“Listen to understand, not to respond.”
Those words became the unwritten assignment of our six day delegation in Israel.
As one of eleven faculty members from universities across the United States, Canada, Germany, and England participating in a policy delegation organized by Academic Exchange, I expected to learn about security, diplomacy, October 7, Gaza, Israel’s borders with Lebanon Syria, Iran, and the geopolitical realities that dominate the headlines.
I did.
But those were not the lessons that changed me.
The people did.
What surprised me most was not the diversity of perspectives we encountered, but the intentionality behind them. Our three guides, all of whom had served in the IDF in positions of varying rank and responsibility, could have introduced us only to voices that reinforced a single narrative.
Instead, they did something far more courageous.
They insisted that we hear a wide range of perspectives, challenging us to listen not to respond, but to understand.
Over six days, we listened to voices from across Israel’s political spectrum, including diplomats, military strategists, journalists, philosophers, Arab citizens of Israel, Palestinian voices, October 7 survivors, intelligence experts, and scholars. We heard from Ofer Zalzberg, Amos Harel, Miri Eisin, Raz Zimmt, Jonathan Spyer, Yoel Guzansky, Moshe Halbertal, Mahmoud Muna, Mohammad Darawshe, Tal Becker, Mark Regev, Haviv Rettig Gur, Gil Hoffman, Elad Goren, Ben Wahlhaus, and Maazal, an October 7 survivor whose testimony transformed headlines into human experience. Their perspectives often challenged one another, yet each invited us to think beyond the headlines.
No one asked us to agree.
They simply asked us to listen.
As educators, we ask our students to think critically, weigh evidence, and wrestle with competing ideas. Yet our public discourse increasingly rewards certainty over curiosity and rebuttal over understanding.
Israel reminded me that genuine learning begins with the willingness to be uncomfortable.
Listening became an act of humility.
Every evening before bed, I placed a sweatshirt and sweatpants at the foot of my bed.
Not because I planned to wear them.
Because if the rocket sirens sounded during the night, we would have approximately six minutes to get dressed and reach the hotel’s safe room.
The alarms never came.
But every night I prepared anyway.
That simple ritual changed me. It reminded me that security is not an abstract policy discussion for millions of Israelis. It is woven into the ordinary rhythms of daily life.
The next day, those briefings became tangible. From a helicopter over the Golan Heights and later standing along Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon, maps became landscapes. The strategic conversations we had been having were no longer abstractions. Geography has a way of transforming policy into lived reality.
Some of the most meaningful conversations were never part of the itinerary.
Over lunch in Majdal Shams, our Druze host welcomed us into her home and shared stories about identity, history, and belonging that resisted the simple categories outsiders often impose on this region. Those conversations reminded me that people rarely fit the narratives written about them.
Later in the week, we were accompanied by a former IDF officer. Curious why our delegation required additional security that day when we had not on the others, I asked him about it. What began as a practical question became one of the most meaningful conversations of the trip.
As we walked together through the crowded streets of Jerusalem’s Old City and into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he shared that he was about to begin a master’s degree in psychology.
As an Associate Professor of Practicum Education at the USC Suzanne Dworak Peck School of Social Work, and Co Founder of the Trauma Informed Learning Alliance, I have spent my career studying trauma and resilience. Before entering academia, I worked in the field of domestic violence for two decades. My understanding of trauma is not only professional. It is also deeply personal, informed by my own experience of domestic violence.
Perhaps that is why I found myself listening differently.
Our conversation quickly moved beyond his military service. He asked about the practices I had found meaningful in my work and in my own life. In turn, he shared the approaches and experiences that had helped him.
For a while, we were no longer discussing geopolitics or security. We were simply two people from different countries and different life experiences talking about what helps human beings move through trauma and find resilience.
Had I not asked a simple question born out of curiosity, I never would have known his story.
It became another reminder that listening begins with a willingness to ask and then to truly hear the answer.
Another unforgettable conversation took place with an Arab Israeli woman who worked at a hotel in Tel Aviv.
She shared that years ago she left her family because she wanted the freedom to determine her own life, to choose how she dressed, whether she wore a hijab, whom she loved, and what future she would build.
She lived in a safe house with other Arab Israeli women who had also fled their families. Eventually, every one of the other women returned home.
She was the only one who stayed.
She worked two jobs to survive.
When someone asked whether she would ever go back, her answer was immediate.
“I would rather die.”
Today, she hopes that by sharing her story she can help other Arab women facing impossible choices.
Throughout the week, I found myself viewing each conversation through the lens of social work.
Trauma can profoundly shape a life, but it does not have to define it.
Again and again, I witnessed people who had transformed suffering into purpose.
I saw it in Maazal, whose testimony transformed headlines into human experience on October 7th.
I saw it walking through Nir Oz, the only kibbutz that received no rescue during the October 7th attacks. Burned homes. Children’s toys left behind. Empty streets that somehow carried more sound in their silence than words ever could. There are places where history is no longer something you study. It is something you stand inside.
I saw it at Yad Vashem, where memory itself becomes an act of moral responsibility.
I saw it in the former IDF officer preparing for a career helping others navigate trauma.
I saw it in the Arab Israeli woman whose own pain had become a mission to help others.
For twenty years, I walked alongside individuals who had experienced domestic violence as they reclaimed their lives and their sense of self. Standing in Israel, I recognized that same resilience again and again, not because the experiences were the same, but because the human capacity to find meaning, purpose, and hope in the aftermath of trauma is universal.
Then there was Friday evening.
The Western Wall.
I was raised without religious faith.
As Shabbat began, thousands gathered in prayer. Families embraced. Children sang. Soldiers prayed. Strangers welcomed strangers.
At some point, I stopped paying attention to where I was.
I simply stood.
Eventually, someone from our delegation came looking for me because I had disappeared into the moment.
I wasn’t lost.
For perhaps the first time in my life, I understood faith not as doctrine, but as hope practiced in community. Watching generations pray together after generations of suffering, I found myself longing for something I had never been raised with but had always quietly admired.
I did not leave Israel with certainty.
I left with something better.
I left believing that behind every political position is a human being.
Behind every border is a family.
Behind every headline is someone’s story.
The greatest gift our three guides gave us was not access.
It was permission to resist easy answers.
They modeled something increasingly rare. They trusted us enough to expose us to competing perspectives and believed we were capable of wrestling with complexity without demanding certainty.
As a social work educator, and Co Founder of the Trauma Informed Learning Alliance, I have learned that healing begins not when someone has the perfect answer, but when another person is willing to bear witness to their story.
That is what our three guides modeled. That is what every speaker, every October 7th survivor, every scholar, every soldier, every Arab Israeli, every Palestinian, every Druze host, and every person who shared a piece of themselves offered us.
I arrived in Israel expecting to study conflict.
I left understanding that the most important lesson had nothing to do with politics.
It was about the discipline of listening.
Because when we listen to understand rather than respond, we do something increasingly rare.
We begin to see one another’s humanity.
I remain deeply grateful to Academic Exchange, our three guides, and every speaker who generously shared their expertise and their stories. They reminded me that education is at its best when it challenges certainty, expands perspective, and invites us to see humanity in one another.