Ronit Yarosky is an anti-racist Jewish Canadian human rights activist and peace activist, and one of the founders of the Montreal Dialogue Group for Jewish-Palestinian dialogue.
Ronit Yarosky on realizing the extent of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinins (2012) “Most of these memories from my [Israeli] military service only came back to me after some ten years. They were transformative events, only I did not realize it at the time. The changes within me began when I started to question and think and ask, while I was doing my MA (at McGill, re Israel]. This is astounding in and of itself, that I could be at the level of a graduate thesis and discover that I knew so little… [I discovered that] My uncle’s very house was a Palestinian house. How did I not know?... Was everything I had learnt in my whole life a lie?... This was the beginning of a total, albeit slow, metamorphosis for me, my turning point – the realization that that there is more than one story in history. . There are multiple stories. And I grew to realize that we cheat ourselves as human beings by telling only one side… To quote my favorite phrase, “You have to be the change you want to see in the world.” [1, 2].
[1]. Ronit Yarosky, “The whole truth” in “Beyond Tribal Loyalties. Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists”, edited by Avigail Abarbanel (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) (pp 99, 100, 103).
[2]. Ronit Yarosky quoted in Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “Beyond Tribal Loyalties”. Stories of anti-racist Jews”, MWC News, 18 January 2012: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/24184-gideonpolya-beyond-tribal-loyalties.html .