PeaceCast

This is a recording of a New Jewish Narrative webinar from June 5th, 2025.  We are living through a moment in the United States when we see both that antisemitism is rising and that the Trump administration is weaponizing antisemitism to silence its critics and to attack academia. For years, NJN has been a leader in making sure that efforts to counter antisemitism are not exploited to violate civi...

This is a recording of a New Jewish Narrative webinar from June 4th, 2025.  "The perimeter" is the term used to describe the ever-expanding buffer zone on the Gaza side of the entire Israel-Gaza border from which Palestinians have been forcibly removed since the beginning of the war. As Breaking the Silence's recent report demonstrates, the area has over time been completely decimated and razed to...

Brian K Barber's new book,  No Way But Forward: Life Stories of Three Families in the Gaza Strip,  is a heart-wrenching piece of nonfiction. Barber, a psychologist and researcher, has cultivated real relationships with three families in Gaza since 1995, allowing him to tell their stories with rare depth and authenticity. Read the book: https://www.amazon.com/No-Way-but-Forward-Families-ebook/dp/B0...

This is a recording of an NJN webinar on April 24th, 2025 Drs. Shibley Telhami and Marc Lynch, co-chairs of the Middle East Scholar Barometer, say that they have seen a "chilling effect" on the working atmosphere for Middle East scholars. Many US-based academics and scholars already felt an increasing need to self-censor when addressing the Israeli-Palestinian issue professionally. The Trump admin...

Recording of a NJN webinar on April 16, 2025  Yair Golan is the leader of The Democrats, a political party formed last year when the Labor and Meretz parties merged. Before entering politics, he had a distinguished military career, retiring as a Major General and serving as Deputy Chief of Staff of the IDF.  His actions on the morning of October 7th – in which he rushed on his own accord to the ar...

Recording of an NJN webinar on April 3, 2025. The conversation, anchored by NJN President & CEO Hadar Susskind, features Hagit Ofran and Lior Amihai from Peace Now. Our guests are on the ground, leading the push against settlements and the fight for for peace.  Lior Amihai is the current Executive Director of Peace Now as well as a previous Executive Director of Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights g...

In this episode of PeaceCast, Maxxe Albert-Deitch is joined by NJN Board members and Habonim Dror leaders Shaina Wasserman and Judah Altman. The conversation delves into the details of how Habonim Dror and New Jewish Narrative are connected, as well as how dialogue, discussion, and youth involvement help shape our broader community. This episode also includes some details about the World Zionist C...

In this episode of PeaceCast, Maxxe Albert-Deitch is joined by NJN's Director of Government Relations, Madeleine Cereghino, for a discussion of President Trump's "flood the zone" tactics, and staying sane in the age of information overload. This episode also covers recent events at USAID and other federal agencies as well as at Columbia University. 

NJN Deputy Communications Director Maxxe Albert-Deitch and Director of Development Karen Paul spoke with Dr. Elana Sztokman about her new book, In My Jewish State. In this book, Dr. Sztokman uses her professional skills of rhetorical analysis cultivated from years of anthropological research, and unpacks the language and ideas that drive the pro-Israel advocacy movement and are used to justify cru...

Between March 10 and May 4, 2025, American Jews will vote for their delegates to the 39th World Zionist Congress, the "parliament of the Jewish people," which will convene in Jerusalem in October 2025. Every vote determines how money is spent, how resources are allocated, and contributes to policies in Israeli society and in Jewish communities around the globe. New Jewish Narrative proudly co-lead...

Recording of a New Jewish Narrative webinar with NJN President and CEO Hadar Susskind, Director of Government Relations Madeleine Cereghino, and Hassan El-Tayyab of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FNCL). We dug into what the new Congress and administration will mean for New Jewish Narrative, our community, and our work. We spoke about initial signals from incoming government officia...

Recording of our November 20, 2024 webinar with Yonatan Mizrachi from Shalom Achshav's Settlement Watch team. This webinar was co-produced with our colleagues at Shalom Achshav, Canadian Friends of Peace Now, and La Paix Maintenant. The conversation was anchored by Hadar Susskind.  Yonatan Mizrachi, a leading expert from the Settlement Watch team, presents new insights from Shalom Achshav's latest...

Recording of our November 14, 2024 webinar. This conversation was hosted by Hadar Susskind. Along with special guest Allison McManus, we discussed what a second Trump administration may hold for Israel-Palestine peacebuilding work. We covered Trump's recent appointee nominations, the effects of potential policies on our agenda, as well as how the US-Israel relationship could shift with Trump back...

Recording of our October 29th, 2024 webinar with Joshua Leifer. This conversation was hosted by Maxxe Albert-Deitch and Karen Paul. We spoke with Joshua Leifer about Tablets   Shattered,  his lively and personal history of the fractured American Jewish present. Formed in the middle decades of the twentieth century, the settled-upon pillars of American Jewish self-definition (Americanism, Zionism,...

In this episode of PeaceCast, Maxxe Albert-Deitch is joined by APN's President and CEO, Hadar Susskind, for a discussion about recent events in the Middle East, the October 7th anniversary, and the past year of conflict. The discussion covers Israel's recent military incursion into southern Lebanon as well as Iran's bombing attack in Israel. 

Recording of our September 24th, 2024 webinar with Sarit Michaeli. This conversation was hosted by Madeleine Cereghino. Gaza and the Occupied Territories in general are at the forefront of conversations around the world– horrific medical scenarios, inhumane treatment of Palestinian civilians, and utterly abhorrent forms of abuse taking place in Israeli prisons and on the ground in Occupied land. B...

Recording of our September 16, 2024 webinar with Amir Tibon. This conversation was hosted by Hadar Susskind and Maxxe Albert-Deitch. We spoke with author Amir Tibon about his new book, The Gates of Gaza , as well as his experience as a journalist in Israel over the last 11 months. This webinar was coordinated in partnership with our colleagues at Canadian Friends of Peace Now. About the book: In T...

Recording of our August 21, 2024 webinar with Dr. Gershon Baskin. This conversation was hosted by Madeleine Cereghino. It is clear that people around the world– and the mediators sent to the table in Doha– want an agreement to stop the violence in Gaza and to bring the Israeli hostages home. But the general understanding of how to get from point A (calling for a deal) to point B (getting the Israe...

Recording of our August 7, 2024 webinar with Lior Amihai. This conversation was hosted by Madeleine Cereghino. Our Director of Government Relations, Madeleine Cereghino, sat down with Lior Amihai, the executive director of our sister organization, Shalom Achshav. Our colleagues there recently released a report detailing what they call the Israeli government's "Annexation Revolution."  Since Octobe...

In this episode of PeaceCast, Maxxe Albert-Deitch is joined by APN's Director of Government Relations, Madeleine Cereghino, for a discussion of PM Netanyahu's DC visit. The discussion covers PM Netanyahu's address to a joint session of Congress, that speech's implications, and the general optics of the PM's DC visit. 

Recording of our July 25, 2024 webinar with Rebecca Abou-Chedid. This conversation was hosted by Hadar Susskind. Hadar Susskind and Rebecca Abou-Chedid analyze Netanyahu's visit to DC (and his address to Congress on July 24th). They delve into the impact on American and international politics, the American Jewish community, and the Arab American community. Rebecca Abou-Chedid serves on the board o...

Ten brave New Story Leadership alumni -  Muslim, Jewish, and Christian -  from Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, decided to move forward together in the aftermath of October 7th. First, the group negotiated and crafted a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and hostage release. But they also realized that this was not nearly enough. After months of research, discussion...

Recording of our June 20, 2024 webinar with Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon. This conversation was hosted by Hadar Susskind and Maxxe Albert-Deitch. Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon feel the loss and pain of October 7th and the carnage in Gaza that has followed especially keenly: both have lost family to the conflict. Since October 7th, the two have appeared on various international forums regarding thei...

Harvey Price is the founder of the Peace Drums Project, an organization that connects children of multiple faiths by having them play together in a steel drum band. In this episode of PeaceCast, Maxxe Albert-Deitch speaks with Harvey about steel drums as an instrument of peace and the logistics of running a people-to-people music-oriented peacebuilding program in Israel and Palestine in the curren...

Recording of our May 22, 2024 webinar, with Anat Saragusti. This conversation was hosted by Naomi Paiss.  "The media" has come to mean many different things– broadcasters, social media, a euphemistic descriptor for spreaders of misinformation, or simply the news. But in the haze of war in Gaza and protests in the U.S., the media has itself become a source of polarization and debate. To analyze why...