It’s hard to imagine a place more welcoming than the home of Eman Ansari.
On a recent fall night at Ansari’s home on the outskirts of Boston, the savory smell of Middle Eastern staples like shawarma floated from the kitchen to the dining room while background music set a relaxed tone.
She was host to a gathering organized by The Jar, a local nonprofit that brings together people from different walks of life.
Ansari is Palestinian American. The founder of The Jar and one of the dinner guests in her home was her friend, Guy Ben-Aharon, an Israeli American.
Their friendship has raised eyebrows in both of their communities. But both have felt the heaviness of the Israel-Hamas war, which began one year ago when Hamas militants invaded Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 200 people hostage. The repeated Israeli military bombardment of Gaza that followed has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
“This past year was a stress test to a lot of relationships. Not all of them survived,” Ansari said. “The respect and trust and shared humanity we have for our people, I think, is what made our friendship endure.”
“I have lost many friends because of political disagreements,” Ben-Aharon said. “Many of my Israeli friends I have lost because of that.”
Speaking to the crowd at the outset of the party, Ben-Aharon stressed the benefits of human connection.
“There’s always something horrible happening around the world,” he said. “But for many of us in this room, this is a moment where it is closer to our families. And closer to our homeland.”
Fighting has now spilled over to Lebanon between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah. And just last week, Iran fired missiles into Israel, further escalating the conflict.
Over the course of the past year, Ben-Aharon and Ansari have had to work through the complex emotions the war has brought in their own friendship.
But it doesn’t require that sort of connection for people to feel the strain.
“This has been a year where it’s hard for people who disagree with each other to be in conversation,” said Lily Rabinoff-Goldman, president and CEO of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Boston.
She said it’s hard to have conversations within the context of the attack on Oct. 7 and the loss of life that’s happened since then. Adding to that complexity, there’s been a notable rise in antisemitism.
“There’s so much shifting sands, right? Every single day the context changes. And we’re in our own election cycle,” she said. “I will say, in a first-person point of view, that it’s hard to hold all of it all at once.”
The Middle East crisis has extraordinary layers of complexity that encompass religion, historical grievances, geopolitics and human rights. That combination makes it exceptionally delicate to navigate.
Tarek Masoud, the faculty director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative, said for many people, the conflict is also personal. The more the fighting expands, the wider the circle of connections.
His advice for those navigating all of this is to understand that people with differing viewpoints usually have a reason for their beliefs.
“They could be wrong, but let me try to understand why they think the things that they think and let me try to explain to them why I think the things that I think,” he said. “And even though I’m probably not going to convince her and she’s probably not going to convince me, you may be will able get to a place where here — at least, in this society, on this campus or in our workplaces, our family lives — where there is more understanding and more tolerance of people with alternative points of view.”
That sort of understanding is crucial for Ben-Aharon and Ansari.
They admit that they don’t agree 100% of the time. But they keep a baseline of respect for each other.
“Almost everyone I know, here and there, would rather figure out a peaceful way forward with a just peace that acknowledged the humanity of everyone [rather] than it’s either kill or be killed,” Ansari said.
Ben-Aharon said, through eating together and praying together, he and Ansari can be a model for the world they want to live in.
“And if I had one hope, it would be that more and more people would take the personal steps to model this in hopes that that is the type of leadership we can elect and empower to bring on change,” he said.
