In this two‑host podcast, Dr. Chris Stout and a co‑host dissect Daniel Levitsky’s comprehensive report on the Peaceworks Foundation and its One Voice Movement, a grassroots peace‑building initiative operating in Israel and Palestine. The discussion begins by framing the conflict not as an intractable ideological war but as a battle between a silent, moderate majority on both sides and a loud, extremist minority that dominates the narrative. The movement’s core philosophy—"enlightened self‑interest"—posits that security for one side depends on the security of the other, removing the need for forced empathy. To appeal to centrists, One Voice is organized as two parallel, nationalist entities (One Voice Israel and One Voice Palestine) staffed by local leaders with strong national credentials. The hosts detail the leadership roster, highlighting founder Daniel Lubetzky and key Palestinian and Israeli figures. Funding is portrayed as a hybrid model: 5 % of profits from Peaceworks LLC, major grants (Ford Foundation), corporate in‑kind partners (IBM, Yahoo), and a diaspora‑focused matching‑gift program. A pivotal methodological innovation was a 2003 citizen‑negotiation poll, co‑designed with IBM, where 130,000 respondents allocated 100 negative points across ten core issues, forcing prioritization and yielding a striking 76 % two‑state support on both sides. The movement scaled through youth leadership programs—3,000+ trained, with Israel’s “Highway Model” for continuous onboarding and Palestinian town‑hall meetings despite severe political turmoil. Internationally, the One Voice International Education Program intervened on polarized university campuses (UConn, Stanford) using the same self‑interest lens. The “What Are You Willing to Do” viral sticker campaign fed into the One Voice Mandate, a massive petition that culminated in a 2007 Davos video intervention where youth statements were presented to world leaders, prompting a restart of top‑level negotiations. The subsequent One Million Voices summit, poised to gather over a million signatures, was sabotaged by extremist factions through online smear campaigns and physical threats, leading to event cancellations. The organization responded with an internal audit, stronger governance, and a recommitment to its methodology. The hosts close by extrapolating the thesis that many modern conflicts feature a moderate majority suppressed by vocal extremists, and that the One Voice blueprint—parallel nationalist structures, data‑driven consensus building, and grassroots amplification—offers a pragmatic template for other polarized contexts.
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Welcome to the Deep Dive. If you're joining us today, you are probably someone who really appreciates getting past the headlines. You know, you want to dig into the actual mechanics of how the world works, especially when the subject matter is— well, when it's incredibly dense or just totally misunderstood, right?
It's so easy to just read a headline and think you know the whole story.
Exactly. So today our mission is to explore a truly comprehensive and honestly eye-opening document authored by Daniel Levitsky. It's titled Peaceworks-Final.pdf. And over the next little while, we are going to be unpacking the history, the core strategies, and the, the profound, sometimes really heartbreaking challenges of the Peaceworks Foundation and its flagship initiative, which is the One Voice Movement.
Yeah, and this was a movement explicitly designed to build consensus and mobilize grassroots citizens in Israel and Palestine.
Right.
But before we really get into the weeds of this document, we need to set a crucial ground rule for our discussion today. Because the source material covers the deeply complex and, you know, politically charged Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we want to make it absolutely clear to you, the listener, that neither of us is taking any political side here.
No, not at all.
Not left-wing, not right-wing, or anything in between. We are not endorsing the viewpoints, the historical narratives, or the political stances contained in this document. Our role today is strictly to impartially report on the ideas, the factual content, and the historical events exactly as they are presented by the original author.
Yeah. Our goal is simply to understand the methodology of this specific movement exactly as it's laid out in the text.
Exactly. Just looking at the mechanics of what they tried to do.
Okay, let's unpack this because the core premise of the One Voice Movement is actually, it's a massive pivot from how this conflict is typically framed in the news you and I consume every day. The author argues that this is not an intractable religious or ideological war between two entirely opposed peoples who simply cannot coexist.
Right. Which is the standard narrative.
Right. Instead, the document frames it as a battle between a vast, silent, moderate majority on both sides and a small, disproportionate, disproportionately loud minority of violent extremists who have essentially hijacked the agenda.
Hijacked the narrative.
Yeah. Yeah. The argument presented is that the moderates are largely passive. The media inevitably amplifies the extremists because, well, because conflict drives coverage.
Leads it. Leads.
Exactly. And so everyday people end up losing faith that there's even a partner for peace on the other side of the border.
And that framing, that leads us directly into what I consider the absolute core philosophy of the One Voice Movement, which is built on a concept called enlightened self-interest.
Enlightened self-interest.
Yes. And this is vital to understand because it underpins every single initiative we're going to talk about today. The methodology here does not require Israelis and Palestinians to suddenly love each other, which is usually step one in most traditional peace initiatives.
You know, you get everyone in a room, you share stories, you try to build deep empathy.
Exactly. And that is where this document diverges so sharply from the norm, it doesn't even require them to accept or validate each other's historical narratives or historical pain.
Wow, really?
Yeah. The author suggests that forced empathy is often just way too high a hurdle. Instead, One Voice relies on a much more pragmatic, almost cold realization, which is that ensuring the security and independence of the other side is literally the only functional way to guarantee your own. Ah, it is enlightened self-interest. You don't have to advocate for the other side out of pure altruism. You do it because your own nation's future absolutely depends on it.
But hold on, if they aren't bringing these groups together in the same room to hold hands and sing songs, how does this actually look on the ground? Doesn't keeping them apart just reinforce the exact divides they're trying to bridge?
What's fascinating here is why that separation is structurally necessary for their specific goals. Joint groups where Israelis and Palestinians sit in a circle and hold hands. Those tend to only attract the traditional left-wing peace camp in any given society.
The people who are already fully convinced, right?
The choir. But One Voice wanted the middle, so they structurally divided the movement. It operates as two parallel, fiercely nationalistic organizations. You have One Voice Israel or Kol Ahad Israel, and you have One Voice Palestine or Sutuna Filastin.
So, they are completely separate branches, united only under the broader One Voice banner?
Correct. And by keeping the branches separate and staffing them exclusively with locals who possess strong nationalistic credentials, One Voice appeals heavily to the center and the center-right of both societies. Think about it from the perspective of an everyday citizen.
Okay.
It allows an Israeli member or a Palestinian member to speak in incredibly strong, unapologetic, nationalistic terms regarding their own security or their own independence without it being considered taboo. It creates a safe space for mainstream citizens to negotiate without feeling like they are compromising their identity or, you know, betraying their people.
That makes a lot of sense when you think about the psychology of identity. And when you look at the executive leadership outlined in the text, you really see the human face of this parallel structure.
Oh, absolutely.
The document doesn't just list bureaucrats. It highlights people deeply embedded in their communities. You have the founder, Daniel Lubetzky, who is the son of a Holocaust survivor, bringing that profound historical weight to his drive for conflict resolution.
And then on the Palestinian side, you have incredible leaders like Nisrin Shaheen.
Right, the Director General of One Voice Palestine.
Exactly. The text details her deep background in democratic and civic challenges, showing how she navigated an incredibly complex political landscape to build a grassroots network from scratch. You also have leaders like Marouf Akhalami and Dr. Ezzeldin Masri doing crucial work in Gaza.
And on the Israeli side, leaders like Oriella Bin-Zvi, Gil Shammy, and Adi Balderman. You really get the sense that these aren't just figureheads, they are people putting their own social standing on the line.
It's a massive logistical and human undertaking, and naturally it requires an enormous amount of resources. The text explicitly notes the immense difficulty of funding conflict resolution as opposed to conflict management.
Because donors are tired.
Yeah, donors are often deeply cynical because they've seen decades of high-profile peace initiatives just fail. So, to keep the lights on and maintain independence, Peaceworks LLC, which is the business side of the foundation, actually donates 5% of its profits directly to the cause.
They essentially built a sustainable economic engine to fund the activism. That's smart.
Precisely. And they supplemented that internal funding with major grants from the Ford Foundation, corporate in-kind partners like IBM, and Yahoo and a highly successful matching gift program.
Oh, right. The matching program that was specifically designed to bridge Jewish and Muslim communities globally, getting them to co-fund these initiatives.
Yeah. Bringing the diaspora into the fold.
Here's where it gets really interesting, though. They had the funding. They had this parallel nationalistic structure, but they needed hard data to prove to the world and to themselves honestly that this silent moderate majority actually existed.
Right, because without data, it's just a nice theory.
Exactly. So in 2003, with the technical help of IBM, they launched a citizen negotiations polling system. But this wasn't a standard poll where you just check a box saying you want peace. They gave over 130,000 Israeli and Palestinian voters exactly 100 negative points to distribute.
This is one of my favorite parts of their methodology.
Can you walk us through the mechanics of how that actually worked? Because the math behind it is so clever.
It really is. I like to explain it using a budget analogy. Imagine you are an everyday citizen and you are given a budget of exactly $100 to spend on blocking the political outcomes you absolutely hate.
Okay.
The pollsters presented the 10 most difficult core conflict issues, the really tough stuff like the drawing of borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the right of return for refugees.
The third rail issues.
Exactly. Now, if you feel incredibly strongly about one specific issue, say you refuse to compromise on the status of Jerusalem under any circumstances, you could assign all 100 of your dollars or negative points to reject that single issue. But if you do that, you mathematically have zero points left to reject the other 9 issues. You spent your entire budget.
So it structurally outlawed absolute rejectionism.
It mathematically forced it out of the equation. In a normal poll, A citizen might just say no to everything because it feels safer. But this forced everyday citizens to prioritize what actually mattered most to them and realize where they naturally had room to compromise. Wow. If you are listening to this, think about how you would distribute those 100 negative points in a deeply personal conflict in your own life. It forces a level of self-reflection that a simple yes or no question completely misses.
And the result of that psychological experiment was absolutely stunning. Despite all the media narratives of total intractability and endless hatred, the poll found that exactly 76% of both Israelis and Palestinians affirmed a two-state solution.
76%.
The exact same percentage on both sides, arriving at the same broad consensus when forced to prioritize their real needs over absolute demands. Every time I read that number, it stops me in my tracks.
It is a powerful data point. But as the author notes, Numbers on a page don't change the world by themselves. You need human infrastructure to weaponize that data, for lack of a better term.
Right. Which brings us to the grassroots mobilization. That is where their youth leadership program came in. The text outlines how they trained over 3,000 young people.
Huge numbers.
Yeah. In Israel, they developed what they called the Highway Model. Because university student turnover is so high, people graduate, they study abroad. They designed a highly structured system where new leaders could join continuously on the 6th of every month.
Oh, like an on-ramp.
Exactly like an on-ramp. They set up specialized subcommittees for strategy, PR, recruitment, local events, and the internet, heavily run by students at major institutions like Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University. It was organized like a highly efficient political campaign.
And we see an equally robust, though highly distinct mobilization on the Palestinian side. The text details the town hall meetings held by One Voice Palestine during the incredibly intense crises of 2006. I want to pause here and unpack what the political climate was like for a Palestinian citizen at that time, because it is crucial context.
The document mentions severe Fatah-Hamas tensions and a financial blockade, but what did that actually mean on the ground?
Well, Fatah and Hamas are the two dominant Palestinian political parties, and in 2006, their relationship devolved into open armed conflict in the streets. At the same At the time, the international community had imposed a severe financial blockade on the Palestinian Authority, meaning public sector employees weren't getting paid, families were going hungry. Add to that the backdrop of the Israel-Lebanon War happening just to the north. It was a time of immense, crushing regional despair.
Not exactly the ideal environment to host a town hall about peace and compromise.
Exactly. Yet, despite that overwhelming turmoil, The document states that over 1,000 people physically attended these town hall meetings across cities like Hebron, Nablus, and Jenin. And across those meetings, 67% of attendees affirmed the One Voice principles.
That speaks volumes about the resilience of that silent majority we talked about earlier.
We also have to highlight the profound courage of the Gaza staff described in the text. They opened a One Voice office in late 2006, and by June 2007, Following the total Hamas military takeover of the Gaza Strip, they had to operate entirely quietly, essentially underground, just to avoid physical danger.
It is incredible what people will risk when they fundamentally believe a different future is possible. And One Voice didn't just keep this methodology in the Middle East.
No, they took it global.
The document details how they launched the International Education Program, or IEP, to tackle the intense polarization happening on global university campuses. If you've been following the news lately, you know campus polarization is a massive issue, but this was happening years ago.
And their approach on campuses was deeply rooted in that same concept of enlightened self-interest.
Right. The document shares this amazing story from the University of Connecticut. There was a history there of adversarial protesters deliberately harassing moderate speakers off the podium, effectively shutting down any nuance. But the One Voice youth activists stood their ground.
They changed the dynamic of the room.
They did. They essentially created a buffer, physically and rhetorically, uniting the moderate Jewish and Muslim students in the room who just wanted to have a constructive dialogue. They did something similar at Stanford, bringing historically reluctant, deeply opposed pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian student groups to sit at the exact same table.
Not to agree on everything.
No, but to agree on the basic parameters of a two-state solution.
This raises an important question, though, and it's a question the author grapples with directly. How do you take all this grassroots energy, the youth leaders, the town halls under fire, the campus programs, and translate it into actual political pressure on the leadership? Because the goal of One Voice wasn't just to talk or to hold nice seminars. It was to force elected representatives to act.
So what does this all mean for the real world? How do you move from a university classroom to the halls of power? The document shows how it all built up to the What Are You Willing to Do campaign?
Which was brilliant marketing.
It started as a highly provocative viral sticker campaign across the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. It challenged everyday citizens to stop waiting for politicians and take personal responsibility for ending the conflict. And this fed directly into the creation of the One Voice Mandate, which was essentially a massive citizens' petition.
Right.
The culmination of this was highly cinematic. It takes us to the 2007 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The Davos event is a perfect case study of their methodology in action. The World Economic Forum gave One Voice an unprecedented global platform. For the first time, ordinary citizens were going to address their heads of state directly on the world stage via video.
But the logistics of making that happen were absolutely wild. The text describes how, on the Israeli side, over 200 youth leaders gathered at Tel Aviv University to film their statement. Demanding their leaders stop making excuses. But the scene in Ramallah was pure stressful drama.
It really was. Hundreds of Palestinians gathered at the Al-Qassaba Theater to film their statement in support of the two-state solution. But while they were inside filming this hopeful message, hardline rejectionist groups—people who absolutely opposed any compromise—began protesting right outside the theater. Just outside the doors. The tension was incredibly high. The Palestinian staff actually had to sneak out the back back entrance of the theater, physically clutching the videotapes.
Wait, they had to physically sneak tapes out the back of a theater while protests were happening out front just to get a video to a conference?
Yes, because if those tapes were confiscated or destroyed, the Palestinian voice at Davos would have been silenced. They sneaked them out just so they could be express-mailed to Switzerland in time for the summit.
That is dedication. And it paid off, right?
If we connect this to the bigger picture, The effort to get those tapes to Davos was entirely worth it. At the plenary session, you had Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and Vice Premier Shimon Peres watching these direct, emotional messages from their own citizens. And they had to respond live on stage in front of the world's media. Prior to this event, the top-level Israeli and Palestinian leadership had completely stopped meeting. The formal negotiations were entirely stalled. This direct, televised grassroots pressure actually helped broker a meeting that recommenced those top-level negotiations.
It was a massive high for the movement. You can feel the optimism in the text, and it perfectly set the stage for what was supposed to be their crowning achievement: the October 2007 One Million Voices to End the Conflict campaign. The big push. They were planning massive simultaneous summits in Tel Aviv, Jericho, Washington, D.C., London, and Ottawa. By September, they had successfully gathered over half half million signatures from Israelis and Palestinians on the One Voice Mandate. They were aiming to get the next half million at these live summits. But this brings us to the devastating climax of the source material. Just as they reached this massive peak of visibility and momentum, the violent extremists on both sides panicked.
The document clinically breaks down exactly how this sabotage occurred. The rejectionists, again, the factions that believe any compromise is a total defeat, recognized that a successful summit of that magnitude showing half a million people demanding peace, would fundamentally undermine their narrative that the other side is pure evil. They couldn't let it happen. So they launched a highly coordinated effort to destroy it. An online smear campaign called Another Voice was created specifically to delegitimize One Voice. They falsely painted the Palestinian staff as willing collaborators with the enemy and framed the entire movement as a Zionist plot using inflammatory cartoons and internet propaganda. And it wasn't just internet trolls.
It escalated far beyond online smears into real physical danger. Exactly.
Explicit armed threats were made against the planned rally in Jericho by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, which is a designated militant group.
If you were listening to this and wondering how ordinary people actually deal with that level of stress, well, they don't always win. Because of those direct threats of violence, One Voice Palestine was forced to make the heartbreaking decision to cancel the Jericho event.
They had no choice.
They could not risk the lives of everyday citizens attending a peace rally. And shortly after, One Voice Israel canceled the massive Tel Aviv event in solidarity with their Palestinian counterparts. Yeah. You read the author's words in this section and the emotional toll is palpable. Let's just pause on that for a second. After years of building this fragile balance, after the town halls, the polling, gathering half a million signatures, they had to to shut the defining event down. Devastating. Lubecki openly admits in the text that the failure made him profoundly doubt the entire power and potential of what they were trying to accomplish. He actually wondered if they had been wrong all along.
It's a crushing moment in the narrative. But the true measure of an organization is how it responds to that level of systemic disruption. Right. The document details how this failure did not lead to the dissolution of the movement, Instead, it triggered a massive internal audit. They gathered their most committed youth leaders and staff, and they engaged in a comprehensive, brutally honest review. What did they change? They instituted stronger governance structures, they clarified their specific advocacy mission to be even more resilient to propaganda, and they committed to external audits. Most importantly, rather than abandoning their methodology of enlightened self-interest, they doubled down on it.
They realized that the only defense against that kind of loud, violent sabotage was an even stronger, deeper grassroots network. Exactly. It really is an incredible journey to read through. When you step back and look at the whole picture presented in PeaceworksFinal.pdf, the core thesis of this document rings so loud. The defining dynamic of modern conflict, not just in the Middle East, but globally, isn't necessarily just one nation against another. No, it's not. It is the vast moderate majorities of the world desperately trying to reclaim their hijacked destinies from from a very loud, very organized fringe of absolutists.
Exactly. And the methodology One Voice used—this framework of enlightened self-interest combined with parallel, fiercely nationalistic movements rather than forced joint assimilation—provides a highly pragmatic blueprint.
It really does.
It challenges you, the listener, to look at other global conflicts, perhaps even the deep political polarizations in your own local communities, through a completely different lens. It proves that consensus often already exists. It's just buried under the noise of the extremes.
Which leaves us with a really compelling thought to ponder, building on everything we've just discussed. If a grassroots movement relies entirely on amplifying the voices of the moderate majority, what happens to that movement when the very definition of what is considered moderate shifts radically over time? That's a great question. Or what happens through successive generations who have been born entirely into the reality of a conflict where the baseline of normal has moved? How does a movement anchor itself when the political middle ground is constantly shifting beneath its feet?
That is the enduring challenge of civil society, and it's a question without an easy answer. It really is.
Well, thank you for joining us on this deep dive into the Peaceworks Foundation and the One Voice Movement. We warmly encourage you to keep exploring, keep questioning the narratives you see in the news, and always keep looking for the silent majorities. We will catch you next time.
