Jill Gabbe, co-founder and executive producer of CITIZENARTS, introduces Israeli Voices: Who We Are, an eight-episode podcast of on-the-ground conversations across a spectrum of Israeli life. Perspectives emerge shaped by personal identity, history, and experience — revealing the humanity of a people striving to live freely with dignity and mutual respect in peace.

Families picnicking, playing, munching cookies and quiche at an outdoor café in the Judean hills. Carefree, joyful expressions in Hebrew and English. A seeming impossible scenario – especially for foreigners who think of Israel as mostly tempests. Looking closer, one notices the dads wearing holstered pistols frolicking with kids. Reminders of ever-present danger.

A few miles away, a serene community built around a vineyard. A lunch celebrating the end of Shabbat hosted by Nissim, an entrepreneur who discourses about Israel as a meritocracy of opportunity regardless of race or background. Where capitalism flourishes in a socialist system. But also where taxes and other mounting costs of daily life are magnified by war and costs of social welfare for the Haredim – Israel’s fast-growing ultra-orthodox Jewish community. And where parents worry and are challenged about guiding children through social media distractions and looming, life-altering commitments to military service.

Further along, Tel Aviv’s economic prowess, Mediterranean beachy, café vibe, incoming missile terrors, Hostage Square remembrance of the damaged and lost. And Noa, a groundbreaking, politically correct journalist, sharing family stories of racial inequity and of feminist influences on Israeli journalism, police brutality, gender harmony.

In the Negev, a few kilometers from Israel’s border with Gaza, many come to reflect, remember, mourn at memorials on Blood Road and at the Nova Music Festival. There and at kibbutzim nearby on October 7, 2023, Hamas military forces and Gazan militants began attacks that killed 1200 Israelis.

In two of the attacked kibbutzim, Eyal, Nevo and their wives and children sheltered in their homes, the sounds of battle and massacre around them. They were rescued and evacuated by the Israeli Army. Settled in another community, Nevo and his wife remain uncertain they will return to their restored kibbutz. Eyal travels to his kibbutz from his temporary home to work and walk within sites and memories of the attack and the murdered. He and his wife and children await the day they’ll live there again and maybe, eventually, walk in peace from their home to the Gaza Strip and across to the Mediterranean Sea.