Joe Carr watched a bulldozer crush fellow activist Rachel Corrie in Gaza two years ago. Weeks later, he witnessed the shooting of another activist, Tom Hurndall, in the same region.

The violence only fueled the 23-year-old Kansas City resident's desire to help people in the turbulent Middle East.

“It was just incredibly affecting to me and really connected me to the Palestinian struggle,” he said.

Carr and Andrea Whitmore, also of Kansas City, recently returned from separate trips to the Middle East. Both are members of the local Citizens for Justice in the Middle East, which tries to educate the public about the conflict and to end U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

The two activists traveled with different groups but share a hope for peace in the region, a frustration with U.S. policy and a desire to share their stories with others. Both will be giving public talks about their experiences.

“It's a moral responsibility to speak out,” said Whitmore, a writer and former teacher at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Others in the Kansas City area, of course, hold different political views.

Marvin Szneler, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee, said few people believe that U.S. policy prevents peace.

“I think that's a very fringe view,” he said, adding that it has been refuted even by the Palestinian Authority.

Szneler, who recently visited the region, said former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's death has many feeling optimistic.

“Israel is the most hopeful it's been in years,” he said.

Carr returned in December from a three-month trip to the Middle East where he worked as a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams. He spent much of his time in the West Bank city of Hebron.

It was his second trip to the region. Carr traveled there in 2003 as a member of the International Solidarity Movement, an organization that included Corrie and Hurndall.

Huwaida Arraf, a co-founder of the organization, confirmed that Carr witnessed both incidents involving Corrie and Hurndall.

Their deaths made international headlines. Corrie, a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., was killed in March 2003 while protesting home demolitions by the Israelis. A month later, Hurndall, a British activist, was shot in the head while attempting to protect Palestinian children. He died months later.

Carr's latest trip was calmer, he said, though he was jailed at one point.

Carr helped Palestinians build a clinic. He guided young Palestinian children who had to walk near Israeli settlements to get to school. And he walked the fields with Palestinian farmers and shepherds whose land bordered Israeli settlements.

The children were harassed and abused on their way to school, he said. Efforts to bring attention to the children's plight ultimately led to the children receiving police or military escort, he said.

“Sometimes, even with the police presence, (settlers have) attacked them and harassed them,” Carr said. “What I do consider a success is that people are paying attention a little bit.”

Carr said he was arrested while monitoring checkpoints with another activist.

“It was so absurd,” he said of the incident. “They interrogated us. They tried to intimidate me. They got in my face.”

After about six hours in jail, he said, he was released.

Carr's work has garnered praise from fellow activists at home.

“From my perspective, Joe has taken a very courageous step to try to make a difference in this part of the world,” said Matt Quinn, president of the local Citizens for Justice in the Middle East.

Carr, a graduate of Center High School and Evergreen State College, has always looked out for other people, said his mother, Jackie Carr.

“He always wanted to save the world, even when he was a little boy,” she said.

But Jackie Carr worries about her son's safety. She thinks of Corrie and sees how close her own son is to the violence.

“It could have been him,” she said.

Some of Carr's journals are on the Internet, and his mother fears he could make enemies with people he doesn't know.

But Carr said he's willing to stand up for his beliefs.

He has made a three-year commitment with Christian Peacemaker Teams and believes he will return to the Middle East. Even while his mother worries.

“If something happens to him, he was doing what he believes was important,” Jackie Carr said.

Whitmore, who lives near Penn Valley Community College in midtown Kansas City, spent two weeks in October in the Middle East with Interfaith Peace Builders, a team sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Her group, of about eight people of various ages and backgrounds, met with people on both sides of the conflict, including Israeli settlers and Palestinians.

Kendra Froshman, a 23-year-old Californian who also made the trip, said the activists were united in their desire to learn firsthand about the situation.

“In the media we see lots of killing and bullets and people crying,” Froshman said. “Actually speaking with people there – it's really powerful…People want to know more deeply what the conflict is all about.”

Whitmore met with people who lost family members in suicide bombings. And she witnessed the humiliation imposed on Palestinians, she said.

She saw how many people on both sides want a peaceful resolution.

“The people are remarkably resilient,” said the English-born Whitmore. “They go about their business.”

But many suffer.

“It breaks your heart, because it's not right that this should go on,” she said.

Carr wants the United States to cut aid to Israel until that country ends its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. He said Israel must stop violating Palestinian human rights with home demolitions, land confiscation, curfews and roadblocks, house raids, missile attacks and brutal repression of nonviolent demonstrations.

“Only then can the U.S. claim to be an independent arbiter in a lasting peace agreement,” Carr said.