NIF Board Member and Internal Medicine Specialist

Dr. Yasmeen Abu Fraiha is a fellow with the Middle East Initiative of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. She’s a medical doctor with a specialty in internal medicine, currently completing a clinical fellowship in critical care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). She formerly served as the Health Policy Director at the Task Force for Health Promotion and Equity in the Arab Society at the Israeli Ministry of Health. In 2016 she co-founded and managed Rodaina, an NGO that aims to prevent genetic diseases in the Middle East, especially in the Bedouin community, by spearheading premarital genetic testing and matching. She is a member of the NIF Board of Directors and also serves on multiple Boards of NGOs aiming to improve Bedouin lives and shared society in Israel. She has won several awards, including the 2007 Ramon Award for quality, leadership, and excellence and was chosen to be part of Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list. In 2023, she was named one of Israel’s 50 most influential women by Globes Magazine.  Yasmeen holds a BSc and MD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School.

Gallanter Prize Winner and Activist for Jewish-Arab Partnership

NIF is thrilled to recognize Shir Nosatzki as the winner of this year’s Gallanter Prize for Emerging Social Justice Leaders. Shir has been a prominent civil society leader and changemaker for over a decade. She was one of the leaders of the 2011 Israeli social justice protests—the largest mass protest in the country at the time. Beginning inJanuary 2023, Shir became one of the organizers of the weekly protests against the judicial reform, the largest and most sustained mass protest movement ever to take place in Israel. Shir is also the Co-Founder and Director of an NIF grantee called Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?—an Israeli NGO advancing Jewish-Arab political partnership working with the Israeli mainstream. Its creative and provocative social media campaigns have reached millions. 

Since October 7th, Shir and her organization have been leading a massive public campaign to counter the dangerous narrative of an internal war between the Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, and managed to create a new narrative of partnership and solidarity. She initiated the first (and only) Joint Arab-Jewish Emergency Relief Center in the Bedouin town of Rahat in the South of Israel. Shir also launched a series of viral testimonial videos of loss and bravery by the Arab community, which were covered extensively in national and international media. Shir also formed a media situation room to deal with the crisis and a partnership project for Arab and Jewish students.

Shir was selected by The Marker newspaper as one of the most influential people on social media in Israel and designated by Maariv newspaper as a promising young leader. She was recently chosen by the Peres Center for Peace & Innovation to be the recipient of the 2024 Medal of Distinction. It is an honor to feature Shir as NIF’s Gallanter Prize recipient, and we cannot wait to introduce her to the NIF community in the U.S.