CHRISTIAN CHURCHES: RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES OR POLITICAL PRESSURE GROUPS?

I would like to correct a few misapprehensions about the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (‘ Partisan’ Christian project angers board, June 22).

I have served twice as an ecumenical accompanier (EA) in the West Bank and a week was programmed so we could hear a variety of Israeli views.

We do not take sides in the conflict. We are not neutral when it comes to human rights abuses, however — our principal task in the field is to observe, report and sometimes intervene when we witness such abuse. (It should go without saying that we deplore the human rights abuses committed by Palestinians on Israelis such as the rockets from Gaza.)

As for “peddling skewed views”, the selection procedure is rigorous. I know one candidate who was rejected for being too pro-Palestinian. Great care is taken to make sure that we do not give our own views or step outside of the circumscribed remit of an EA.

Our presentations are based on our experiences. We use facts and figures from Israeli organisations and bodies such as the UN, the Red Cross and Amnesty International. I hope this goes some way to reassuring the chief executive of the Board of Deputies about a programme dedicated to ending occupation and supporting a just peace in Israel-Palestine. Sharen Green sharen_eappi@msn.com

As a Quaker, I have to agree with your articles criticising Quakers for their disgraceful stand against Israel. For years we have taken a very biased and simplified view of the Israel/ Palestine situation and have enthusiastically supported EAPPI and its one-sided advocacy for the “Palestinian cause”. Quakers imagine they are encouraging peace by supporting the side that refuses peace while being hostile to the side that has seriously tried to make peace. I am ashamed of British Quakers.

I have started a fledgling Quaker Friends of Israel. If you know of any other Quakers who are similarly appalled at the activities carried out in our name, please let me know. Sarah Lawson salawson@ntlworld.com

I am a member of Forest Hill Quaker Meeting and at Meeting for Worship on Sunday a friend showed me your editorial ( Quakers astonish, June 22) which commented on the Quaker support for a ban on the import of products from Israeli settlements. In the editorial the phrase, “something, even the wrong thing, has to be done to bring Israel to heel’, is used.

For a single Quaker or group of Quakers to endorse that phrase is terrible. It suggests a Machiavellian attitude of the end justifying the means. Nothing could be further from where Quakers should stand; we have a strong tradition of peacemaking and the first rule of peacemaking is not to take sides. As it says in the Bible, “Judge not, that ye be not judged”.

Whoever it was that said or implied that phrase undermined any authority that Quakers may have had in peacemaking. How can we help in reconciling differences when we have judged and stated our support for one side over the other? We are a religious society, not a political pressure group. John Brown brown.work@zen.co.uk