Questions and Concerns About the ‘L.A. 8’

Re “18 Years Waiting for a Gavel to Fall,” Column One, June 29: You did an excellent job explaining the story of the “L.A. 8,” helping America see that for years Zionist-inspired witch hunts have been targeting Palestinians, trying to depict them as villains to take away their rights in America. Billions of dollars of our hard-earned money support Israel’s own extensive state-sponsored terrorism of the native Palestinian people.

I cry for the orphans of Palestine, suffering in crowded concentration camps, denied freedom and a future, refugees made refugees multiple times all because Israeli racism and war rules, rather than real justice and the possibility of peace.

Anne Selden Annab

Mechanicsburg, Pa.

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No Arab terror group has been at it longer than the murderous Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Yet you defend those who raise money for the PFLP. Is there any group supporting Arab terror you would not defend? FBI agent Frank F. Knight is a hero, not a villain, as you described him.

Albert Reingewirtz

Carlsbad

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As an American Jew, I share with many the concern for human rights in general, and specifically those of Palestinians, whose basic civil liberties are extremely curtailed by the repressive policies of the Israeli government, funded to the tune of $3 billion a year in military aid from the U.S.

It would be a great crime to our social fabric to deport the L.A. 8 with no more evidence than having been “guilty” of the distribution of a magazine.

Michel Ibrahim Shehadeh, one of the L.A. 8, is an important member of the human rights community of the Los Angeles area. I have known him for years. We have broken bread many times. It is the FBI’s relentless pursuit of nonviolent human rights activists that is the real threat to our safety and to justice.

Given the refugee status of the L.A. 8 and Israel’s refusal to allow Palestinians to return to their homes, one wonders, where will the U.S. deport these activists?

Emma Rosenthal

Baldwin Park

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Peter King did a great job documenting the 18 years of torment these Palestinian immigrants have had to endure. Obviously, if these people were real terrorists, it would not take 18 years to prove it.

The real questions are who has been bankrolling Knight all these years and why don’t the FBI and all of our sundry Homeland Security agents track and arrest dual-nationality Israeli immigrants, who clearly support illegal and terrorist activities in Palestine?

Suzanne Moorman

Orefield, Pa.