I have always believed that personal stories can change how people understand the world.

A story fills in the parts that statistics are not able to.

I saw this firsthand when ISRAEL-is — an Israeli organization that aims to improve the way Israel is perceived— came to campus to showcase its virtual reality project: Survived to Tell. The project shares the firsthand experiences of survivors from the Oct. 7th attack on Israel by the Palestinian political party and militant group Hamas.

Prior to the event, I was not sure what people’s reactions would be. Some people were curious, some hesitant and some disinterested. However, the moment participants put on the virtual reality headset, there was an immediate shift.

People were not watching reports being cited or politics being debated. Rather, we were seeing people and hearing their stories as if we were there with them. Several students, many of who had very different opinions regarding the conflict in the Middle East, shared with me that the experience nonetheless humanized the situation for them.

To me, that is the whole point of sharing stories. When people only hear extreme, one-sided narratives, it becomes easy to dehumanize the other side.

VR can help cut through that.

It is harder to ignore the lived experiences of survivors when using VR because you are not debating ideas and politics. You are forced to experience empathy while hearing the stories from survivors themselves. Once you humanize them, it is harder to go back to the idea of only politicizing them.

It feels strange to say it now, but there was a time when I was not supportive of Israel. I didn’t come to that on my own – I absorbed it over a long period of time from social media platforms such as TikTok and the people in my life.

Looking back, I’m sure most of it was wanting to feel like I had a sense of belonging, especially during the COVID-19 lockdown. It was hard to find connections with people that generally agreed with my beliefs because of a large lack of contact with the outside world. The conversations around me were often full of certainty: Israel was oppressive, the land did not belong to Jews – and that was that.

Learning what Zionism actually is – the belief in Jewish self-determination in the land of Israel that developed out of the need for a safe homeland and is based on the cultural and historical connection to the region – ended up being a major shift in my life.

It wasn’t the oppressive ideology I had been taught. It was far more human and far more necessary.

Once I understood that, my perspective changed completely. Similarly, a YouTube video titled “Confessions of a Former Pro-Palestine Activist” shares one person’s journey from being only pro-Palestine to also being pro-Israel after going to the Nova Exhibition in Los Angeles. Her story holds so much relevance because it demonstrates anyone can change their beliefs, even if they thought it would be ingrained within them forever.

What changed me was stepping outside of my immediate social circles and actively seeking out viewpoints I was not used to hearing. Specifically, I was talking to someone, and we had gone back and forth several times. It got to the point that, one day, I asked them where Jews originate from, and we had a long conversation about it. I kept asking questions, and they answered them all. If they did not know the answer, they would Google it with me right then and there so we could research together. After that, I was more open to conversation and made active attempts to learn from those diverse viewpoints.

Listening to people directly affected by the conflict on both sides forced me to confront the fact that I had oversimplified an extremely complex and deeply human issue. Once you see that complexity, you can’t unsee it.

Being open to new narratives didn’t just change my political identity, it changed how I approach information in general. It, overall, made me more thoughtful, more skeptical of slogans and more aware of how powerful lived experiences can be.

You don’t have to agree with every perspective you hear, but you do owe it to yourself – and to the people affected – to listen.

Sometimes, one story is enough to change everything.

Daniella Abbott is a third-year sociology and global studies student at UCLA.