Press
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October 24, 2025Collaboration can build a stronger, healthier tomorrow
Visitors to Givat Haviva often rub their eyes in disbelief: Jews and Arabs building deep, meaningful relationships every day, in every space, without denying their identities or narratives. Through our educational tools, mutual suspicion and fear are replaced with healthy curiosity and a desire to understand,” writes Mohammad Darawshe, Givat Haviva Director of Strategy, for Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) in the United Kingdom. ”The tragic war in Gaza is the longest and most brutal war we’ve ever known, and has shattered everything we’ve worked so hard to build – mutual responsibility, compassion, trust, and a shared society between Arabs and Jews in Israel,” Darawshe continues. “Surveys we have conducted during the war have confirmed that Jewish and Arab communities have closed off and distanced themselves from each other, avoiding the few shared spaces left in Israel. Against this backdrop, we have nurtured a healthy, thriving microcosm at Givat Haviva where partnership is not a necessity but a conscious choice. Jewish and Arab students arrive charged, angry, and hurt – but after 48 hours with children from the other society, they breathe easier. Thousands of emotionally wounded students came to us and left with friends and a smile. It’s hard to express just how meaningful it is to witness this process unfold every day, and to know that not all is lost.” Read Darawshe’s full article.
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October 20, 2025Israel’s fractured soul Everything shattered on Oct. 7, 2023. Two years later, Israelis and Palestinians are far from picking up the pieces.
During his weeklong trip to Israel in September, Boston Globe Editorial Page Editor James Dao visited Givat Haviva, met with staff and students at YOUNITED - Givat Haviva’s International School. Dao’s visit was a follow-up to Givat Haviva CEO Michal Sella’s meeting with the Globe editorial board in Boston in June. “Givat Haviva is an unusual oasis of diversity among Israeli public schools, with a mix of Palestinian Israeli, Jewish Israeli, and international students, almost evenly divided among Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Unlike many Israeli schools, they discuss Palestinian narratives in Israeli history, including about the Nakba — Arabic for ‘catastrophe’ — when some 700,000 Palestinians were driven from Israel in 1948,” writes Dao. “In a time when the Israeli left is a shadow of its once powerful self, the school is like a walled garden for the liberal vision of Jewish and Palestinian comity.” Yuval Dvir, principal of YOUNITED, and Clare King Lassman, the school’s director of fundraising and communications, are quoted in the article.
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October 15, 2025For those caught in the middle, the path to Middle East peace is a long one
For those caught in the middle, the path to Middle East peace is a long one The Globe and Mail, October 15, 2025 Doug Sanders, international affairs columnist for The Globe and Mail in Canada extensively quotes Mohammad Darawshe, Givat Haviva’s Director of Strategy, in his piece on opportunities for peace after the Hamas-Israel ceasefire. “After joyous days of bombs no longer dropping, hostages returning and aid flowing, the difficult questions are beginning to cut through the fog of no-longer-war. How, at what is widely considered the lowest moment in Israeli and Palestinian politics and mutual relations, can any lasting peace be carved out of this ceasefire?” writes Sanders. “I cannot think of a single individual in the Middle East who embodies that question, and knows how to approach it, better than a defiantly cheerful Israeli man named Mohammad Darawshe.” Mohammad tells Sanders that “there’s a deep psychological fatigue in our communities. After years of recurring violence and failed diplomacy, people have stopped believing that peace is even a possibility. My own children have grown up with the idea that war is cyclical and inevitable – that any calm is just a pause before the next eruption. That mindset is corrosive, and it shapes how we respond to any political overture.” Sanders cites Givat Haviva’s survey earlier this year that showed 72 per cent of Jewish Israelis do not trust, or are afraid of, Arab Israelis, and 52 per cent of Arabs now feel the same about Jews. Both figures, Darawshe says, are about three times higher than they were before the war.
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October 10, 2025Supporting work toward a shared society is vital for Israel - eJewishPhilanthropy
Tamara Serwer Caldas, a Friends of Givat Haviva board member, in her eJewishPhilanthropy oped, shares her personal connection to Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and what compels her to be deeply involved with Givat Haviva. “Fruitful, cooperative Jewish-Arab relations can seem impossible for anyone who looked on with dismay and horror at the excruciating aftermath of the horrific attack inside Israel on October 7, 2023, and the ensuing devastation in Gaza. Indeed, even with the new promise of a long-awaited ceasefire and hostage exchange, it is difficult not to feel hopeless and cynical about the future of the entire region. “For me, sinking into despair is not an option. Beginning in the days after the Oct. 7 attacks, one direction I turned toward for hope and action is the difficult but essential work of building a shared society….The natural place to turn my attention was Givat Haviva, the largest and oldest organization in Israel working toward a shared society between the country’s Jewish majority and the 20% of citizens who are Arab. “What compels me to get more involved is also deeply personal. My family’s connections with improving Jewish-Arab relations goes back nearly a century, a fact I recalled with new meaning and purpose in the wake of the events of Oct. 7, 2023. “My grandmother, Blanche Luria Serwer Bernstein, and her siblings collectively spent many years in Mandatory Palestine and then Israel….Reflecting after the Oct. 7 attacks on what I could possibly do to understand the legacy of my grandmother and other family members from her generation, I reached out to Friends of Givat Haviva, the U.S. based organization that my Uncle Sydney chaired and my grandmother supported for many years. “Like me, some of my American Jewish friends have struggled to figure out what it means to have a relationship with Israel in this time of extraordinary crisis and disillusionment. Reflecting on my own family’s history and on the urgency of the current situation, I’ve concluded that it’s my turn — it’s time for me to pick this up and figure out what I can do. “I encourage other Jews in Atlanta, and across the country, to consider supporting pioneering efforts toward building cooperative ties among Israel’s citizens. This work is essential to ensuring a healthy democratic and shared society in Israel.”
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September 22, 2025Change Starts When Decide Hate Will Not Have the Final Word
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati CEO Daniele V. Minson praises Givat Haviva’s Through Others’ Eyes program in her Cincinnati Enquirer oped, Change Starts When Decide Hate Will Not Have the Final Word, published on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. “In Israel, the vision of a shared society is fragile but worth defending. History reminds us that democracy is built not on victory but on reconciliation,” writes Minson. “Healing begins when people take bold steps in relationship together. We saw a glimpse of what that looks like last week. Four teenagers from Israel − Jewish and Arab − shared their photographs and experiences with hundreds in Cincinnati.” Givat Haviva’s Through Others' Eyes program, bringing together Israeli Arab and Jewish teenagers for dialogue and shared experiences, “shows that pluralism is not theory but lived practice,” Minson writes. “These teens remind us that even simple acts of being in relationship with one another can chip away at stereotypes and build something new. Change doesn’t come by accident. It comes when people decide fear will not have the last word.”
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September 17, 2025Art is a Piece of the Puzzle: A Special Encounter at Duke University
Avital Meshi writes about meeting with the five Israeli Arab and Jewish alumni of Givat Haviva’s Shared Art Center who are spending six weeks in an art residency at Duke University. “Art can foster dialogue and understanding. It can be a powerful form of expression, opening channels of communication and helping to bridge divides. In that sense, it can contribute to peace efforts,” writes Meshi. The conflict permeates the pieces the Israeli artists created at Givat Haviva and are exhibiting at Duke. “Despite being marked by pain and trauma, each of those artworks carried within it the possibility of better days,” writes Meshi. “Holding on to that possibility isn’t easy. Still, meeting this remarkable group of artists, and seeing institutions making space for their collaboration, was deeply moving.”