State Sen. Martha Scott last week defended her 2009 trip to Israel, saying she met with Palestinian lawyers during her stay there to “hear both sides of the story.”

State Sen. Martha Scott with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a trip to Jerusalem sponsored by an AIPAC-affiliated group.

Scott met with right-wing government leaders during a visit to Jerusalem organized by the American Israel Education Fund, a group affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Her office issued a press released in November saying “we learned about the unique problems of security and terrorists, settlement and refugees that Israel faces daily.”

The release discussed visits to the West Bank, where she met with Israeli settlers, and to the Israeli-Syrian border, but did not mention occupation or illegal settlements.

The trip and the statement angered some Arab American constituents and supporters who donated to Scott’s political campaigns in the past.

Scott represents portions of Detroit, Hamtramck, Highland Park, Harper Woods and the Grosse Pointes in the state legislature. She ran for U.S. Congress last year but does not plan to run again.

In January 2009, Scott appeared and spoke at a local demonstration protesting Israel’s three-week bombardment of Gaza that killed some 1,300 Palestinians in three weeks.

“I’m here with you because I feel your pain,” she said at the time. “I’ll always be with you because I understand.”

A group of Arab Americans later threw her a small campaign fundraiser.

She said in an interview last week that she isn’t very familiar with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I guess I still didn’t truly understand,” she said. “I like to try to help people, but there’s two sides to everything. I don’t know if that conflict is going to ever be resolved.”

Scott said she made the trip primarily for religious reasons and was encouraged to go by Baptist ministers.

She met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, toured Jerusalem, West Bank settlements, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Mevasseret Zion Immigrant Absorption Center, the Western Wall, the Masada archeological site at the Dead Sea and the Israel-Syrian border.

She said she also held a meeting with two Palestinian lawyers there to get a sense of the Arab perspective.

But during the Jan. 21 interview with The Arab American News, she remained unaware of controversy surrounding illegal settlements in the West Bank and the separation barrier referred to by many as the Apartheid Wall.

Scott does not plan to run again for U.S. Congress, and cannot run again for state Senate because of term limits.

She said she is considering a run for county commissioner in the future.