Cultural change tends to have a pendulum-style rhythm, and we are now at the dawn of another collective phase. This mode of collectivism embeds us in communities—but they’re not friendly communities; they’re angry ones.

For the past two and a half months, with the help of an American professor, Robert Vogel, teens from a number of Jewish and Palestinian communities in Israel were encouraged to write about their identities and process their feelings. Heart of a Nation had the privilege of hosting six of these remarkable students.

International high school and college-level students are invited to participate in a social media storytelling contest surrounding October 7 and the ongoing war.

Emerging voices are making the case that the failure of political leadership means that a top-down resolution of affairs… will not be possible to achieve without the greater engagement of civil society…

As we watch the horrors of another war in the Middle East, it is easy to get gloomy and depressed... But that misses an important shift that has taken place in recent times, one that provides some cause for optimism about the future…

Failure to capitalize on this transformative moment would have far-reaching consequences… Israel risks squandering this chance, a mistake with potentially grave consequences for us all.

Many peace groups have been struggling since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which have hardened the positions of many Israelis and Palestinians. But some activists, including those in Combatants for Peace, have quietly started to resume their work.

All the world’s babies are children of a single nation. They have a common language, a common past, common dreams.

The trauma of this war has wiped away compassion for the other. We need courageous voices, reaching between sides, to emerge.

More than 60 countries, with some 4 billion people, are set to stage national elections in 2024. That means roughly half the planet could go to the polls in what could be the greatest rolling spectacle of democracy in human history.

‘I think that in our souls, or our minds, or whatever you call it, there is something very complex, some ability to contain ambiguity, not to be swept with only one emotion. To be able to inhale the complexity of existing,’

One of our slogans is, "There is no movement without friction.” If we want to get things moving, obviously there will be differences of opinion about us. Standing Together is a stream of thoughts, from which we derive our actions.

We are blessed and cursed by not having a mother tongue,' said Amira Mohammed, one of the two Palestinian Israeli hosts of the new podcast Unapologetic: The Third Narrative.

'It may be nice to dream of one shared homeland, but Israelis will not give up their state. And Palestinians also need their own state, with the two strongly interconnected'…

We have all lost friends, co-workers, fellow congregants and family members because of our current fault lines and divisions… and the distance created by those acts and anthems seems unbridgeable. And maybe it is. But does it have to be?

How much do Americans really care about democracy? The disturbing answer: Less and less, especially among the young…

Faced with uncomfortable feelings, the pressure to get rid of them by doing something can make it hard to control our impulses and consider the consequences of our actions.

If we want to reverse the trend of radicalization, we cannot just talk about it. Instead of lamenting and making broad gestures toward peace and stamping out extremism, we have to provide actual alternatives...

This is the time to address Israelis in the spirit of mutual respect, hope, and truthfulness; to move beyond the dismissive, derogatory, and threatening words and deeds that define the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis, and between Arabs and Jews.

Clearly, it is difficult to talk about peace during wartime... But a peace initiative is the only way Israel’s ultimate security can succeed.