Invest In Peace

My name is Uri Strauss. As a child, I was a settler in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank settlement of Efrat. I was taught in school and in my community that God gave all of Israel, including Judea and Samaria, to the
Jews and that Arabs (we didn’t acknowledge that they were Palestinians) were a menace that had to be defeated. I believed it and I participated in acts of racial harassment against the Palestinian workers who worked in the settlement. It was not until I was older and in the Canadian education system that I came to realize how wrong I had been. It’s painful to reflect on the indignities and humiliations that I may have caused.

The United States government does the wrong thing by funding and providing political cover for the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I believe it is up to civil institutions, especially community institutions that espouse moral standards, to morally condemn and financially divest from the occupation. I trust you to do the right thing.