Karen Ross's Youth Encounter Programs in Israel: Pedagogy, Identity, & Social Change is a timely contribution to the fields of conflict and Israel/Palestine studies. The book arrives at a moment in which the rise of populist nationalism—signaled in Israel, for example, by the recent passage of the Nation-State Law—simultaneously threatens yet necessitates peacebuilding efforts. Against this backdrop, Ross's work helpfully analyzes the efficacy of youth encounter programs, or educational initiatives, that, in this case, bring young Israeli Jews and Palestinians into sustained contact with one another for the sake of peacebuilding. Do such programs, the Economist has asked, “actually change things for the good?” In response, Ross poses a question of her own: “What, in fact, does it mean for such projects to ‘change [something] for the good’?” (3).
To answer these questions, the author engages in a thorough comparative analysis of two Israeli-Palestinian encounter organizations, Peace Child Israel and Sadaka Reut, assessing the perceived impacts of their programs on the lives and beliefs of past participants. Peace Child Israel, established in 1987, brought young Israeli Jews and Palestinians together through a shared involvement in theater. Although the program underwent major changes, including a shift toward increased professionalization after the death of its founder, it continued to maintain a similar pedagogical approach that emphasized interpersonal connection before ceasing operations in 2011. Sadaka Reut, established in 1983 and still in operation today, is a grassroots organization that, through a variety of programs, educates and empowers young Israeli Jews and Palestinians to involve themselves in social and political activism. Although Sadaka Reut originally focused on interpersonal programs, it soon changed course by directly tackling sociopolitical issues, particularly those related to power dynamics and systemic inequities within Israel/Palestine (chapter 3).
Early in the text, Ross charts the dynamic histories of these groups, offering the reader a sense of how they transformed over time and what may have motivated their organizational and methodological choices. I was curious about these groups’ internal methods of data collection and impact assessment, and whether their own data played a part in the changes they undertook—for example, in Sadaka Reut's shift from an interpersonal focus to a more straightforwardly political one. Looking at perceived impact through a comparative lens, Ross concludes that Sadaka Reut's direct approach proved more effective than Peace Child Israel's in influencing participants’ “worldview horizons” or “underlying, deep-seated beliefs” about the role of the individual in the world and in spurring their engagement in other forms of activism. What seems unclear, though potentially relevant to Ross's findings, is why Sadaka Reut changed its course.
The core chapters of this text are informed by Ross's extensive research and field work starting in 2009–2010, including her observation of group activities, meetings, and retreats; perusal of various written materials (e.g., correspondence between staff and board members, pedagogical manuals and curriculum, etc.); and interviews with over seventy program alumni, in addition to two dozen or so staff members. The comprehensive scope of this study allows for an exploration of pedagogical methods, organizational structures, and participant experiences—intertwining variables that influence outcomes. Sociopolitical and familial circumstances also have an impact, as Ross reminds her readers, which understandably complicates the design of such a study. Indeed, outside circumstances may have a greater influence on program participants in areas of conflict. Perhaps this accounts for the relative dearth of scholarship on intergroup encounter programs in conflict settings, which Ross mentions in framing her study's contribution to existing scholarship.
One of Ross's primary interventions is a critique of traditional experimental and “quasi-experimental” impact assessment strategies, which attempt to isolate variables of interest—those pre-established by the researcher, rather than by the study participants or in a collaborative effort—while controlling for others. Her study eschews some of those conventions in favor of a more democratized, flexible approach that privileges the participants’ perspectives over those of the researcher. In practice, this method entails detailed interviews whose open-ended questions invite participants to share their life histories with the researcher, emphasizing the aspects they deem important and contextualizing their experiences in encounter programs in a broad fashion. This ethnographic strategy better suits the aims and values of Ross's study, as well as those of encounter programs themselves.
In the same vein, the author's examination of Peace Child Israel includes an astute discussion of the program's flaws. While the organization strove for parity in the experiences it offered and the environment it created for participants, its operational structure proved inequitable to its own board members and staff. In a few instances, Jewish leadership and staff asserted more control over the program and were given more responsibilities than their Palestinian counterparts, who, in some cases, seemed to be counterparts in name alone. Ross is right to draw attention to this concern, and whether or not it had anything to do with the organization's closure, it serves as an instructive example for similar organizations.
Ultimately, Ross's work paints an imperfectly positive picture of her objects of study. On the one hand, the data suggest that encounter programs helped transform participants’ horizons, demonstrating to them, for example, that alternatives to the present reality exist. On the other hand, these transformations were reported by Jewish participants in greater number than by Palestinian participants (table 2, p. 71). And while over half of the participants whom Ross interviewed continued their involvement in social change engagements after their encounter experiences, a closer look at the data reveals that this number includes more than twice as many Sadaka Reut alumni than Peace Child alumni. This finding, coupled with the penultimate chapter's consideration of participants’ identity transformations, points to Sadaka Reut's model as the more effective of the two, though it does not suggest that Peace Child Israel's was without merit. Instead, by nuancing and enriching the evaluative framework conventionally employed for impact assessment, Ross's work clarifies the nature of the transformations that come about as a result of different pedagogical modes and institutional structures. Youth Encounter Programs in Israel thus puts forth a rationale for such programs, along with actionable takeaways for the future—a worthy endeavor whose significance is heightened by present sociopolitical circumstances.
