Ittay Flescher: Explaining the Israel-Hamas war and the dream of peace

By admin On Jan 19, 2024

Australian native Ittay Flescher has called Jerusalem his home for years. It is where he works as the Jerusalem correspondent for Plus61J and as a teacher focused on peace education.

Plus61J is an Australian news site. “I’ve been doing a weekly column for about six years,” Flescher tells In Jerusalem, “mainly writing about Australia-Israel relations, but I also write about my life, about war, peace building, elections, the cost of living – basically whatever’s going on.”

Nowadays, he combines those skills on his podcast, From the Yaara River to the Mediterranean Sea, available on Spotify and Apple podcasts, explaining the Israel-Hamas war, its impact, and the background behind it to his Australian audience.

How popular is your podcast ‘From the Yaara River to the Mediterranean Sea’?

The podcast has had over 12,000 downloads in less than a month. We’re getting a lot of feedback from Jews married to non-Jews who use the podcast as a way to start talking about the war to their partners, and they feel much safer with our podcasts than with others.

What makes your podcast stand out?

There are a lot of right-wing podcasts that do their version of Israel advocacy, and Palestinian podcasts that explain the Palestinian narrative, but very few give both Palestinian and Israeli perspectives. I’m a history teacher and teach the Nakba and Israeli independence, so I was suited to do this.

Operation Horev, 1948 (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The first three podcasts are a history lesson. Every episode after has had different guests.

Which is the most impactful podcast you’ve done so far?

Episode 3, ‘October 7 War Diary,’ where I shared what I did on the day of the massacre. A lot of personal stuff came up – I shared how as a journalist, I struggled to tell my son what was happening.

I said on the podcast, ‘I explain this country for a living, and I had no idea what to tell my 10-year-old son.’

How did you start it?

I’m very well known in Australia. When the war began, I got messages asking ‘Can you explain the war?’ ‘Why did Hamas do this?’ ‘Do you still believe in peace?’ ‘How do you talk to Palestinians?’ From there, people started asking historical questions. One of the callers was a family lawyer named Hannah Baker from Melbourne. We spoke for hours and decided to record our conversations and make a podcast.

What is your background in peace education?

I’m the education director for Kids4Peace Jerusalem, a youth movement for Israelis and Palestinians where Jews, Muslims, and Christians come together for regular dialogue. We aim to promote peace, justice, and equality through humanizing one another, hearing each other’s stories, having fun, and having tough conversations in a safe place.

What kind of guests do you have?

We’ve had Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers. The idea is to show that despite the strong feelings that we have now, it shouldn’t stop us from talking to people we disagree with.

We just did an episode with Maoz Inon, who lost his parents on October 7. Since then, he’s been traveling the world speaking about peace, reconciliation, and basically saying ‘I don’t want my grief to be used to hurt anyone.’ I resonate with how he’s not letting his grief become a desire for revenge.

How does your podcast focus on dialogue?

One thing that keeps coming up is how to have conversations with someone you disagree with. A lot of people don’t know how to do that.

I’ve been facilitating dialogue for over 20 years, and a lot of what I say on the podcast isn’t just the content of the conversation but how to have it in the first place.

Many people tell me that they really want to talk to Palestinians or Jews but don’t know how because they don’t condemn this or that. A lot of people don’t know how to start the conversation, to hear things they disagree with, to listen and not respond. A lot of what we’re doing on the podcast is modeling how to have challenging conversations using history, stories, and the lives of our guests, and to not give up on the dream of peace.

Everyone now thinks that this war will last forever. I think when you believe that, you act like it.

I’m trying to give people hope that there’s another way to do this. ■