There was no surprise reading a highly skewed perspective presented by Bethe Dufresne in her April 21 op-ed, "Hebron walk reveals cruel occupation." She has now at least twice gone on trips with the anti-Israel Tree of Life Educational Fund. Her Hebron guide was from Breaking the Silence, an organization depending heavily on funding from hostile foreign governments and NGOs. It’s widely despised in Israel.

However, there are some basic facts that should have been included even in this anti-Israel propaganda piece.

I was amazed to see Hebron described as being "lorded over by a hornet's nest of militant Israeli settlers" when 80 percent of Hebron is under control of the Palestinian Authority. Those supposedly "militant Israeli settlers" can't even set foot there.

Why is there no mention that Hebron, of minor importance to Arabs and Muslims, is Judaism's second most holy city, with a Jewish community living there from even before it served as the Biblical Jewish kingdom's first capital until 1929? That year an Arab pogrom was instigated by Haj Amin el Husseini, who later spent much of World War II in Berlin, a guest of Adolf Hitler. Sixty-seven Jews were slaughtered. The community fled to Jerusalem, ending 3,000 years of Jewish presence.

To paraphrase Dufresne's closing, Israeli Jews deserve to walk freely and safely in that ancient Jewish city without the need of soldiers to protect them from yet another massacre.

Alan Stein

Netanya, Israel, and Natick, Mass.