How Jewish and Arab students at one of Israel’s few mixed schools prepare for peace, by simply listening

Jerusalem — Every morning before going to school, 12-year-old Dariel Bardach-Goldstein sticks a number on her chest. It marks the days since his cousin was taken hostage by Hamas.

Dariel campaigns almost daily with her mother, Rebecca, demanding a deal to bring back the dozens of Israelis captured by Hamas during the group’s invasion. October 7 terrorist attack back home. But it hasn’t been easy.

In the days immediately after the attack, Rebecca thought her daughter needed help.

“I immediately spoke to her teacher and we agreed that she should meet with the school counselor – and the school counselor is Arab and I don’t know her,” the mother recalled. “This is complicated? Will it be complicated?”

Dariel attends one of six schools in Israel that are not segregated between Arab and Jewish students.

“That night the school counselor wrote to me,” Rebecca recalled. “She said, ‘My heart goes out to you.'”

“It was like a wave of feelings felt, heard and seen, and completely safe and confident,” she said.

At the Hand in Hand school in Jerusalem, children learn Arabic and Hebrew. History is taught by two teachers – one Jewish and one Palestinian.

Hanin Dabash also sends his children to school. She told CBS News that this gives them “the opportunity to speak their minds – to talk about their fears, their future, their misunderstanding of what’s going on… I think kids are normalized to listening to each other.”

“We have family members of students in Gaza who were killed. We have teachers who send their children to the army in Gaza,” said Director Efrat Meyer. “And we pay attention to everyone.”

Meyer, who is Jewish, is responsible for the remarkable experiment. She told CBS News that the laser focus on simply listening to each other stems from several key goals.

“We want our students to first not be racist,” she said. “Recognize the different histories and sufferings of both cultures, and we will know that students who graduate here behave differently in society later on.”

To get them to that point, no subject can be taboo.

“We talk about our fear,” explained deputy director Engie Wattad, “and when we see the other side understanding and putting themselves in our shoes… it’s deeply comforting.”

For students like Dariel, that means having difficult conversations.

“I learned that it’s hard for us to talk because many of us are afraid to share our thoughts,” she admitted. “But we need to.”

Principal Meyer doesn’t try to portray her school’s work — or any aspect of life in the heart of the troubled Middle East — as easy, but she said it helps to know that she and her colleagues are working to create a better future.

“The situation in Israel is not easy,” she said. “I think it’s easier when you know you’re part of the solution… It’s easier when you know that what you do now affects the lives and souls of students. It’s easier when you talk about it, when you broaden your knowledge. I find it harder to be out of this school now.”

She knows that peace may be far away for her country and for all her students and their families. But they are prepared.

“When peace is here, for us, it won’t be a big change,” Meyer said. “We have the skills, we have practiced. We will be able to teach other people how to do this.”

Until then, she and her colleagues at Hand in Hand will continue arming their students with a weapon more powerful than guns or bombs: empathy.