CPTnet Digest
20 January 2011
Mr. Don Smith, CEO
Combined Systems Inc.
388 Kinsman Rd.
Jamestown, PA 16134
Dear Mr. Smith,
I visited the West Bank with Christian Peacemaker Teams to learn and to promote peace.
What I experienced was quite different.
Our group participated in a peaceful demonstration in the town of Bidu.
The demonstration was intended to protest the Israeli demolition of buildings and
olive orchards on the edge of the town to prepare for building the wall
through this Palestinian community.
It didn’t remain peaceful.
Suddenly we heard explosions and saw clouds of smoke. We did not see soldiers through the trees and brush on the side of the road where the explosions were coming from. But we soon smelled the choking tear gas.
For a time it didn’t feel survivable. Have you ever experienced it?
According to newspaper reports, thirty-five people were injured.
Friends there send me videos almost daily of peaceful demonstrations, with intense responses of gas from Israeli soldiers. This is on Palestinian land, by an occupying army. Can you imagine what life is like for those people?
The inhumanity of it is shocking, but then I learned that you make the gas and canisters.
How can you possibly do that? People are dying from being hit by the canisters or breathing the gas. These are human beings who are trying to survive on land were their families lived for thousands of years.
If knowledge of what you are doing is not enough to make you stop sending those canisters, PLEASE visit the West Bank to see and experience it first hand. What you are doing is inhuman and if you are not fully convinced of that, please go there to see it yourself.
Sincerely,
Jake