Digital Peacebuilding Expo: The Hotline for Israel-Palestine

On March 13, the Digital Peacebuilding Community of Practice-led by the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP), Search for Common Ground, the Toda Peace Institute, and Mercy Corps-and the Council on Technology and Social Cohesion hosted a digital peacebuilding expo, which featured a series of interactive, practical demonstrations and presentations of digital peacebuilding tools.
The ongoing crisis in Israel-Palestine has led to unprecedented violence and humanitarian suffering, as well as contributed to societal tensions, antisemitism, and Islamophobia around the world. This session put a spotlight on the work of the Hotline for Israel-Palestine, a texting hotline that provides educational resources from many perspectives and answers questions around the conflict in Israel-Palestine, so that people can develop their own informed and nuanced positions. The hotline has grown into a network of more than 30 volunteers from different political, religious, and national background. Shira Hoffer, a Harvard student who founded the hotline, shared stories of the hotline’s contributions to advancing dialogue, challenges faced, and how its impacts can be scaled.