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
