Correspondence recently received from Cohen
to Castel. Cohen it seems is not yet dead.
Hullo Castel...
I’m still alive and thought to write you a quick note to let you know…I was as
they say ‘picked up’ just outside Cairo…you were right Castel…I should have
listened to you…not tortured much this time…but they beat me up pretty
badly…pretty brutal these guys…no big surprise…prison system in Iran is not
crash hot…Syrian military prisons were to be greatly feared…and Saddy Hussein’s
prisons were legendary….what is with these people Castel…why the
barbarity…suicide bombers…honour killings …beheadings…using kids as suicide
bombers…the ‘French’ Muslim nutter who chased a wee Jewish school lass in her
play ground…to shoot her in the head…why the barbarity…our Muslim brothers are slaughtering
innocents all over the world… killing Christians in Nigeria, Egypt,
Iraq…Pakistan...Buddhists in Thailand…they kill each other in Gaza…. in Syria
and Lebanon… in recent times they have slaughtered each other in the Iran-Iraq
war…and in Kuwait… in Iraq and Kurdistan …they are killing each other in
Somalia…in Pakistan…in Afghanistan…in India.. blowing each other up in
Indonesia… massacred innocents in London…in Spain…in Bali…in New
York……Indonesia…France and Israel…what is their problem…nothing can justify
this manner of behavior…you can see I feel quite strong about this…I think I
have said all this to you before Castel…guess I don’t talk to many people these
days...and then there is that facet of human culture classified as being of
‘historical importance’ for example the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan that were destroyed….the
sufi shrines in Pakistan…the manuscripts and shrines in Timbuktu…the little
known destruction of the art in the museum in Kabul under the Taliban…what
exactly is wrong with these people…why destroy examples of past rich human
cultures just because they didn’t believe what you believe…this I believe would
be defined in clinical psychiatry as a form of madness…why is no one looking at
levels of barbarity in the Arab world…fatwas…death because you are an
apostate…death because you are a child in the wrong place…but still a
child…heads lopped off…I am tired Castel…they let me go in the end…told me that
they would ‘pick me up’ again soon and send me back to Gaza…so I got out…I
still have contacts Castel…I’m in Paris now…thank God…though Paris also is not
what it once was...people forget how quickly things can change…but the coffee
is good and I’ve taken to drinking Armagnac…thanks again for looking after me
in Alexandria…Castel…I should have listened to you…not many good
obituaries of poor old Sharon…lots of stuff written with no context or the
writer seems to believe that Sharon lived in Disney Land…and treated some of
the inhabitants badly…!people should be looking at barbarity of the modern kind
acted out by Islamic religious types who believe that any action whatsoever is
justified and permissible under their code…Best Wishes Castel and don’t write
back…S H Cohen
