Dear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton,

We, the undersigned U.S. citizens, are writing to express our profound outrage at the treatment of U.S. citizen Sandra Tamari by the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, which recently refused to assist her while being interrogated by Israel at Ben-Gurion Airport. Ms. Tamari was asked by the U.S. Embassy whether she is Jewish and was then refused assistance based on her response that she is Palestinian.

It is patently unacceptable for the U.S. Embassy to engage in such blatant discrimination. We demand that the Department of State issue clear guidelines to its embassy in Tel Aviv and consulate in Jerusalem that embassy employees are to respond immediately to all requests for assistance from U.S. citizens irrespective of their religion or ethnicity.

Furthermore, Ms. Tamari and two other U.S. citizens, Najwa Doughman and Sasha Al-Sarabi, were subject to blatant racial profiling by Israel and intrusive demands that they allow the Israeli government access to their private email accounts. They were detained overnight in a detention facility, without access to their luggage, passports or phones, and were deported the next morning. These practices by Israel are part of a systematic pattern to target Palestinian-, Arab-, and Muslim-Americans, as well as anyone seeking to visit or show solidarity with Palestinian family or friends, thereby denying them entry to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories based solely on their ethnic or religious background and/or their political beliefs.

The United States gives Israel more than $3 billion of weapons every year, weapons which are misused by Israel to commit human rights abuses of and to oppress Palestinians. We demand that the United States marshal its extensive leverage with Israel to formally demand an immediate end to its systematic policies of racial and political profiling of U.S. citizens and its violations of their privacy.