Dear Editor;

I am an American Jew who strongly opposes the Israeli military occupation of Palestine, now in its 39th year.

During the recent vice presidential debate, Senator Edwards was asked how America could contribute to a peace process between Israel and Palestine. His response was to reiterate Israel’s ‘’right and obligation” to protect itself from terrorist attack, and to lament, as any right thinking person must, the tragedy of Israeli children killed in a suicide bombing.

To my shock and dismay he did not so much as mention the existence of the Palestinian people, much less any rights they may have. Nor did he mention that, even as he spoke, the population of the Gaza Strip - - some 1.5 million people, mostly refugees from previous Israeli attacks w - -as under fierce Israeli military siege ostensibly in retaliation for recent rocket attacks by militants on Israeli towns.

Since the military assault on Gaza began on September 29th, over 120 Palestinians have been killed, most of them unarmed civilians, and about 25 of them children under the age of 17. Hundreds more have been injured.

Palestinian schoolgirls seem to have fared particularly badly during this operation, grotesquely dubbed “Days of Penitence”. Yesterday Ghaderr Mokeir, 11 years old, was shot at her desk when Israeli forces opened fire on her UN supported school. Last month another girl from the same village was also shot as she sat at her school desk. That girl did not survive. On October 5th, Iman al Habs, a 13 -year -old schoolgirl, was shot as she walked not far from an army outpost, carrying her schoolbooks. After she was hit, she tried to flee and then fell to the ground. According to Israeli soldiers who took the rare step of going public with the horrific events they witnessed, as Iman lay wounded or dying, the Israeli platoon commander approached her and fired 2 bullets in her head. He then went back a second time and, putting his weapon on its automatic setting, empting his entire magazine into her body. (As reported by BBC Broadcast News).

Are the lives of Iman and the hundreds of other children killed in Palestine by Israeli forces since 2000 of any lesser value than those of Israeli children? What is the ‘right and obligation” of defenseless Palestinian mothers and fathers and residents to protect their children and themselves against lethal attack by Israeli forces?

Not long ago, four former chiefs of the Israeli Shin Bet security agency startled the world when they spoke out publicly against the occupation and the oppression of the Palestinian people. One of them said; “We must once and for all admit that there is another side, that it has feelings and that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully.” Clearly Senator Edwards is not yet willing to make that admission.

Despite my dismay at Senator Edwards’ rhetoric I have no choice but to support the Kerry/Edwards ticket given the dangerous alternative of another Bush administration. I hope within the near future Senators Kerry and Edwards will take steps to educate themselves on the legal, political and human rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the Israeli people, and that their administration will become a force for a just and peaceful solution for this suffering region.

--Carol Sanders, USA