By Meg Foley Yoder
At a time when conversations about Israel and Palestine often collapse into accusation or silence, a recent event at the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights sought to model something else: a sustained conversation grounded in friendship, biography, and shared moral commitments.
The event, titled Friendship Across Conflict Lines, featured Dr. Eman Khadra Ansari, a Palestinian-American physician and assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and Israeli-American theater director Guy Ben-Aharon, founder of the arts organization The Jar. Moderated by Carr-Ryan Center Director Mathias Risse, the discussion was part of the center’s series From Pain to Hope? Israel/Palestine in 2026, which explores the human dimensions of one of the world’s most enduring conflicts.
Risse opened by acknowledging the difficulty of hosting such conversations amid escalating violence in the Middle East. Human rights, he argued, must be applied consistently. “They do not depend on nationality or religion, ethnicity, political allegiance, or historical grievance,” he said, warning that selectively applying human rights principles undermines them everywhere.
The evening unfolded largely as a dialogue about how two people from communities shaped by the conflict had arrived at an enduring friendship.
Ansari began by recounting a background shaped by displacement and mobility. Born to Palestinian parents and raised in Saudi Arabia, she described a childhood in which her family maintained a strong sense of Palestinian identity even while living abroad. Her father, a clinical pathologist, emphasized education and curiosity about the wider world.
When Ansari later moved to Boston for medical training, relatives urged her to conceal her Palestinian identity. They warned that identifying herself as Palestinian could expose her to hostility. “Say you are Saudi,” she recalled being told. “Never say you’re Palestinian. Because if Jews know that there was a Palestinian there, they want you dead.”
She decided to test those assumptions rather than accept them. One of the strongest supporters of her early medical career turned out to be an Orthodox Jewish physician who advocated for her residency application. “The labels clearly did not tell me the story,” she said, reflecting on how her experiences repeatedly complicated the categories she had been warned about.
“The labels clearly did not tell me the story.” – Eman Ansari
Ben-Aharon approached the subject from a different background. Born in Israel and raised partly in the Boston area, he found an early home in theater. For years he directed and produced Israeli plays in English translation, staging more than three dozen productions that toured universities and theaters in the United States and abroad.
While the productions sparked debate, he said audiences often left discussions discouraged or entrenched in their views. “I didn’t get into show business to make people unhappy,” he said. The experience eventually led him to found The Jar, an organization that brings people together across differences through art, storytelling and shared meals.
The personal connection between Ansari and Ben-Aharon began through a friendship between Ansari’s daughter and the daughter of one of Ben-Aharon’s friends. Through that relationship, Ansari was invited to attend one of Ben-Aharon’s theater productions, where the two met for the first time. What followed was a growing friendship that expanded to include their immediate families.
The discussion repeatedly returned to the impact of the October 7 attacks and the war that followed. Both speakers described calling each other shortly afterward to check on one another’s families. “First, always the human first,” Ben-Aharon said. “You’re checking on your friend, not the status of the state.”
“First, always the human first. You’re checking on your friend, not the status of the state.” – Guy Ben-Aharon
Ansari described one particularly meaningful episode. For her fiftieth birthday, she planned a cycling trip from Safed, her father’s birthplace, to Haifa, where her mother was born. Ben-Aharon’s father, an avid cyclist, helped organize the journey. The trip brought together Ansari, friends and members of Ben-Aharon’s family in what she described as one of the most meaningful experiences of her life.
The conversation also addressed the political tensions that have surrounded their friendship, particularly since the violence of recent years. Ben-Aharon spoke about losing friendships after publicly criticizing Israeli government policies and the siege of Gaza, and about conflicts with members of his extended family over his views and his refusal to serve in the Israeli army. In his view, the debate often divides people into rigid camps.
“There’s the politics of life and the politics of death. If you justify one person’s death to say it’s going to cause other people to live, you believe in the politics of death.” –Guy Ben-Aharon
“I believe in two things,” he said. “There’s the politics of life and the politics of death. If you justify one person’s death to say it’s going to cause other people to live, you believe in the politics of death.”
Ansari offered her own reflections on the future. While she said she is not a politician, she described a hope for a region where people could move freely and live with equal dignity regardless of religion or nationality. In such a world, she suggested, identity would not determine whether someone belonged.
Yet neither speaker presented a detailed political blueprint. Ben-Aharon suggested that grand visions sometimes obscure the more immediate question of how people treat one another in everyday life. He described the building where he lives in Jaffa, where Jewish, Muslim and Christian neighbors live under the same roof but not always with the same legal rights.
If he had a vision, he said, it would resemble that building but with genuine equality for all residents.
Since then, their collaboration has expanded. Ansari joined the board of The Jar, and the organization has increased the number of people participating in its events that bring together strangers from different backgrounds.
Toward the end of the evening, Ansari reflected on the responsibility owed to children and future generations, invoking the words of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
By the evening’s end, the message both speakers returned to was simple: coexistence begins not with political agreements, but with people willing to see one another as equals.
Kyle Faneuff | Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights
