By Daniel Sokatch, NIF International CEO
January 24, 2025

This past week has been an emotional rollercoaster. I have felt incredible relief and joy watching daughters united with their families in Israel. And I’ve felt relief for the people of Gaza as the fighting stopped and we watched hundreds of trucks enter the Strip, and some small amount of pride that some of those trucks are loaded with warm winter gear from NIF grantees like Standing Together.

On the other side of the emotional spectrum, I’m sad and frustrated that the ceasefire-hostage deal is only coming now, even though a nearly identical deal has been on the table since May. I have watched the fear that Palestinians in the West Bank are feeling as extremist settlers attack them and their property. Finally, I worry about Palestinian civilians living in Jenin because just two days after the guns fell silent in Gaza Israeli troops launched an assault on that city. And that’s just on the Israel side. Here in the U.S. and around the world we are watching with trepidation and concern as the new administration re-ascends to power.

Too many of this administration’s very first acts — from pardoning 1,600 January 6 insurrectionists to reversing U.S. sanctions on violent Israeli settlers — have the potential to unleash violence and hate both here and in Israel. As my friend, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs Amy Spitalnick recently said, “the barrage of bad coming out of Washington has felt like drinking out of a firehouse. It’s a tactic.”

At times like these, when things seem so bad and hope so remote, I always know what to do. I look to the work of our grantees on the ground — they inevitably inspire me and remind me why we do what we do. They know what NIF has always known: It will not be some outside force that comes to ‘save Israel’ or its democracy. It will be Israelis themselves. It will be good people who pressure, protest, educate, and, above all, insist on a different path and show their fellow citizens, their brothers and sisters both Jewish and Palestinian, that democracy is the only system under which everyone can be safe, can be assured of their rights, and can flourish.

Those are the people NIF supports. A few that have especially touched me these past difficult days are those who — in the face of right-wing populism which seeks always to divide — work to bring people together, people whose politics are different, people whose nationalities are different, people whose socio-economic status is different.

Because that’s the ground stable, democratic societies need.

First, we’re bringing the idea of peace to the people. For six days in December, with support from an NIF grant, a Shatil-coordinated group that calls itself the ‘peace coalition’ led a bus trip for Arab and Jewish peace activists across the country. They called the tour “The People’s Peace Journey,” and they stopped at 14 locations for events with Jewish and Arab members of Knesset, local political leadership, musicians and artists — drawing approximately 1,300 people. They had conversations about pain and hope, and leveraging the unifying power of food, music, and community. The People’s Peace Journey offered a glimpse of a better future built on equality, justice, and security.

Second, we’re building the next generation of Jewish-Arab partnership. In November, our longtime grantee, AJEEC-NISPED brought together 120 fourth and fifth grade students from the Bedouin village of Rahma and the Jewish town of Yerucham. Imagine the scene: Bedouin 11 year olds entering a Jewish town they may have never stepped foot in; Jewish kids who had never met someone who lived in a village that until recently, the government did not recognize. The kids did outdoor activities, circus workshops, and discussion circles — together. They were led by participants in AJEEC’s gap year program. Suleiman Alamor, Co-CEO of AJEEC-NISPED, told us how meetings like this strengthened his “hope for a shared future and a cohesive social fabric in the Negev and all of Israel.” He, like myself and like all of us, knows how essential it is to involve the younger generation in shared experiences that promote connections that go beyond difference. In doing so, he said, “we lay the foundations for a more stable society.”

Finally, we’re actively working to block settler violence in the West Bank in two basic ways: First, with grants to organizations like COMET-ME and Yesh Din that help Palestinians stay where they are, in the most vulnerable and impoverished villages in Area C of the West Bank. And second, by supporting activists on the ground who do “protective presence” work — doing anything from putting their own bodies between violent settlers and Palestinian residents, to cleaning and maintaining water pipes so that Palestinians can have access to clean water. To that end, we’ve recently developed something called the Activists’ Support Program which just last month led a series of training sessions that included mental resilience for activists and documenting settler violence.

There is no substitute for activism on the ground. And when it comes to pushing back against the forces of reaction, NIF will always be there, supporting peace, minority rights, and protecting the most vulnerable.

This upcoming Shabbat, the first Shabbat of this coming presidency, let’s make a pledge together to not lose sight of those values — the things we deeply believe, and that we all hold in common as Americans, and as people who care about both Israelis and Palestinians: peace, equality, safety, and democracy for all.