Fighting for Peace Under Democracy

I was impressed by your story of Kristen Schurr, reporting on the group from the International Solidarity Movement that brought food into the besieged Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (“U.S. Backers of Palestinian Cause Protest Their Treatment by Israel,” May 19). Schurr reported that, although an American citizen, she was assaulted by Israeli troopers, jailed for a week without charges and forced to fly home without most of her belongings.

As a U.S. taxpayer supporting the Israeli army to the tune of $3 billion to $4 billion a year, I am directly complicit in that violation of her human rights, especially in a nation that calls itself “the only democracy” in the Middle East.

I was unimpressed by the put-down description of her as a “33-year-old doctoral student and self-described peace worker” and “one of a small minority of non-Arab Americans who have embraced the Palestinian cause.” There are far more of us “self-described” peace workers who have embraced the cause of justice for the Palestinians than your tendentious and unfair reporting might ever be willing to admit.

Thomas E. Ambrogi

Claremont

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I wonder whether we could get Schurr and her fellow “peace activists” to go to Iraq, where they’d protest treatment of the Kurds. Failing that, maybe they could complain about Sudan’s genocide against its own Christian and animist populations for the last 22 years. Not a chance!

J.A. Nylander

Claremont