AS ONE of the people quoted in Victoria Cheng's article ("In Bethlehem, a bond is born,"
City Weekly, Dec. 23), I was pleased with the way she summed up, in the
little space she was given, the purpose and spirit of the
Cambridge-Bethlehem People-to-People Project.
There
was one disturbing note, however: the two paragraphs devoted to the
views of Nancy Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Community
Relations Council.
Not only was Kaufman not on the trip with us.
Not only does she insist on calling a 26-foot-high concrete wall a
"fence." But she also ignores what the wall does to Palestinians'
lives, cutting neighbor off from neighbor, pupils from their schools,
workers from their jobs, and farmers from their land, and the fact that
it is in most places a long way into Palestinian territory from the
1967 Green Line. And her reasoning suffers from a fallacy about the
wall - that it is the cause of the halt in suicide bombings, something
many commentators would dispute.
But the real question for all of
us on the delegation and many others is why the Globe felt the need to
consult Kaufman. If "balance" is the issue, then I trust that the next
time anyone expresses views that are uncritical of Israeli policy
toward the Palestinians, the Globe will consult a member of our
delegation or of one of the several Boston-area groups concerned with
Palestinian rights.
EVA S. MOSELEY
Cambridge
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