When Reason Meets Radicalization: Why Facts Alone Cannot Change a Hateful Mind

This week I spoke with an Israeli man who teaches at an university in the Netherlands. What he told me stayed with me: “Trying to change someone’s mind with facts will never work. You must first find common ground.”

His idea was simple. Don’t start by saying “Israel has the right to exist,” because a committed anti-Israel activist will ignore everything after that. Instead, begin with something universal, curing cancer, raising healthy children, improving hospitals. Let them agree first. Then slowly lead them to the truth: that the people who often generate these innovations, who run some of the most advanced hospitals in the Middle East, who have brought life-saving breakthroughs to the world, are Israelis,  Jewish scientists, Jewish doctors. And if you want these benefits to reach the region, Israel must exist, must thrive.

At first, this sounded clever. Build agreement. Lead them gently to reality. But something in me resisted. And after thinking about it for days, it........

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