Expanding the Conversation: Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya

By :  Expanding the Conversation Podcast | Expanding the Conversation

What does it mean to live fully in two worlds—and feel at home in neither?

In this episode of Expanding the Conversation, Dr. Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya, one of Israel’s leading experts on Arab society and state policy, shares a deeply personal and analytical perspective on the experience of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Drawing from her research and lived experience, she explores how government policy, economic marginalization, and social separation shape everyday life for Arab Israelis—and what it means to seek belonging, dignity, and equality in a divided society.

This conversation, recorded after her appearance at the JTS convening Israel at a Crossroads, offers a rare and nuanced window into the complexities of identity, the enduring impact of the Nation-State Law, and the fragile promise of a shared future.

Bio of Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya

Discussion Questions

  1. Glass Ceilings and Early Awareness
    Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya begins her story with a childhood memory of visiting a kibbutz. How do early experiences of exclusion shape identity and ambition? Can you recall a moment when you recognized social or cultural boundaries for the first time?
  2. Identity and Belonging
    “We are part of the Palestinian people, and we are citizens of the State of Israel.” How does Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya describe the experience of holding both identities? What tensions and possibilities does she identify in that duality?
  3. Measuring Democracy
    Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya suggests that one way to evaluate a democracy is by how it treats its largest minority. What does this lens reveal about Israeli society? How might that same question apply to other democracies?
  4. October 7 and Aftermath
    How did the events of October 7 and the war in Gaza impact Arab-Jewish relations within Israel, according to Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya? What role can shared grief, empathy, or civic dialogue play in times of national crisis?
  5. Hope and Responsibility
    Despite the challenges, Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya emphasizes the need for shared society and a win-win future. What forces or values give her hope? What role can external Jewish communities play in supporting that vision?

SHOW NOTES

Video

Further Reading

Transcript

Ellie Gettinger

Welcome to Expanding the Conversation, a podcast series that brings the Jewish Theological Seminary to you. The series focuses on the messages that emerge from Israel at a crossroads navigating religion, democracy and justice. A Convening that took place at JTS in April 2025. I’m Ellie Gettinger, director of outreach for the Center for Lifelong Learning, and I will be curating the series, which will highlight key messages from the convening itself with insights from our panelists that were recorded separately.

Today, we learn with Dr. Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya. When my colleagues heard Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya, they felt that it was imperative that we share her thoughts with this podcast audience. She is one of Israel’s leading experts on the economic and social development of Arab society, governmental policy, and majority minority relations. She spoke on the panel Majority Rights and Equity for Minorities assessing the nation state law.

She offered a perspective that many of us were unfamiliar with, that of Israeli-Arab, sharing her lived experience. She bolstered these personal reflections with statistics and demographic information from her research. There are few moments in the talk where she speaks Hebrew and Rabbi Ayalet Cohen, the session moderator and dean of the JTS Rabbinical School, provides translation. The talk opens with a story from her childhood.

Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya

When I was six years old, it was the first time that I went out from my neighborhood. My grandfather took me to a demonstration in Kibbutz Gezer Kibbutz Gezer is far from Ramla, from my neighborhood. For something like 5 minutes, I went to a demonstration that peace now arranged in Kibbutz Gezer. It was a sunny Saturday, and I couldn’t care less about the protests.

I was amazed by the swimming pools. It was the first time that I see a swimming pool in the kibbutz. I saw kids riding their bikes safely and I see green fields. The neighborhood that I grew up in was a very poor neighborhood. I told my grandfather that when I would grow up, I want to raise my kids in the kibbutz because it looked like a heaven.

And my grandfather told me that only Jews can live in the kibbutz. And I was really angry because he make my glass ceiling very low without even knowing what is a glass ceiling is. And I promised myself then that when I will grow up and I will have children, I will teach them to dream and to to make the effort to be, to achieve all they want.

And today, I’m a mother of three amazing girls, Carmel. She is studying law at Tel Aviv University, and Hala and now she’s finishing high school and Nir she  will be studying in Yad B’Yad in the bilingual school. And I can say that about 40 years later from this, from this story, the glass ceiling is still low and the Nation State Law makes the reality much more complicated.

But we have a lot of good organization and a lot of good activists that promote equality for the Palestinian minority within Israel. It was very important for me to say that we don’t need law to feel as a second class citizen within our homeland. The glass ceiling and the reality is much more complicated than the law.

Ellie Gettinger

After her session, when I sat down with Nasreen, I wanted to understand what brought her to JTS to share her story? What is the importance of connecting with an American Jewish audience? Why would this be something that you made time for?

Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya

Because we are 21% of Israeli population and you cannot deal with issues like democracy and minority and majority relations and state minority relations without bringing the perspective of the Arab minority. So I wanted to come and to speak about the current situation, the current political situation, about the complexity of our identities.

We as I spoke, we have a families in Gaza and in the West Bank, and we are also citizens of the state of Israel, and we have very complex identity. So I wanted the audience to hear from my personal experience and my personal point of view, what is what it look like to be a citizen of Israel and to speak about the challenges of our democracy and how we can work together to make Israel a real democracy to all its citizens.

That includes the Arab and the Palestinian minority living in Israel.

Ellie Gettinger

Returning to her convening remarks. Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya provides a context to understand the nation state law

Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya

In order to talk about the nation state law. We need to begin by understanding the context. Arabs are 20% of Israeli population. It’s not a small minority, and that also includes the people that live in East Jerusalem.

Some live in villages. Behind the wall was limited access to Israel. They don’t have all the legal rights. It seems the people that live in Israel and have Israeli citizenship. Arab and Jewish Jews in Israel live in, for the most part, separated lives. We have separate routines, not so much because of the law, but because the system is built this way.

And when I talk about the system, for example, school system is divided into four sectors. Is the secular, the religious, Jewish, ultra-Orthodox and the Arab. That means that Arab students and Jewish students do not have any interaction. And when we talk about the Arab minority, you need to understand that the same ways the Jewish people are divided to different groups.

We are also very diverse minority. We have religion. The majority of us are Muslim. We have Christian and Druze. We have geographical regions like the Bedouins living in the Negev, the Triangle area, the Galilee and mixed towns and of course gender. When we talk about the Palestinian minority, we need to understand that a large part of the minority don’t succeed to integrate within the Labor force the lower employment rates of Arab men and women. And that, of course, leads to a very high poverty rates. Almost 40% of Arab families live under the poverty line when we talk about children. Almost every second child lived under the poverty line in 2008. The Israeli government drafts a governmental resolution for the economic development of the Arab population with budget is larger than ever before, as almost no in investment or government Resolution 922 and the current one off the five year plan for 2022-26. Our government is government Resolution 550. All was our widest and the largest land till today, covering many areas and budget is at around 30 billion shekel about $8 billion. This governmental resolution shows that through the recent government have a shift towards the extreme right. There are importance that work towards development and closing gaps.

This include internal processes like the our commission of the early 2000. Pressure by international organizations like the OECD, Israel Civil Service officials and major civil society organization, and some members of the government. The ministers in the current government like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, are doing all they can to cancel and to freeze those budgets. The plan was already cut by about 15% because of the war, while other plan like were left without any cut.

It’s very hard to talk about any positive thing during those days, but it’s very important. We need to admit that thanks to this governmental investment and development and people like the new as people from the New Israel Fund think, do you and people from the SDF promoted several programs that succeeded to promote the Arab minority and so we can see a lot of positive trends.

We see significant increase in the number of Arab students in the higher education institution. We see greater inclusion of the tech industry, white collar and public service position. We see the increase in Arab employment rate, which is very positive trends.

We can’t talk about the Arab minority in Israel without talking about the crime, as in our towns was in our villages. In the last two years, the number of the victim reached a level higher than ever before, more than 230 victims during the last two years and 2022. During the Bennett Lapid government and inter-ministerial committee created the plan managed to decrease crime the first time in many years. However, since that plan worked only for one year, the government was only short lived, as you know, and the plan to fight crime was stopped by the current government.

We are also witnessing a sharp increase in crime. In the past three years. This year was already have more than 60 victims from the Arab society.

Ellie Gettinger

The statistics from Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya’s talk paint a stark picture of Palestinean Israeli life, which were drawn from her research. Tell me more about your work and who you partner with.

Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya

My research focus on inequality in Israel. I try to work with the Israeli government to promote equality, to promote our integration in the workforce and the higher education system and also in the civil service, because I really believe that if we want to make a change and right now we cannot be part of the political game because there we are not legitimate enough.

So one of the platforms that can help us to make a change is a civil service. So a large part of my research deal with large part of my research deal was the tools that can promote the integration of Arab civil services.

Ellie Gettinger

In this session, Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya began to unpack the complexity of Arab Israeli identity and another important context to understand the situation of Arab citizen in Israel is a complex issue of Arab- Israeli identity.

Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya

As you may know, we are part of the Palestinian people and more than 20% of of us have family in Gaza or in the West Bank. At the same time, we are also as the citizen of the state, and this is our homeland where we want to feel belong as full number. Also, in terms of decision making, that complexity is much harder to Jews to accept, while almost all Arab on field and believes that the two parts of our identity is the Israeli one and the national one can live together and we don’t have any less duties. Our government part is low participation. We have low political influence and historical marginalization as Arab localities and institutions are under budget is averaging the Arab population ability to mobilize.

For example, the Arab school system consistently receives 20 to 40% less than the Jewish school system. The marginalization of the Arab minority and the discrimination as that Arab suffer lead to alienation and frustration, especially among the younger generation. Although, the Arab population suffer from discrimination as the majority of us want to make a change through a democratic institution and to have greater influence of politics.

For example, survey, that’s the Israel Democracy Institute I’ve done during the last few years shows that more than 80% of the Arab minority want to see our parties part of the government and want to to see Arab ministers. On the other hand, when we ask the Jewish population about our integration was in political gain, we have a majority that won’t accept us as part of the game.

The last three years were characterized by a raise of incitement against Arabs, specially during the Lapid- Bennett government when an Arab party, Mansour Abbas, was part of the government for the first time and after outbreak of the current ongoing war,

Ellie Gettinger

You have this great inside outside perspective because you’re someone who’s been looking at the society and researching the society. And at the same time this is your lived experience and you really did a tremendous job balancing that while you were talking. Here is the demographic. These are the challenges. This is how this affects me and my family. Is there a challenge there in how you are reflecting in or out?

Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya

I have a responsibility when I bring thoughts and ideas to the stage. I want to represent the thoughts of my community. I don’t bring thoughts and ideas that do not present large majority. So when I would speak about our link to integrate in the politics, when I say that we’re willing to integrate in the labor force inside of education system and to be part of the Israeli politics, I know that a large majority of the Arab and Palestinian minority in Israel think this way.

We want to be part. We want to be. We want to integrate. And this is the reason that I brought the idea to the stage, because I know that it can be meaningful to the audience to hear the way that we think and wish to be, to be part. At the same time, it’s very important for me to say that while many people from Israel think that we cannot have two identities, we cannot will integrate in the economic and inside Israeli society, we cannot have at the same time, Palestinian identity.

I feel that it’s it’s a very important to speak and to bring the ideas to identities of Israeli citizenship and the Palestinian nationality can live in very peaceful way.

Ellie Gettinger

In her talk, Dr. Haddad, has Yehia explored the experience of Israeli Arabs since October 7th.

Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya

I want to move talking about the current situation, and we need to understand the major effect of that October seven massacre and the war in Gaza.

I have on state minority relations. In the beginning of the war, we saw a wave of solidarity within Arab society since we were also shocked by the events of October seven. As the war continued, it’s brought to the surface the complexity of our identity. We saw the loss the loss of life in Gaza while the most Israeli did not seen it.

We have families that kept telling us how the situation in Gaza is awful and unfortunately we have the privilege to see the news that the Israeli TV [speaking in Hebrew]. So they’re able they’re able to consume both the Israeli news that’s broadcasted within Israel, but also other Arab news sources that are available internationally.

The ongoing war brought about growing tension between Jews and Arabs citizens. That is that significant. The percentage of Arab reported that they don’t feel comfortable going to Jewish or mixed localities expressing themselves freely on the social media or speaking in Arabic near Jews. On the economic level, we saw increased level of unemployment among Arab citizens. And as always, during crisis situation, it takes longer to the Arab minority to get back to the employment market because there are we are overrepresented in low tech and nonprofessional jobs, which are always harder during this situation.

But I want to say that although the situation is really hard and with this current government, we see ministers that try to freeze budgets and try to do all their best to hit hard NGOs that promote shared society. But I really believe that we have a lot of good forces within the Israeli society that still believes that we can promote shared society and we can promote equality. Bad forces within our society had a lot of [in Hebrew] some of the the worst forces in Israeli society now have a huge platform and it’s time for other people.

It really depends on the context. So, for example, when we speak with the Israeli government, we specially concentrated on our citizenship. But when we talk in such forums, it’s very important for us to to show that we have a very complex identity. We are part of the two people. We are we have the Israeli citizenship, which it’s really important identity because I’m part of the state of Israel.

In the meanwhile, I’m also part of the Palestinian people. I have a large family. More than 500 people of my family live in the refugee camp of Jabalya in Gaza. We are part of the two people as the Palestinian and the Israeli. And we feel sorrow. And we and although it’s complicated, but I think that we have a very special role because there is no other minority in the whole world that speak the two languages, that know that suffer of the two.The two people.

We live, study, work. We spend most of our time with Jews, not only me. The majority of my community live in Jewish spaces. So we know why it’s so important to that Jewish people to have their own state, why they need the definition. And we know the sorrow and the pain of the Jewish people. At the same time, we also have families in the West Bank.

I have a family in Hebron and in Gaza, so the fact that I know what kind of suffer my family is dealing with all the pain in Gaza. We have a special and unique role and and promoting peace between the two people because there is no other minorities that really know how to be a bridge between the two people.

I’m Palestinian, I’m a mother. I’m Israeli. Our identity is very complicated in some places. I use the term I don’t even deal with my national identity, or neither was my Israeli citizenship. In some places we defined ourself as female. Sometimes as as I define myself as a researcher, sometimes as Palestinian, sometimes sometimes as Israeli. It’s really depends on the context.

But to be honest, my dream is to be to feel comfortable, to say the word. So use the definition Palestinian. When I talk with the Israeli government, because today when we talk and you talk about it, the official officer want us to integrate because of economic reason. And I want the state of Israel to promote more integration, not only because of economic reason, because I’m a citizen, because I’m a I’m a sorry, English is my fourth language.

[Hebrew] to Native minority. And I want the state to to treat me not as its enemy. I’m part of the state. And when the state of Israel will will succeed, it will be also my success. So it’s a is a it will be a lose-lose situation to all of us. All it’s be and it could be a win-win.

So I really believe in a win-win situation. and I believe that this kind of discussion can help us to, to, to, to come to this situation that also the state of Israel and the government not the current one, because I lost the hope from people like from Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu and Smotrich to try to to look at us as a human being and to treat us equally.

But so we have a lot a lot in common. We are the Arab minority in Israel is a large minority. The Jewish minority in the state is a large minority. And I believe that we have a very we have a common values. We have common challenges. And the ways that I want to believe said the ways that I will do anything to to make Jewish feel safe and to fight and to antisemitism after October seven and the war in Gaza, I want to believe that the people sitting here in this room will do anything that I will feel safe within my homeland.

Because if you want to measure the democracy of Israel, you can measure it, by the way, that the state of Israel is treating the largest minority.

Ellie Gettinger

Thank you so much to Dr. Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya for sharing with them. I so appreciated her willingness to sit down with me and offer additional insights into her experience. I would rate my own knowledge of Arab-Israeli life very limited.

I found it eye opening to consider the day to day challenges for a large portion of Israeli citizens. In closing the session, I returned to the end of Dalia Sheindlin’s message. She asked for American Jews to engage in these issues. What is our responsibility to Israel’s largest minority?

Thank you for listening. This audio was recorded at the JTS Convening, Israel at a Crossroads. I hope you will expand this conversation, sharing your concerns and questions, and maybe this podcast with friends and family members. If you want to see complete footage of this session or of any of the sessions of the meeting, Israel at a Crossroads.

You can find a link on our website jtsa.edu/podcasts. Look for the “Expanding the Conversation” icon. Each episode includes discussion questions for individuals or groups to consider and links to our speakers, organizations and publications. If you would like to attend a Convening, you can find information about our upcoming programs at jtsa.edu/convenings

I’m Ellie Gettinger, director of Outreach for JTS. This podcast was produced by me with technical support from Chris Hickey, director of New Media. This is a production of the Jewish Theological Seminary. No part of this podcast may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The views expressed here in may not be those of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

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