25/05/2026
What does it take to keep working side by side during crisis?
When the violence of May 2021 tore through Israel's mixed cities, and again after October 2023, social welfare workers faced an impossible situation: being there for traumatized residents while managing their own fear, grief, and fractured trust in the colleagues sitting next to them.
This month's issue of Mida'os, the Journal of Social Workers in Israel, confronts that reality head-on. In "We Remembered Who We Are: Arab and Jewish Social Workers on the Front Lines," Prof. Edith Blit-Cohen of the Hebrew University and Dr. Shany Payes, Director of Research and Evaluation at the Abraham Initiatives, document what happened inside those welfare departments and what it took to begin rebuilding. The article draws on their experience as organizational consultants within the Ministry of Welfare's Shared Cities framework, initiated following the groundbreaking research of Prof. Roni Strier.
The findings are sobering. Years of professional cooperation were strained under the pressure of national crisis. Arab workers faced the pain of being associated with events they opposed; Jewish workers grappled with fear and a sense of rupture. Managers were left without a roadmap. Working side by side, the authors argue, is a vital foundation but must be backed by organizational infrastructure, shared language, and intentional practices for rebuilding trust.
Three conclusions stand out:
- Professional coexistence between Arab and Jewish workers is fragile without deliberate, ongoing investment. Goodwill alone is not enough.
- Workers in mixed cities navigate a constant tension between their professional identity and their national identity, one institutions have never formally acknowledged. Ignoring it causes real harm.
- Crisis-response interventions are too little, too late. What is needed is a permanent support framework embedded in professional training and organizational structure.
Commissioned by the Ministry of Social Affairs in cooperation with the Abraham Initiatives, Prof. Blit-Cohen and Dr. Payes led the two-phase intervention: mapping the specific ruptures within teams of social workers and between workers and residents, then facilitating honest, structured dialogue to work through them. The work demonstrated that the Abraham Initiatives' expertise in conflict transformation has concrete, practical value inside Israel's public institutions, reaching some of the most vulnerable residents in the country's most contested communities.
Article in Hebrew - https://bit.ly/4dHSS6e
Translation to English - https://bit.ly/42SAEKw
