In April, Eran Nissan joined the Encompass team as our new Israeli coordinator. Welcome Eran! We caught up with Eran over Zoom to find out a little more about his background and motivations, as well as how he hopes to use his experience to build up the Encompass community in Israel:

“My name is Eran Nissan. I’m an Israeli, born and raised. I’m 29 years old and I live in Jaffa. My father was born in Iran, Tehran, his parents are Iraqi jews from Baghdad. On my mother’s side, my grandparents came from Poland and Romania. I’m the youngest of three brothers, my brothers and I all served as combatant soldiers in the IDF.

During my military service I got to see the part of the conflict that you are not taught when you grow up. You discover what the occupation really is, how the military forces police citizens. Because of the things I saw, the things I did and was sent to do, I became more and more distrustful of institutions and became more angry. I experienced combat and I lost friends and classmates and I attended too many funerals for someone my age. When I left the army I was broken and I was angry. I went travelling and I thought that I was moving forward but on the day that I returned to Israel I found out that the brother of one of my best friends had died in a military attack. A lot of trauma rushed to the surface, I felt a lot of anger and pain. I decided that I wanted to do more to contribute to preventing more violence and so I joined a political party and I decided to study political science and philosophy. I also started volunteering at Peace Now, and was hired to run their educational and advocacy department. Through this, I also began working with Solutions Not Sides (SNS), a UK based programme. I travelled to Bradford and spoke to teenages there about the conflict and eventually became SNS’ regional coordinator. I find working with young people very rewarding and important. On an emotional level, talking to young people helped me feel more meaningful. It helped me heal. 

When I was in highschool, I knew about the occupation but I didn’t really understand the conflict. I didn’t really understand what the occupation was. My experiences woke me up and so I’m trying to politicise the younger generation. I believe that a conflict that we pass on to our children is a conflict that we have lost. It is our responsibility to make sure that the next generation will grow up with a different story, with a different soundtrack. In my work, I put an emphasis on building bridges, and building empathy between young Israelis and young Palestinians because I think it is up to us to work together to create a better future for ourselves. 

Last summer, I travelled to Washington DC for a programme called New Story Leadership where I interned at Congress with seven other Israelis and Palestinians. We were there to write a new story about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict by speaking to people about our experiences. When I returned to Israel, I joined an organisation called Mehazkim which harnesses social media to empower ordinary citizens. We support activists, initiatives and struggles and protests and organisations advocating for democracy and equality and peace and social justice. 

I strongly believe in the idea: “Don’t talk about us without us”. Discourse on the conflict is generated by the older generation and often by extremists, both in Israel and Palestine. It lacks the voices of young Israelis and Palestinians even though their decisions have a massive impact on us. I think the main thing we need to do to inject into the conversation is empathy and understanding. I recognise that attempt in the work that Encompass does. I believe that the main obstacle to peace is that Israelis are desensitised to suffering, we were taught to be indifferent, if not gloating, whenever something bad happens across the fence. It’s part of our  rationalisation of demonising and dehumanising the other side, but it’s also because we don’t meet. It is easy to dehumanise when you don’t have any emotional consequences of feeling that way. From my experience, bringing young Israelis and Palestinians together in a neutral space fosters relationships, creating an irreversible experience so that when you go home and hear the news about Palestine or Israel, you will no longer have this anonymous, faceless image. You have a face, a name and a memory of a positive interaction. So the concept of getting people together to work on fostering relationships based on understanding and empathy is something that I’m very invested in. I expect that I will face some challenges in my role as Encompass’ Israeli coordinator. There is risk for Israelis who are working with Palestinians for a peaceful resolution, they are labelled ‘traitors’. However, while the delegitimization of dialogue programmes, as well as the current political climate, will make it harder to recruit for programmes, I am extremely excited about taking up this challenge and to start my work as Encompass’ Israeli coordinator!”