Photo Credit: Ari Strauss for NIF
This has been a year of challenges, resolution, determination, and constant insistence on our values: that democracy and equality mean a better future for everyone. For us at NIF, alongside raising money to distribute to our pool of incredible organizations on the ground in Israel, we’ve also been hard at work in the U.S. Here, our goal has been to shift the conversation away from a zero-sum game and towards a shared future. We have approached this in myriad ways. Here’s a few of our favorites from this last year here:
Standing Together Changed the Tone of the U.S. Conversation Post-October 7
Standing Together, a progressive grassroots movement of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, went into hyperdrive in the wake of October 7. Less than a month after October 7, members of their leadership, Sally Abed and Alon-Lee Green, toured the US, and generated the kind of buzz that helped people think about what a shared future would look like. Their determination inspired audiences and offered an alternative to sinking into despair.
At one of their events, Alon Lee Green put their mission this way: “We’re trying to play a different game in Israel and Palestine. And this game is very simple. It says that both Jewish people and Palestinians are going to stay on this land. No one is going anywhere. We need to start working from this point.”
The audience, the New York Times reported, nodded in agreement. NIF Vice President of Public Engagement Libby Lenkinski, who moderated many of their events, told the Times that she saw “a palpable sense of relief” among audience members who exhaled or placed hands over their hearts. Standing Together’s message resonated, she said, because it did not demand choosing either Palestinians or Israelis, either Jews or Arabs. It is “both/and.”
Standing Together was featured in the New York Times, NPR, MSNBC, and many other media outlets. They met with politicians (including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), celebrities, authors, journalists, college students and many others.
New Generation of Young American Jews Digging in to New Israel Fund Values
Over the last year, our New Generations (NewGen) community has grown in meaningful and beautiful ways, and worked to shift the conversation among young American Jews. A vibrant and progressive group of young professionals, social activists, community leaders, and students in their 20s and 30s, NIF’s NewGen participants are committed to the work of the New Israel Fund and the values it stands for.
The community offers young people a way in to the conversation about Israel through hearing directly from NIF grantees and activists on the ground and by participating in NIF’s many fellowship opportunities. (The 2025-26 Social Justice Fellowship is now accepting applicants!)
NewGen just launched its second book club, and has dozens of young people signed up to read former Social Justice Fellow Josh Leifer’s new book on the history of the American Jewish relationship to Israel, Tablets Shattered. NewGen currently has chapters in Boston, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Toronto and a growing national community that meets virtually.
Groundwork: a podcast about activists working for justice, equality and peace.
NIF, in close partnership with the Alliance for Middle East Peace, produces an English-language podcast that brings progressive changemakers on the ground in Israel into your ears. Our hosts and producers talk to activists who work for justice, peace, and equality for all. Some of them work to end the occupation, some of them work to build power. All of them offer American audiences ways to think about the conflict that are outside of the black-and-white conversations we have most of the time.
In the third season of the podcast, Sally Abed of Standing Together co-hosts with activist and comedian Noam Shuster. The season features stories like Einav Zangauker’s, whose son Matan is still in Gaza as she leads the hostage families’ movement to save him and the rest of the hostages and end Israel’s war in Gaza. You can also hear the story of Mai Shahin, a Palestinian woman who grew up participating in violent protests against Israeli policy during the Second Intifada, and now works to bring Israeli Jews and Palestinians into deep connection and empathy with each other. The seasons’ latest episode dropped yesterday, and brings listeners one woman’s microcosm of a fight to keep a restaurant open on Shabbat, and unlearn her “learned political helplessness” along the way.