among us and had the impact on society as described in the Bible, and a historian of that time had not acknowledged it, it would be like a modern historian writing a comprehensive biographical account of British Prime Ministers of the 20th century and totally failing to include Margaret Thatcher and the impact she had on world politics in the 1980s. It just couldn't happen.
Alan R Pendragon, Leicester
