Friend,
I just returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank. I left with the usual combination of despair and determination to work harder toward a better future.
During my day in the West Bank, I traveled the same path many J Streeters have walked before me.
It was a dagger to my heart.
There was an eerie kind of quiet as I traveled through abandoned neighborhoods, the silence born of the violent, cruel expulsion of Palestinians from their land.
I felt a stillness in the ruins of homes following displacement and demolition. Much has been left behind in the village I visited, Mu’arajat in the Jordan Valley, and so many other communities like it.
Homes waiting for families who are not coming back. Playgrounds and schools bereft of the joyful laughter of children. Lives simply stopped.
We saw settler outposts everywhere we looked. Olive trees that were once a bountiful, beautiful blue-silver are now brown, brittle and bare of any fruit. Settlers using their own sheep and cows to slowly destroy the Palestinian farms around them. It was a quiet destruction, the terrorism easy to mistake for neglect if you didn’t know what you were seeing.
The only sound piercing the silence was the testimony of our Palestinian hosts – stories of the violence and indignities suffered at the hands of violent settlers and pleas for American intervention.
Settler terrorism must stop. It does not represent my Jewish values. It does not make the Israel I love more secure.
The UK, joined by France and Canada, just announced major action against Israeli settlements in the West Bank, banning imports from Israeli settlements and sanctioning those who finance, facilitate or support their expansion.
This is exactly the kind of accountability J Street has long called for: Concrete action against the settlement project that will pave the way for Palestinian self-determination and Israeli security.
Now, we need Congress to follow suit.
Add your name to our petition urging Congress to support these settlement sanctions and to pursue similar accountability measures of its own.
Tell Congress: Sanction Settlements →
It’s critical for those who care deeply about Israel to speak out in moments like these. Every signature helps us make the case on Capitol Hill that our shared mission – Palestinian freedom and a secure, democratic Israel – depends on ending the settlement project now.
Thank you for standing with us,
Nancy Reichman
Chair-Elect, J Street Board
