Content Archives

Zero-Sum Thinking: How Philanthropy Can Stoke Division
Corie Ford Corie Ford

Zero-Sum Thinking: How Philanthropy Can Stoke Division

Grant makers are not the primary drivers of toxic polarization. Nor do they intentionally operate as conflict entrepreneurs. But despite our best intentions, we are human and susceptible to habits and behaviors that stoke and fuel toxic polarization.

Read More
Activist helps keep the peace
Corie Ford Corie Ford

Activist helps keep the peace

Israel’s Arab citizens have not taken up Hamas calls to join the fray. Heart of a Nation Board Member Mohammad Darawashe was instrumental in dousing the flames.

Read More
Rage as an Obstacle to Progress
Corie Ford Corie Ford

Rage as an Obstacle to Progress

Cultural change tends to have a pendulum-style rhythm, and we are now at the dawn of another collective phase. This mode of collectivism embeds us in communities—but they’re not friendly communities; they’re angry ones.

Read More
Heart of a Nation hosts emerging change-makers in Washington, DC
Corie Ford Corie Ford

Heart of a Nation hosts emerging change-makers in Washington, DC

For the past two and a half months, with the help of an American professor, Robert Vogel, teens from a number of Jewish and Palestinian communities in Israel were encouraged to write about their identities and process their feelings. Heart of a Nation had the privilege of hosting six of these remarkable students.

Read More
Civil society key to peace-building
Corie Ford Corie Ford

Civil society key to peace-building

Emerging voices are making the case that the failure of political leadership means that a top-down resolution of affairs… will not be possible to achieve without the greater engagement of civil society…

Read More
It’s easy to miss that the Middle East has changed
Corie Ford Corie Ford

It’s easy to miss that the Middle East has changed

As we watch the horrors of another war in the Middle East, it is easy to get gloomy and depressed... But that misses an important shift that has taken place in recent times, one that provides some cause for optimism about the future…

Read More
Activists Are Still Quietly Working for Peace
Corie Ford Corie Ford

Activists Are Still Quietly Working for Peace

Many peace groups have been struggling since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which have hardened the positions of many Israelis and Palestinians. But some activists, including those in Combatants for Peace, have quietly started to resume their work.

Read More
Choose Life Over Revenge
Corie Ford Corie Ford

Choose Life Over Revenge

All the world’s babies are children of a single nation. They have a common language, a common past, common dreams.

Read More
Global democracy is on the ballot
Corie Ford Corie Ford

Global democracy is on the ballot

More than 60 countries, with some 4 billion people, are set to stage national elections in 2024. That means roughly half the planet could go to the polls in what could be the greatest rolling spectacle of democracy in human history.

Read More
A New Jewish-Arab Partnership Is Building in Israel
Corie Ford Corie Ford

A New Jewish-Arab Partnership Is Building in Israel

One of our slogans is, "There is no movement without friction.” If we want to get things moving, obviously there will be differences of opinion about us. Standing Together is a stream of thoughts, from which we derive our actions.

Read More
Promise in the Pain
Corie Ford Corie Ford

Promise in the Pain

'It may be nice to dream of one shared homeland, but Israelis will not give up their state. And Palestinians also need their own state, with the two strongly interconnected'…

Read More
Mending broken friendships, the Bayard Rustin way
Corie Ford Corie Ford

Mending broken friendships, the Bayard Rustin way

We have all lost friends, co-workers, fellow congregants and family members because of our current fault lines and divisions… and the distance created by those acts and anthems seems unbridgeable. And maybe it is. But does it have to be?

Read More