Professor Menachem Mautner is a Professor of Comparative Civil Law and Jurisprudence at the Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Law. In this episode he explains why he wrote two recently-published books that are unrelated to his academic expertise: a dystopian novel that predicts the devastation that Mautner believes will lead to Middle East peace, and a book analyzing the crisis of Israeli Liberalism.

Prof. Mautner's web page

Amos Oz's last lecture (Hebrew)

Professor Nurit Shnabel is a psychologist at Tel Aviv University, who researches the way in which empathy can diminish the sense of exclusive victimhood that each side feels in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Some of her findings could be leveraged by leaders and other members of both societies to help find a way toward peace and reconciliation.

Links:

• Haaretz newspaper recently published a story about Shnabel’s research, under the ambitious headline How to Solve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, According to Psychology Research.
• A newspaper story with an image of the rabbit-duck optical illusion

Our one hundredth episode(!) coincides with the end-of-year holidays, a time of positivity and hope. To talk about positivity and hope in the context of Israeli-Palestinian relations and Jewish-Arab relations we are hosting Dina Kraft. Her monthly podcast, The Branch documents Israelis and Palestinians and Jewish and Arab citizens in Israel forging meaningful relationships with each other in a complex reality. 

Dina is a veteran journalist, currently based in Tel Aviv, reporting for both Haaretz and The Christian Science Monitor. Her writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. She is the former Israel correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Kraft was formerly an Associated Press correspondent based in Jerusalem and Johannesburg. She has reported throughout Africa, as well as from Pakistan, Jordan, Tunisia, Russia and Ukraine.

Link to The Branch: www.hadassah.org/thebranch

Link to the latest episode of The Branch: https://www.hadassah.org/multi-media/podcasts/branch-episodes/episode-16-the-tour-guides.html

Link to our December 2017 conversation with Elias Zananiri (PeaceCast’s first episode):  https://peacenow.libsyn.com/-1-partner-and-outpost-expert-interviews-with-elias-zananiri-and-talia-sasson