NORTHAMPTON — Navigating the complex violence between Israel and the Palestinian peoples is a difficult task for anyone. For children, the conflict can seem even more daunting and inaccessible. These days, community members at Lander-Grinspoon Academy are making strides in demystifying these events for kids by sharing their experiences engaging in peace activism.

On Thursday, a panel of parents and former educators gathered before students in grades 4-6 for a discussion about what productive peace activism looks like during this ongoing conflict.

“We’re a Jewish school, so the recent events have been a lot to deal with and we’ve been grappling with how to approach it,” Said Jake Marmer, Lander-Grinspoon’s head of school. “The news nowadays can be very disheartening and heavy, so it’s important to remember that there are people working towards peace.”

Students, faculty, and panel members took a few collective, grounding breaths and then moved into an engaging discussion about the panelists’ experience with peace-building work. Rebekah Steinfeld, assistant director of Hillel at UMass Amherst and a former Lander-Grinspoon educator, kicked off the dialogue with a description of her work at Seeds of Peace, a camp in Maine focused on bringing children from areas of conflict together for fun activities and constructive dialogue.

“How many of you have ever been afraid that someone might not like you? That they might hate you?” she asked. Every student raised a hand. “That’s the feeling these kids are coming to camp with. They’re afraid the others might hate them or even want to hurt them … or maybe they’ve been taught to think of other people in a certain way. But once they go swimming with the other kids, or do art or play sports with them, they realize that these are just other people, just like them.”

Isaac Luria, a Lander-Grinspoon parent and one of the founding members of the nonprofit advocacy group J Street, spoke to the children about how they can take an open, inquisitive approach to learning about the conflict.

“You should get to know Palestinian people for who they are. Just like Jewish people are of all kinds, Palestinian people are of all kinds,” he told the students. “You all may be the generation that gets to see something different [happen with this conflict], and I will fervently work to make that possible.”

Next, students heard from panelists involved with the Israeli-Palestinian co-led grassroots organization Standing Together. Tamar Fields, a former Lander-Grinspoon educator and member of the Western Massachusetts Friends of Standing Together explained to the children how they can understand diplomacy in a holistic way. She illustrated this kind of peacemaking with a metaphor involving a classroom of children with assigned seats, where many of the children do not like their assignments.

She explained that one way of approaching the issue would be to try to make the situation better for those who don’t like their seats while adhering to the rule stating that they cannot change their seats. However, the approach that her work takes involves calling the rules themselves into question.

“Instead, we can ask ‘Why can’t we change seats? Why does it have to be this way? Can it be a different way?’” said Fields. “We can all meet and talk about what we need and reach an agreement. That’s called a negotiated settlement. That’s diplomacy.”

Hannah Pollin-Galay and Asaf Galay, Lander-Grinspoon parents who came to Massachusetts from their permanent home in Tel-Aviv shortly after the attacks on Oct. 7, work with Standing Together’s branch in Israel. Pollin-Galay said she found the organization when looking for a peace-focused group to get involved with that aligned with her values, one of which is “love thy neighbor as yourself, not love thy neighbor as yourself unless you’ve been fighting for a long time and both want the same thing.”

“Everything we do [at Standing Together] has shared leadership, so if an event has an Israeli speaker, we also have a Palestinian speaker.” She likened this model to the saying “don’t talk about me without me.”

“This kind of shared leadership is the foundation of full equality,” she said.

Students were encouraged to ask questions, and to continue to do so after the panel’s conclusion. For Lander-Grinspoon Academy, this event is part of a broader effort to foster an open dialogue about Israeli-Palestinian relations. After the discussion between students and panelists, and a long-awaited recess period, teachers planned to discuss the panel with their students and any questions it generated. Marmer said the school continues to search for new ways to educate students on the conflict and encourage them to be open-minded, informed decision makers when they enter adulthood.

Alexa Lewis can be reached at alewis@gazettenet.com or on Instagram at @alexamlewis.