The war between Israel and Hamas has taken a huge toll — far greater than we can recount.
The conflict is deeply personal for many people, including here in Vermont.
But it's hard to talk about.
Two women with Vermont ties and personal connections to the war — one who is Palestinian and one who is Jewish — were open to sharing how it has impacted them.
This piece was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Mitch Wertlieb: This is Vermont Public. I’m Mitch Wertlieb, and the voices you’re about to hear belong to two women with a thing or two to teach when it comes to speaking about difficult subjects.
First, let’s meet Raneen Salha.
She grew up in Milton and likes to bake in her spare time. Chocolate chip cookies if she doesn’t want to spend all day in the kitchen.
Raneen Salha: Um, or I can go to the extreme and do like a Middle Eastern dessert like Halawet El Jibn, which takes hours (Laughs).
Mitch Wertlieb: Otherwise you might find the 19-year-old relaxing with a book, or working at a cosmetics store in Williston.
Raneen Salha: I like beauty and skin care and taking care of myself, since that is a big part of having that work-life-school balance.
Mitch Wertlieb: Raneen is entering her junior year at the University of Vermont, and I’d be thinking a lot about balance as well, if I were studying neuroscience and psychology on a pre-med track, like her.
Sarah White is a bit of a bookworm as well.
The 23-year-old recently started revisiting all of the Percy Jackson fantasy novels.
Sarah White: I mean, it’s like middle grade. But the nostalgia is still there.
Mitch Wertlieb: Sarah graduated from UVM in December, with a double major in studio art and Spanish.
Sarah White: I really love working with colors or trying to match colors, or trying to get things to look like other things.
Mitch Wertlieb: And she spends time back home in Boston chasing around her family dog, a 10-year-old Wheaton terrier that acts like a puppy and has a penchant for thievery.
Sarah White: He’s nutty. I’ve been calling him a shoe bandit recently.
Mitch Wertlieb: The dog’s name is Brady, but even though he’s a Beantown-based pup, it has nothing to do with the guy who won all those Super Bowl rings.
In fact, Sarah’s family often uses the dog’s nickname.
Sarah White: We use a lot of Yiddish words, so we call him Sugie.
Mitch Wertlieb: That’s short for meshugenah, which means crazy.
And now that you know a lot of Yiddish is spoken in Sarah’s house, you may have guessed — she’s Jewish.
Raneen is Palestinian.
And both of them have personal connections to people caught up in the war between Israel and Hamas that’s been raging since Oct. 7.
That’s when Hamas led a deadly attack against people attending a music festival in southern Israel, followed by an Israeli military response that has been swift, devastating and not limited to members of Hamas.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, in what has become one of the 21st century’s most destructive conflicts. There are fears the war could broaden further, and it may already have by the time you’re hearing this.
But even though the events of Oct. 7 that sparked the war are what led us to reach out initially to Sarah and Raneen, this war is only the latest in a deadly conflict with roots reaching back centuries.
And those years contain complex threads interweaving past and present, along with perspectives and perceptions that can too often be warped by personal or political bias.
This conflict has divided families, friends, university campuses, news organizations like the New York Times, and also ours here at Vermont Public.
It’s really hard to talk about.
I first met Sarah White at Hillel, located on the UVM campus, not long after Oct. 7.
Hillel is a Jewish campus organization with affiliates all over the world, offering students a place to study, meet with friends, and discuss the meaning of Judaism — although all faiths are welcomed.
UVM’s Hillel is a spacious, marble-and-slate-lined house nestled in the heart of the Burlington campus on College Street.
On this night, back in the late fall, a group of about a dozen students met to discuss that long and troubled history of conflict between Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East. The history was told from each group’s perspectives in the hopes of sparking critical thinking about the current events of the war.
After the reading and discussion, I asked if anyone wanted to follow up, and Sarah offered to speak with me about a week later, again at Hillel.
It’s a place that’s meant a lot to her since coming to UVM from Massachusetts, where she grew up in a predominantly Jewish town.
Sarah White: It was definitely a bit of a culture shock to come from such a Jewish area to UVM, which is still pretty Jewish by most university standards. But it was still a place where I could find Jewish community where I knew that not everyone in my classes was going to be Jewish. And at least there were Jewish people here.
Mitch Wertlieb: She learned of the October Hamas attacks after sleeping in on a rare day when her school schedule allowed it. She opened her phone and saw people posting on Instagram about attacks against Israel, which she at first assumed were remote rocket strikes.
Sarah White: Anyone who's familiar with Israel knows that they undergo a lot of rocket attacks all the time. And so at first I was like, oh, like people are probably shooting rockets at Israel again, like, that sucks. But then I realized it was not your standard rocket attack, which is such a weird concept too. So when I realized that this was so much more, I had no clue where to begin in terms of processing it.
I had no clue where to begin in terms of processing it.Sarah White, speaking about the Oct. 7 attacks
Mitch Wertlieb: She also learned that a young man she had befriended on a trip to Israel was caught up in the initial Hamas attack at the Nova music festival.
Sarah White: When I was going through my phone, someone I had gone on a trip with posted a screenshot from the trip’s counselor that said that someone who was on my trip was taken hostage. His name is Hersh Goldberg Polin. He's been all over the news.
Mitch Wertlieb: Around this time demonstrations and protests started popping up in Vermont, both in light of the initial Hamas attack, and Israel’s military’s response.
I attended one of them — a pro-Palestinian demonstration in front of the Burlington offices of Sen. Bernie Sanders — a little over a month after the war began.
Protestors, including Raneen Salha, were calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Like Sarah White, Raneen had concerns of her own — and a personal connection to the war.
Raneen Salha: I'm here today because of my family back home. They're not able to raise their voices as much as we can here. So I'm using my freedom of speech as much as I can for liberation.
Mitch Wertlieb: When you say your family back home, where are you talking about?
Raneen Salha: I'm talking about Gaza City.
Mitch Wertlieb: You must be terrified for them.
Raneen Salha: I am absolutely terrified for them. There hasn't been much connection over the past few weeks. I've only contacted one person, a distant relative, and they're saying that they're basically waiting for their time of death. And yeah, I honestly, I have no, I'm at the point of just no words. I'm speechless.
Mitch Wertlieb: We caught up again a few weeks later at UVM’s Waterman building, a campus hotspot and favorite study area for Raneen which happens to be just across the street from Hillel.
After sitting down in an empty classroom, I asked Raneen about her hijab headdress — a symbol of modesty in Islam. She started wearing it in high school, as part of her Muslim faith.
But growing up on the northern edge of Chittenden County, she says there weren’t many other students like her, and things started to change when the hijab became part of her everyday dress in public.
Raneen Salha: In high school I used to be bullied a lot. I used to be verbally harassed, I used to get into all sorts of situations with other students because of just simply being me, and those same students would be the same people who even before I wore the hijab would talk to me normally, so it's just like all of a sudden I put this piece on and now everyone thinks I’m a completely different person, but in the end it’s just me.
Mitch Wertlieb: These days, because Raneen is fluent in Arabic, she’s been able to keep up with news about the Israel-Hamas war in two languages, for better or for worse.
One night while she was having dinner with her family in Vermont, her mother showed her an Al Jazeera news update delivered in Arabic.
Raneen Salha: And it's basically the news reporter, explaining how a lot of people are under the rubble, and then I hear my last name, and find out that it's actually some of my family who are actually under the rubble. So it was, I just, I was speechless. Honestly. Like, that's the last thing I kind of heard as like a major event.
Mitch Wertlieb: What family members have been talking about here? How are they related to you?
Raneen Salha: Extended family. They're mostly just like cousins of my parents, like uncles of my parents, if that makes sense.
Mitch Wertlieb: But very important to you.
Raneen Salha: Of course, of course. Well, I consider all of Palestine my family, in a way.
Mitch Wertlieb: What does your Palestinian heritage mean to you?
Raneen Salha: It's everything to me, honestly. Like, I don't know what to tell you. I feel like all our lives we've been used to having the risk of having our heritage exterminated. It's been our goal to revive it as much as we can. To keep having to say I'm Palestinian, I'm Palestinian. I'm Palestinian, to like, even in our daily lives, like wearing the keffiyeh as part of our identity. Even as simple as, like, putting stickers on our laptop that look like, that are Palestinian stickers, like the simplest of things just to reassure ourselves that you know, we exist, since it feels like the whole world is trying to like destroy us, or like kill us, or like trying to wipe us out.
"It feels like the whole world is trying to like destroy us, or like kill us, or like trying to wipe us out."Raneen Salha
Mitch Wertlieb: Similar concerns were expressed for the Jewish community when we asked Sarah about the importance of her heritage.
Sarah White: I've started to realize that things that I took for granted, or that I thought everyone experienced, were actually unique to the Jewish people.
Mitch Wertlieb: When Sarah came to UVM as a freshman, she told herself she’d go to one social event per week, so she started attending Shabbat prayers every Friday.
Sarah White: And that became a very important part of my routine. But outside of that, I'm not particularly religious, which I think surprises people, because I talk about Judaism so much in my everyday life now. But to me, Judaism is so much more as an ethnoreligion. I've also thought a lot more about my Jewish ancestry and trying to find out more about that, where my great-grandparents have come from.
Mitch Wertlieb: But Sarah said expressing her thoughts about the latest war between Israel and Hamas at UVM could be tricky, because showing support for Israel often led to being judged by other students:
She started seeing pro-Palestinian fliers and protests on campus, including a student die-in intended to focus attention on the death toll in Gaza.
And Sarah says the atmosphere on campus continued to shift as the Israeli military campaign intensified.
Sarah White: I am very left-leaning in terms of my politics, especially socially. But then I find that my stance on Israel separates me from a lot of my peers. And people believe that I can't be on the left because I support Israel. I've heard people call Jews politically homeless. And I found that that's really resonated with me, And what's frustrating about that, for me, is that I don't necessarily support the Israeli government or their policies or their actions. I think a lot of things that the Israeli government is doing is absolutely horrendous and needs to be condemned. And at the same time, I don't think that's a reason to say “Israel should be wiped out.” Because I think there are many countries that have committed many human rights violations. And no one is saying “let's disband Russia.” People are not their government.
Mitch Wertlieb: Sarah also wanted to make clear that — unlike a lot of the political leaders and major antagonists driving this conflict — she does not pretend to have all the answers.
Sarah White: I have a lot to learn. And I'm very cognizant of my bias, especially as a Jewish person growing up going to Hebrew school and hearing about how great Israel is. I think I will always have that bias. And I'm anti-Hamas. I think that's perfectly reasonable. I also acknowledge that many Palestinians who might hold antisemitic views likely hold them because of trauma they've endured. And so I try to hold space for that as well. Obviously, there's a line. But I think that Palestinians deserve the right to exist, they deserve their own homeland. They have claim to the region as well. I don't know what a solution would look like. Because my theory is that if there were a perfect solution, it would have already happened by now.
Mitch Wertlieb: The more I got to know Raneen and Sarah, the more I realized where their minds align. Like thinking that so much of this larger conflict boils down to the failure of institutions — and the people in charge of them.
We wanted to give them the chance to talk about it, together. If they wanted to.
Mitch Wertlieb: Would you be willing to sit down with a young Jewish person and have a respectful conversation about these really difficult things? Even if that conversation proved a little bit uncomfortable?
Raneen Salha: Yeah, I would be fine with that. Uncomfortable situations and uncomfortable conversations need to happen in order for a breakthrough to happen, in order for action to take place, because if we don't understand each other, we're just going to be stuck.
Mitch Wertlieb: And I put the same question to Sarah during our sit-down interview about speaking with a young Palestinian.
Sarah White: Absolutely. I hope that I could have a conversation with anyone who treated me with respect. Like, I think it could be really cool also and I would hope that they would feel respected by me also.
Mitch Wertlieb: And that eventually led to this moment at our Vermont Public studios.
Sarah White and Raneen Salha: Nice to meet you.
Mitch Wertlieb: Breaking the ice, because I know this is like a huge topic, I'm wondering if you had any friends, any family who, when you told them what you were doing, did any of them have any advice for you? Or concerns? Or say, “Really? You're gonna do this?” Or was everybody like, “Yeah, go for it?”
Raneen Salha: Um, no, everyone in general was just like, they were excited. They were like, you know what, like, go through with it, even if you are nervous, and even if conversations can be difficult, like, that's how you strive. So they were definitely overall positive about the situation.
Mitch Wertlieb: And Sarah, you came up here from Boston, you've graduated, you came back just to have this conversation.… What did your friends and family say to you?
Sarah White: To be honest, I kind of didn't tell them the whole truth because I was worried that they would try to talk me out of it. I didn't really tell most people when I did the initial interview, But even when I told my grandma, I said, I was doing an interview with the radio, she immediately was like, “Well, make sure you don't give your full name” and this and that. And I was like, OK, so I'm not going to tell them what it's about. So my family's not entirely filled in, but they'll find out eventually. I figured, I'm doing this because it feels like the right thing to do. And I'm so grateful for the opportunity and I didn't want people to try to talk me out of it.
Mitch Wertlieb: Before having Sarah and Raneen chat with each other, I asked if there was any news about the people they each had connections to in the region. Sarah hadn’t heard any updates on the status of the young man on her bus trip to Israel who was taken hostage when Hamas attacked, but Raneen had heard news on her family just prior to our studio interview.
Raneen Salha: Well actually, my mother just told me an hour ago that her aunt passed away yesterday due to an airstrike. So the death toll in our family has passed 40 individuals. It's been devastating. It's been tough to talk about the situation. And I just wished that this just could come to an end somehow.
Mitch Wertlieb: I'm sorry.
Sarah White: I'm really sorry for your loss.
Mitch Wertlieb: Despite that sobering news, Sarah and Raneen went ahead and got to know each other a little better.
For example, they each lamented the difficulty of navigating social media platforms to find information about the war, agreeing that sites like X tend to highlight provocative and sensational black and white views of events, while blunting the voices of people seeking commonality.
Sarah White: I'll see things like, if a celebrity advocates to bring the hostages home, that means like, they're a Zionist, and you can't follow them. And if you support their music, then you're trash. And it's like, Oh, my goodness gracious.
Raneen Salha: It’s also like who and what you follow for sure. If you were to follow accounts, of like, say journalists who are on the ground, for example, that is real content, real graphic content that you can't deny. Whereas if you're following like a pro-Palestine account, then there might be some sort of bias to it.
Sarah White: Often, like, if it's like an American news source, they might be more likely to report things favorably towards Israel. They might be interpreting it a certain way. And I need to keep that in mind.
Mitch Wertlieb: But even while social media tends to highlight divisiveness, Sarah and Raneen focused on similarities.
Raneen Salha: We have so much in common.
Sarah White: So much.
Raneen Salha: It's like, people don't even realize that. And it's like, I think I said this in our last interview, like us in Arabic, we say “iinahum 'abna' or like “iinahum 'abna' eumumatina,” which literally means “they are our cousins,” Jewish people are cousins, because we're so close in religion. So it's just so ironic to see that, like, people are clashing like this, and there's so much going on. And there's so much conflict between the two religions, just in general. It's just it's so wack to me, honestly.
Sarah White: I think also of language. Language really interests me, of like all the shared root words, or the shared like sounds, the fact that like, both Arabic and Hebrew are read from right to left. Even like when I'm learning Spanish, there are like root words that maybe have Arabic influences. But then I recognize the root word because I know it in Hebrew.
Mitch Wertlieb: The two found more common ground as we dove into the politics of the conflict, and it got harder. You’ll hear references by both women to the IDF — which stands for Israeli Defense Forces.
I had a question about the people in power, on both sides, choosing violence over diplomacy. And what Sarah and Raneen believe is the driving factor behind that mindset.
Raneen Salha: Pride. Is a big thing. Pride, and I think if Netanyahu stops bombing civilians, then he's gonna go straight to jail. And that is what's keeping this conflict going to keep his position in place. So that's also another thing that's going on.
Mitch Wertlieb: He was facing corruption charges before all this began.
Sarah White: He's not popular right now. And he wasn't before. Like, there are protests, and there have been protests in Israel, because people do not want him anymore. At the same time, like, I think on like, in my experience, I'm like, Why doesn't Hamas just stop? Like, why don't they return the hostages? Why don't they stop trying to eradicate Israel? Why don't we have talks to come together and try to find a solution? Because I think historically, a lot of the issues have been not wanting Israel to exist in any capacity. And then probably on the Israel side, also saying, well, Palestine can't exist, either. And it's so delusional, because there are millions of people, and they're not going anywhere.
Raneen Salha: I'll probably need a minute. Because you said a lot. I don't know where to start. I'll agree with you on the Oct. 7 attack. Hamas did not have to do that. For sure, like, without a doubt, but also will say that Oct. 7 was Hamas. But for months [it] has been the IDF. And I will say that Hamas did return all the hostages, I believe, or at least most like, I think half?
Sarah White: No, there are still I think it's around like 130 something. And we were told that the IDF has confirmed that at least one fifth to one quarter were killed.
Raneen Salha: But also, if you compare the numbers of hostages between Hamas and the IDF, it's close to 10,000 on the IDF side. So there's a huge difference in proportion. You know, they're being beaten, and I've seen one woman that got released, and her whole face is burned off. And it's just like, the torture.
Sarah White: I think also, I think of like how, at least, like the hostages that are Israeli, like they were civilians. They were elderly people. And I'm sure that there are also civilian Palestinians who are being detained or whatever word.
Raneen Salha: Of course.
Sarah White: I don't know, like enough. But I don't think like, I don't know. It frustrates me to think that, like, I don't know. It just all sucks.
Raneen Salha: Because when I say thousands, this is accumulation of over the years. This isn't just from Oct. 7 till now, till today. This is from like, this is decades.
Sarah White: I think also from my understanding, which could be wrong, I think most, if not all, were detained because of like suspected terror activity. But I've also heard that trial process is unjust.
Raneen Salha: There isn't a trial process. There's a lot of injustice when it comes to detaining the Palestinian people. They don't have fair trials, and they don't get a say in general.
Sarah White: So that's something that needs to change. And hopefully soon.
Mitch Wertlieb: This is the part of the conversation that does get a little uncomfortable when you start saying, “Well, look what happened on Oct. 7,” which was terrible. Look what's happened since then, that the Netanyahu government has done. The thousands of Palestinians that have been killed. It's terrible. That's the frustration I have, is that there are a small number of people making very, very bad decisions. And then it conflates, and it becomes a bigger thing that you can't get your hands around. Where's the point where there's a step-back?
Sarah White: I struggle with that question, mostly because I don't think I have a say, and especially the government of Israel, like I'm a United States citizen, I don't have citizenship to Israel. I could protest online. I have a private Instagram account. My public Instagram account has maybe a whopping 110 followers, I think. I know that there's power in numbers, of course. But I don't think I have the knowledge or the ability to make big change for the government. Especially like the Israeli government makes decisions that its own people often don't agree with. And that's just reality. So if their own people are protesting in the streets, then how is some girl from Massachusetts going to really change their mind?
Raneen Salha: OK, we'll say yes, we both have like 100 people like following us or whatever. But connection with one person leads to connection with another person leads to connection with another person and so on so forth. Like, how else did I meet Mitch? Like by attending a protest, and how else are we speaking on VPR today? Like, it’s connections leading to one another for you to make that big impact. I don't think We should belittle ourselves, because we're such a small population of people, especially since we're in Vermont, like that's a very small state. But I think we could make some sort of effect. And like I said earlier, if communities get together, it could be something that comes together at large. Like, our senators and our representatives here in the state, and then that could go even further. I feel like it's better to be hopeful and to be optimistic than to say like, you know what, this is probably not like, I can't really do much.
Mitch Wertlieb: If Raneen’s view seems overly optimistic to you, consider the subtle and not so subtle changes that have occurred within Vermont’s own congressional delegation since the war began.
Sen. Bernie Sanders was initially reluctant to call for a cease fire even as Israel began moving into Gaza, but has shifted that stance and come out against the U.S. continuing to send military aid to Israel.
And although Congresswoman Becca Balint and Sen. Peter Welch pledged full support for Israel after October 7, they’ve since publicly condemned the country’s military strategy in the wake of so many Palestinian civilian deaths.
Mitch Wertlieb: We're hoping that this conversation that you too are having now, we have the ability to put this on a platform and amplify your voices. So we're hoping that maybe somebody else will hear this. And maybe just maybe their perspective will change a little bit.
Raneen Salha: Be a little bit open minded. Yeah, just from hearing us.
Mitch Wertlieb: And maybe they have some power, and maybe they can influence somebody else in that way. That could be overly optimistic thinking on my part, and I completely understand that that may be.
Raneen Saha: I feel like this is so rare, people are going to be taken aback. And I feel like they're going to start opening their eyes a bit more.
Sarah White: Also, I think it shows that you don't necessarily need to agree 100% with what everyone is saying. But I think at the end of the day, we're like, we have the same values. I wish, like, one thing that I think is cool for me, and I hope you don't mind me pointing this out is like, when I'm sitting in the room, and I'm looking around like you have your keffiyeh on. And you have your Palestine necklace, I think right? And then meanwhile, like I'm wearing jewelry that I got in Israel, I’ve got my Star of David on, like, we're sitting and we're coexisting, and it's okay. And we're able to find common ground. And I think, hopefully, that will show that this is possible. It's not some lofty goal.
Raneen Salha: It’s almost as if people see us like, you know, disclaimer, we're not going to strangle each other. Like, no, this is not the case whatsoever. Like, why are you, why would people be so shocked that we're even sitting in the same room? That's absurd.
Mitch Wertlieb: Can I just ask how you each feel about having met each other now?
Raneen Salha: I feel relieved. I was nervous about coming here, thinking that there would be some sort of heated argument. Obviously, there are going to be disagreements. That's what being human is, having our own differences. But I'm overall very happy.
Sarah White: Yeah, excited. I think this has been a great opportunity. I'm really grateful for you agreeing to it and like, going forward with it, even though I'm sure it was really scary and nerve-wracking.
Mitch Wertlieb: Well, Raneen Salha and Sarah White, I only have one thing left to say to both of you. And that is thank you. Thank you very much.
Sarah White and Raneen Salha: Thank you so much.
Mitch Wertlieb: Thank you for listening. This has been a special audio documentary produced by Vermont Public.
This piece was reported and produced by me, Mitch Wertlieb. It was edited by Kevin Trevellyan. Additional editing support from Brittany Patterson and Myra Flynn.
Peter Engisch mixed this piece. Music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Josh Crane.
I’m Mitch Wertlieb. Talk to you soon. ■
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