Melanie Robbins
Palestinian-American on Hamas’ attack and ongoing
Melanie Robbins is the deputy director of the Realign for Palestine project at the Atlantic Council. Melanie is a dreamer and a doer with a lifelong commitment to building partnerships between diverse communities. Raised in a humanist Jewish home, Melanie is driven by the value of ‘repairing the world.’ She believes that only a shared future for Israel and Palestine will achieve security and dignity for both people and has made it her life’s work to foster mutual understanding and reconciliation as a path to peace. She seeks to elevate the lived experiences of Palestinians in Jewish and Israeli spaces and discussions. Engaging across the Jewish political spectrum, Melanie brings an aspirational vision for coexistence to Jewish policy and communal discourses through her work as an educator, non-profit professional, policy advisor, and advocate in the land and the United States.
In the aftermath of the October 7th , Melanie partnered with the Jewish-Arab movement, Standing Together, among others, to engage American communities as allies to Jewish- Arab solidarity from the land. She co-organized with Standing Together, one of the largest Jewish-Palestinian gatherings in the US post-October 7, and developed local interfaith forums in her community. Melanie felt that in addition to solidarity work, it was crucial to be a dedicated ally of the Israeli hostage families who were calling for a hostage-ceasefire deal. For almost a year, Melanie has been helping these hostage families to engage the American Jewish community and policymakers. In the summer of 2024, Melanie helped organize a delegation of families to lobby US policymakers, during which Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib joined the Israeli families. Together, they modeled an unprecedented Jewish-Palestinian partnership to members of Congress from across the aisle. Authentic solidarity like this was truly unparalleled in the American context. Following varied successes from this experience, Melanie and Ahmed continued engaging in this solidarity model. Soon, she began supporting Ahmed more specifically as he developed the Realign for Palestine project.
Raised in a humanist Jewish home, Melanie is driven by the value of “repairing the world".
Melanie has worked in shared Jewish and Palestinian frameworks for nearly two decades, including at a joint educational organization for Jewish and Palestinian youth, which publishes a Hebrew-Arabic magazine. From this experience, she realized the importance of introducing the lived experiences of the other as a way to humanize the other. Melanie decided to apply this model to the diaspora-Jewish discourse. She created an alternative tour for American Jews to visit occupied Hebron and Bethlehem, confronting hundreds of diaspora Jews with the realities of the conflict and offering a chance to meet with Palestinians living in the land. Melanie later shifted toward effectuating change in Israeli society and joined the veteran Israeli peace movement, Peace Now, as Director of Development. At Peace Now, she actively opposed settlements and extremist influences affecting Israeli society. While still working closely with Palestinian allies in the West Bank, Melanie understood that having direct knowledge of the Israeli security landscape was critical to her pragmatic peacebuilding efforts, and she decided to earn her master’s degree from Tel Aviv University’s Executive Masters in Security and Diplomacy.
Upon returning to the US, Melanie worked for the Anti-Defamation League and became deputy director of the NY-NJ regional office. Melanie built relationships with faith leaders and civil rights allies locally and nationally. She was responsible for tracking and responding to extremism and antisemitism in the region and engaging policymakers on hate and extremism issues. Melanie trained as a facilitator in anti-bias education and managing implicit bias. Subsequently, Melanie shifted her focus back to work in the region. She became Director of Global Connections for the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest, a community committed to shared society work and invigorating communities around the Gaza envelope.
Melanie published a book on peacebuilding and human rights in 2011, and she holds a BA with honors from Drew University in Political Science, Middle East Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. At Drew, she worked closely with the renowned Egyptian democracy leader, Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, and served as an inaugural fellow at the Center on Religion, Culture, and Conflict. Melanie serves as an advisory board member of the Muslim Jewish Solidarity Committee. Melanie is a mother of four and a Boston Native.
The time to Realign For Palestine is now