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As the Jewish granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, author Anna Baltzer's view of Israel differed little from that of many Americans.

"My image of Israel was of a small, victimized country that wanted peace if only its anti-Semitic Jew-hating Arab neighbors would leave it alone," she said Sunday during a speech at the Salt Lake City Library sponsored by Utahns for a Just Peace in the Holy Land.

That perception began to change about three years ago when the 27-year-old Baltzer, a graduate of Columbia and a Fulbright scholar, took an extended trip to the Middle East that included teaching English in Turkey and traveling in Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

"My new friends told me stories of past and present military attacks, house demolitions, land confiscation, imprisonment without trial, torture and government-spon- sored assassination," wrote Baltzer in her new book Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories.

"It seemed that these atrocities were not carried out for the protection of the Jewish people, as I had previously been taught, but rather for the expansion of Israel beyond its legal borders at the expense of the rights, lives and dignity of non-Jewish people living in the region," she wrote. "It was hard for me to believe that Israel could act so unjustly. Questioning Israel in any way felt like a betrayal of my grandmother."

That trip began a personal quest for Baltzer, who would do research for her book by spending five months in Palestine's West Bank working with the International Women's Peace Service.

Now, as evidenced in the speech and question-and-answer session at the packed Salt Lake City Library auditorium, the Jewish American writer offered views against Israel's occupation of Palestine and U.S. support of that occupation.

Baltzer's criticisms of Israeli and U.S. policy toward the Palestinians included accusations that:

* Checkpoints manned by the Israeli Army under the guise of providing security make it difficult if not impossible for Palestinians to attend college outside of their village, hold down a regular job or attend family functions such as marriages and funerals.

* Israel profits financially from roadblocks in Palestinian territories because the disruption to regular transportation routes make Palestinian-produced products more expensive to transport, thus making Israeli products, which can be moved on Jewish-only roads, cheaper to buy.

* Israel has violated more U.N. resolutions than any other country.

* Despite the perception of Palestinians as using suicide bombs to terrorize Israeli citizens, most protests are nonviolent.

Baltzer provided the audience with a fact sheet citing sources for her claims and said they are documented on her Web site, www.AnnaInThe MiddleEast.com.

"Find out for yourself," she told the audience. "You will not get the stories from the mainstream U.S. media."

In fact, during the question and answer session, Baltzer claimed that the U.S. media use internal censorship, that reporters can be fired for using the wrong kind of word and that the media too often adopt the rhetoric of the government.

"The media are more conservative because people are more conservative," she said.

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