I admire the courage of Samuel Settle and Jonathan Bringuier in their July 6 letters to the editor confronting the difficult task of defending Israel when its own human rights organizations, politicians, academics and newspapers describe it as an apartheid state.

Bringuier whines about the capture of a single armed Israeli soldier, referring to Gild Shalit, who was captured while inside a tank armed and ready to attack Palestinians on occupied territory. Israel holds more than 10,000 Palestinian detainees and most of them in administrative detention under continuing torture (according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel). I'm not sure how Settle claims Israel as a democratic state when it claims to be a state exclusive to Jews only, where the Arab citizens there are treated as second class citizens, as reported by Bt'selem and other Israeli human rights groups.

Bringuier and Settle don't bother to quote any human rights sources to support their claims, unlike Sammy Haddad. It's not they don't want to quote the well respected human rights organization to support their argument, it's because they can't.

All major human rights organization (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'tselem) conclude that Israel practices a system of apartheid and denies basic human rights to the Palestinian people.

People today are getting tired of hearing talking points and are ready for the truth. Based on the documentary record, Israeli soldiers aren't defending a Jewish homeland. They are just war criminals defending a racist state and committing war crimes against the defenseless Palestinians.

Shadi Ghrayp

graduate-engineering