Helping U.S. Citizens held against their will in Saudi Arabia
Reader comment on item: Hearing on "Should the United States Do More to Help U.S. Citizens Held against Their Will in Saudi Arabia?"

Submitted by Lila B. Reisman (United States), Aug 7, 2002 at 13:33

After the U.S. gets all the facts from Saudi Arabia and from their U.S. Embassy and the American citizens who surely must have gone to our Embassy for aid, if there is sound reason for American Citizens not to be allowed to go home...no murder cases, no civil cases that are detrimental to Saudi Arabia, then we must step in. Our American citizens leave U.S. shores with the understanding that our Embassy will aid and abet them when they want to leave a country so it is quite understandable that the U.S. should step in.
Lasty, I am amazed that the U.S. has not taken some action when 5 of our great citizens, studying at the Hebrew University that was founded in the pre Statehood years and open to all students from every country, including Arab students, to demonstrate that we will not tolerate this. Pres.Bush's note of "great sorrow" is an empty statement to say the least...especially when he immediately moves on to a statement of wanting Peace in the Middle East to the Jordanian leader whose late father, the Israelis helped to prevent Jordan from being overthrown by the Palestinians not so many years back. (4/5 of Palestine was given to make the Hashemite country of Jordan and that was that....prior to Israeli Statehood.)

We in the U.S. must recognize that Saudi Arabia, a totalitarian state, is not at all interested in seeing a democracy developed in a Palestinian state situated next to Israel and has fought this from the very first...when a separate state was offered to the Palestinians by the U.N. They, the Saudis feared, as did their other Arab totalitarian countries, that a democratic Palestinian state would cause an overthrow of their leadership. That is quite apparent to any thinking person.

Thank you again for your very insightful articles that I read with great relish and is the only email article that I am ever moved to comment on. As I told you previously, this 74 year old American born woman has seen with her own eyes what really took place
in the Middle East and I urge others to read the history books, if possible.

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