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Jewish Israelis and Palestinians working together for a better world

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Welcome To TalkMatters

When I know you on an everyday face-to-face basis you can no longer be my enemy and I can no longer be your victim. Then open and honest conversations can more comfortably take place about issues affecting relations between Jewish and Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and in the wider context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is what TalkMatters is all about.

Latest Updates & News

What We Do

We inform the UK Jewish, Christian, Muslim and any constituent communities to whom the region has special significance about over thirty associated cooperative grassroots organisations that bring Palestinian and Israeli Jewish people together. 

We engage via webinars and live events with the Conversation on the ground. We provide a space for respectful conversation where you can explore the complex issues facing Israel and Palestine on social media via our Campaigns page.

We invite you to subscribe to our mailing list, to watch our webinars, and to hear about future webinars and live events.

Inspirational people at difficult times

Since October 7th our associate organisations have continued to engage with Arabs and Jews to build relationships. In this short video clip, Rima Boertz and Nir Hodis of the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa explain what they are doing.  Their respect and compassion for one another is inspirational. 

The Leo Baeck Education Center ensures that they keep their Shared Society activities running. As time goes by, racism and antisemitism are rising in Israel and across the world.  They see it as their duty and privilege to maintain our long-term interfaith relationships and educate society for shared living, equally with mutual respect.  

Voices of Hope & Fear in Times of Terror

TalkMatters provides a space for you to engage with moderate Israelis and Palestinians and to listen to what they have to say. In Spring 2024 we ran a weekly series of one minute video clips – Voices of Hope and Fear.

Each clip featured a new voice from one of the over thirty co-operative initiatives that TalkMatters supports.   Voices that express what the people on the ground were thinking and feeling.  

Watch our webinars

TalkMatters has hosted and participated in many webinars since our launch. We have archived our previous webinars so that you can watch any that you missed, and while celebrating our first year, we created a series of “highlights” clips which you can watch as a taster, too.

Inspirational Stories

Late Night Encounter – Muhammad from Jericho meets Abraham from Jerusalem at the Lido cafeteria just north of the Dead Sea

It was 1:30 am, on a still and quiet winter’s night. I lay awake in my Jericho home, nervous and restless. I couldn’t sleep. I had been trying for hours but it was useless. 

Eventually, I got up and headed to a coffee shop, where one of my friends works, north of the Dead Sea. The small cafeteria called Lido is connected to a gas station and acts as a stopover for travellers and visitors passing through. It is a place fully secured and controlled by the Israeli authorities… continue reading
 

Israeli and Palestinian fathers bond together through a shared grief

Rami Elhanan is Israeli and Bassam Aramin is Palestinian.  They formed a deep bond through the tragic death of their daughters.  In 1997 Rami’s 14-year-old Smadar was shopping with friends when two suicide bombers blew themselves up and killed her and four others.   In 2007 Bassan’s ten year old daughter Abir was shot with a rubber bullet by a member of the border police outside her school.

Now Rami and Bassam are part of the Bereaved Parents Circle and travel together all over the world telling their story: ‘We are brothers.  We have experienced the same.  We lost our lovely daughters. Smadar and Abir are victims of the same conflict.  Both of them were not guilty of anything and they were killed for nothing…it will not be over until we talk’….continue reading

“How can there be peace without people understanding each other, and how can this be if they don’t know each other?” Lester B. Pearson, former Prime Minister of Canada, Nobel Peace Prize Winner

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