University of Haifa Talk Tackles Israel’s Social Healing

The University of Haifa in Israel recently facilitated a discussion in English by Ran Kuttner, who runs the university’s program in international peace and conflict management. For several years, he has also taught at Creighton University and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Law School and in Israel.

Of all the universities there, the one in Haifa is perhaps best situated to be the home for such a program in understanding and dealing with conflict. Fifty percent of its students are from families that have never had a college graduate among them. Forty percent of the students are from Arab Israeli families, and the university has a student population that is among the most diverse in the country.

Its campus sits atop Mount Carmel on the Carmel Ridge and is surrounded by villages and smaller towns whose populations represent many different faith and social and economic backgrounds. It has offered the university a unique opportunity to train future generations in the skills of conflict resolution that can help Israel manage both its relationships with other nations and relationships among its own citizens.

Facilitating the online discussion with Dr. Kuttner was Gideon Herscher, vice president of the University of Haifa. They talked about healing from within, rebuilding Israel social fabric after Oct. 7.

Herscher prefaced the discussion by saying that Israel today faces profound internal divisions that threaten its social fabric and its national resilience. The aftermath of Oct. 7 he believes has intensified preexisting fractures between religious and secular communities, which we saw prior to Oct. 7, but it’s now amplified, and also those rifts between those with differing visions of how Israel’s society should be governed.

The schisms between Jews and Arab citizens, according to Herscher, have widened since Oct. 7 in Israel. This fragmentation of Israeli society, he pointed out, not only weakens Israeli society from within, but it also impacts critical national priorities, many of which will be raised today, including strategies for ending the war and securing the safe return of hostages.

In discussing how Israel can best heal itself internally in the years ahead, Dr. Kuttner said that the first step may be for the country to come in with a mindset where they reserve judgment and try to shy away from heated political discussion in which they take sides, saying who’s right and who’s wrong. His further remarks have been edited for space and clarity.

“I think part of what I would like to say is that we need to be able to observe and embrace and be mindful of the complexities at hand. And in order to do that, we need to take a step back from passionate advocacy towards one side or another.

“I was hosting a discussion among 15 Israeli Army members, friends since the age of 18, and now they’re 65 or 66. They called me in saying, ‘We can’t handle our relationship anymore.’ And you know, friends coming out of the Army, you know what kind of bonding that is, they say we’re unable to maintain and contain our relationships. Do come and help us.

“We were sitting there for three hours. There were two people at the end that were a bit frustrated, saying we didn’t say anything about why Bibi is good or Bibi is bad. I said that’s not the point. All the rest, we’re hugging each other in tears, and they know that they have what it takes to deal and to manage and contain and to engage constructively with these difficult issues. And I think that’s more important.

“We need to find ways to empathize, empathize in the classical term of kind of getting into the shoes of the other, going into the home of the other, and seeing the inner logic that there is over there. I keep on saying, there is an inner logic that we need to be able to be to attend to.

“I remember being in Colorado mountains, and I remember a person telling me he used to help hikers in the summer, and he told then if you get lost on the mountains, first thing you need to do is to sit down. Don’t try to find a way out, just sit down. Take a deep breath, count to 10. Do something constructive as we count to 10 of taking the other person into account, so that we can get to a more complex perspective that allows us to embrace the differences. Work on finding a third way, a new way, a new compassionate narrative.”