Across the region, from Iran and Israel to the Gulf states, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and beyond, regional actors may be responding to the same events, but they are not necessarily seeing the same reality. The same development can be understood by one actor as a threat, by another as an opportunity, and by another as a strategic necessity.

In this up to the minute intelligence briefing, Avi takes us inside a dimension of the Middle East largely missing from Western media. Exploring how these different realities create a complex geopolitical landscape fraught with opportunities and risks – not only for Israel – but for all the players in the region.

At a time when conversations about Israel and the Middle East are increasingly polarized, and when discourse in the West influences realities on the ground, understanding why different actors can experience the same events as entirely different realities matters far beyond understanding the Middle East. It directly impacts the conversations we navigate in our personal, professional, civic, and communal lives.

Through Avi Melamed’s distinctly apolitical approach, audiences across generations, backgrounds, political perspectives, levels of knowledge, and relationships with Israel are not told what to think. They are given the context and tools to think more critically, understand competing realities, and engage complexity without abandoning conviction. By creating shared ground for understanding without requiring agreement, Avi’s approach helps bridge divides and equips people to become more informed and constructive participants in even the most difficult conversations shaping our campuses, communities, families, and institutions.

| Israel 2026 |
Elections, Politics & Identity

Israel’s elections at the end of October 2026 will take place against the backdrop of a complex, tense, and rapidly shifting political landscape—both within Israel and across the Middle East. The period since Israel’s previous elections in November 2022 has been marked by an intense struggle over the country’s identity, character, and future direction.

What are the major political camps shaping Israel in 2026? What are their ideologies and worldviews? How do they understand fundamental concepts such as Zionism, statehood, and religion? What significant transformations are taking place within some of these camps, and what could their implications be? And, counterintuitively, where do political camps at opposite ends of Israel’s political spectrum intersect?

Avi Melamed, Founder of ITME – Inside the Middle East, explores these questions and more in a thought-provoking conversation about Israeli identity in 2026.

 | NARRATIVES AND REALITY |
ARE YOU REALLY ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY?

Challenge the assumptions behind the language shaping today’s campus conversations. This thought-provoking program explores how key Middle Eastern concepts, identities, political realities, and narratives are understood within the region, often revealing perspectives that differ dramatically from those shaping conversations on Western campuses.

Through ITME’s distinctive educational framework, Avi challenges students to question assumptions, think critically, and consider whether the language, slogans, and narratives that dominate today’s discourse accurately reflect the complexities of the Middle East. Participants leave with a deeper understanding of why context – not slogans – is the foundation for constructive, informed decision-making, and becoming an Ambassador of Change.

| THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT |
A VIEW FROM THE REGION

What if the Middle East explains the conflict—not the other way around? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often presented as the defining issue of the Middle East and the primary force shaping the region’s geopolitical landscape. Avi challenges that assumption. Through ITME’s distinctly regional lens, this program demonstrates how the broader geopolitical, historical, ideological, and strategic dynamics of the Middle East have shaped – and continue to shape – the trajectory of the conflict.

By demonstrating that understanding the conflict begins with understanding the region, Avi equips participants with the historical context, regional perspectives, and geopolitical framework often absent from Western discussions. Real solutions begin with a more accurate understanding of the problem. This program empowers participants to engage the conflict with greater context, confidence, and nuance – becoming more thoughtful and constructive Ambassadors of Change.

| JERUSALEM |
LIVING ON THE EDGE OF ETERNITY

A multimedia exploration of Jerusalem through history, politics, religion, and excerpts from The Seam Line, an ITME original documentary, revealing the city through the eyes of Avi Melamed—a fourth-generation Arabic-speaking Jerusalemite and former Advisor on Arab Affairs during the Intifada—alongside the voices of Arab and Jewish Jerusalemites. Through firsthand experiences and rarely heard perspectives, participants uncover the realities, relationships, and regional dynamics that make Jerusalem essential to understanding Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the broader Middle East.

ANTISEMITISM, NARRATIVES
& THE MISSING MIDDLE EASTERN CONTEXT

The dramatic rise of antisemitism in North America did not emerge in a vacuum. One factor contributing to it is the convergence of two powerful trends that have reshaped Western intellectual, academic, political, and public discourse over the past generation: the growing influence of emotionally driven, binary worldviews, and the growing role of narratives in shaping how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is understood.

Since October 7 and the war in Gaza, that convergence has intensified anti-Israel sentiment and, in turn, contributed to the rise of antisemitism.

Yet a critical dimension is missing from the conversation: the significant gap between how influential narratives are understood in the West and the meanings, motivations, and consequences associated with those narratives in the Middle East. This is not simply a difference of interpretation. That gap shapes how Israel, the Palestinians, and the conflict are understood, how events are framed, and how complex realities are translated into public discourse.

Which narratives have entered Western discourse? Why have they proven so compelling? How are those same narratives understood within the Middle East? Where do the meanings attached to them diverge? What are the consequences of that gap? And why is understanding it essential to understanding contemporary antisemitism?

In this presentation, Avi Melamed, Founder of Inside The Middle East | Intelligence Perspectives (ITME), takes audiences beyond the familiar Western conversation. Drawing on authentic voices, perspectives, and information from across the region—many rarely heard in Western discourse—he brings the missing Middle Eastern context into the conversation and examines how narratives can take on different meanings, motivations, and consequences across different environments.

Apolitical and educational in approach, the presentation invites audiences to move beyond familiar assumptions, engage complexity, and consider an often-overlooked dimension of contemporary antisemitism through a deeper understanding of the ideas, language, and perspectives shaping the conversation.

INSIDE THE MIDDLE EAST
To Understand Israel, We Must Understand The Middle East

Organizations engaging people around Israel and the Middle East are working in an increasingly complex environment. Their audiences may span generations, backgrounds, political perspectives, religious identities, levels of knowledge, professional roles, and relationships with Israel. And conversations about Israel and the Middle East rarely remain confined to a single program, classroom, department, or moment. They surface among students, professionals, educators, leaders, boards, families, community members, partners, and others.

For organizations navigating this environment, the question is increasingly not only what programs or educational opportunities should we offer, but how do we create meaningful education and engagement for people who may enter these conversations from very different places?

In this interactive session, Avi Melamed will introduce the educational framework at the heart of Inside The Middle East | ITME, grounded in the principle: To Understand Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and the Palestinians, We Must Understand The Middle East.

Participants will experience the framework in action through a focused mini-briefing on the Axis of Resistance, examining the gap between how the term “resistance” is often understood and portrayed in Western discourse and the actors, objectives, interests, and impact of “resistance” on the people and societies of the region.

Through this example, Avi will demonstrate how apolitical Middle East education, intelligence-based critical thinking and media literacy, and perspectives from regional experts and voices often absent from Western discourse can fundamentally change the way people understand Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the broader Middle East.

Drawing on ITME’s extensive experience educating diverse audiences across communal, educational, campus, professional, and leadership settings, the session will then examine why this approach works with people who do not necessarily begin with the same politics, knowledge, experiences, or relationship with Israel—and what that means for organizations thinking strategically about the people they serve.