Tag: Palestinians

SED Student Helps Bring Israeli, Palestinian Youth Together

Posted on by kathiemm

by Joel Brown

Dana Dunwoody (SED’19) (above) spent part of her summer using disc games to bring Israeli and Palestinian youth together at the Ultimate Peace camp in southern Israel. Photos courtesy of Ultimate Peace.

By Joel Brown

Just about everyone has tossed around a Frisbee for fun. Dana Dunwoody is doing it for peace. At a summer camp in an Israeli desert, she is using the flying discs to bring together Israeli and Palestinian youth—and maybe change the world, one toss at time.“As youths, we get inundated with information about who we are and what our cultures are, and when there’s a lot of violence and hostility going on, there’s a lot of misinterpretation,” says Dunwoody (SED’19), a doctoral candidate in applied human development. “To be able to come together and realize, I can have a say in changing that narrative, is a very empowering experience.”This is Dunwoody’s second stint as a volunteer counselor at the Ultimate Peace camp. Using the grounds of an Israeli boarding school for a week each summer since 2007, the organization strives to build ties between Israeli and West Bank youths. It does that with Ultimate, a game that’s extremely competitive, but depends heavily on teamwork and sportsmanship. The 200 or so 10-to-16-year-old campers come for the hours of practice and games each day. They have some fun away from the burdens of daily life in that conflict-wracked corner of the world, and if things go the way they are supposed to go, they begin to see one another differently.“We encourage conversation and sharing of culture,” says Dunwoody, who has a bachelor’s in psychology from Temple University and a master’s in athletic counseling from Springfield College. “We have a lot of different activities the kids do together to create safe spaces to share their identities and explore other cultures.”

Dana Dunwoody speaking with camper

Dunwoody uses her skills as an educator and athletic coach to help campers find ways to get along.

Mostly, though, there is Ultimate.

Flying-disc sports are a lot more organized than they were in the peace-and-love days of the 1960s. Millions of people in the United States regularly play Ultimate, which is not officially called Ultimate Frisbee because Frisbee is a Wham-O trademark. Long Island native Dunwoody picked it up as an undergrad and quickly became an avid player.

“You hear about these opportunities to use Ultimate culture as a way to connect people,” she says. Ultimate Peace, created by Ultimate-loving Americans and one Israeli, also offers a year-round program that brings Israeli and Palestinian youth together to play the game.

In Ultimate, the disc is advanced only by passing—players cannot run with the disc—and a team scores a point when one of its players catches the disc in the other team’s end zone. Most important, as far as Ultimate Peace is concerned, there is no referee, so players must call their own fouls.

According to USA Ultimate’s “Ultimate in 10 Simple Rules,” “Ultimate stresses sportsmanship and fair play. Competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of respect between players, adherence to the rules, and the basic joy of play.”

“The spirit of the game infiltrates all parts of your being,” says Dunwoody. “For me it feels like it’s alive. Every person manifests it in the way they communicate with you on and off the field. At Ultimate Peace, it’s mutual respect, but it’s also integrity and collaboration and cooperation.”

“The Ultimate Peace project is an example of sport for good, or sport for development, which is kind of an emerging field,” says Dunwoody’s faculty advisor John McCarthy (SED’98, SED’04), a School of Education clinical associate professor and director of the Institute for Athletic Coach Education. “These projects hold so much promise in areas where a lot of people have struggled and there are some really deep societal problems.”

“Dana’s very committed to social justice,” McCarthy says. “This project brings together a lot of her passions: social justice and her energy for using sport and exercise as a vehicle for positive change and just her kind of caring for other people.”

None of which surprises McCarthy. Dunwoody is SED’s first Holmes Scholar, and was elected national president of the program for 2017 to 2019. The Holmes Scholar Program, which is overseen by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education provides mentorship, peer support, and professional development to students from historically underrepresented backgrounds.

“She’s a bright light,” McCarthy says. “She can do a lot of good for a lot of people.”

Feel the pain

Posted on by kathiemm

Guest Post from the Steering Committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR)

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Today’s post is a statement from the Steering Committee of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR), of which I am a member. As an organization focused on psychology’s contributions to peace and positive social change, PsySR is keenly aware of the profound psychological impact of living in a war zone, including the following:

 

  • Psychological distress in war zones is often as great as the physical suffering that receives more widespread attention. For some, including children, coping with issues of family separation, multiple losses, and bereavement can be even more unbearable than other health-related concerns.

 

  • People already under stress before an attack – from severe poverty, chronic exposure to harsh imposed restrictions, and past bloodshed – are likely to have stronger and more overwhelming psychological reactions to violence.

 

  • Prolonged fears of attack, powerful feelings of helplessness, and deep worries about family and community heighten the damaging psychological effects of life-threatening events and can contribute to ongoing cycles of violence.

 

  • The magnitude of psychological suffering in war zones can be mitigated somewhat by people’s immediate and continuing access to individual and family supports, along with broader efforts that are locally, culturally, and psychologically-informed.

 

As a result of the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, psychological suffering has overtaken communities across the Palestinian territories and Israel this summer. However, we believe that external financial support for community healing is particularly essential in Gaza. In our judgment, this is not only because Israeli forces have engaged in the disproportionate use of violence in recent weeks, including reported attacks on schools, hospitals, ambulances, and health professionals, but also because of the exceedingly difficult socioeconomic circumstances and the harsh and seemingly hopeless conditions brought about by the decades’ long occupation.

Ultimately, a just and lasting peace and a brighter future for Palestinians and Israelis alike will require that these psychological consequences and considerations receive serious and sustained attention.

With a special emphasis on vulnerable groups including children, women, and victims of torture and human rights violations, the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) provides crucial and irreplaceable mental health services to thousands of Gaza residents. These services will be even more broadly and desperately needed in the days and months immediately ahead. Throughout its history, the GCMHP has also been firmly committed to nonviolent resistance and to working for a world where Palestinians and Israelis can live together in peace.

The Programme has suffered extensively from the fighting this past month, with several staff, including the director, suffering family losses. In times such as these, external aid can be important beyond the purely financial support by serving as an expression of caring and compassion from the outside world.

Organizing help for the GCMHP is one way that we, as psychologists and mental health providers, can counter the despair and hopelessness bred in all parties by this renewed outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas. In so doing, we make a statement in support of human rights, mutual recognition and security, and a pathway to the reconciliation that must underlie a sustainable peace in this region.

Donations should be made by check payable to the Gaza Mental Health Foundation and mailed to the Gaza Mental Health Foundation, PO Box 380273, Cambridge, MA 02238. Please include your name, address, telephone number, and email address. 100% of your donation will be sent to GCMHP. Your donation is tax-deductible to the extent provided by section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

For more information about this PsySR initiative, please email gazamentalhealth@psysr.org. A PDF version of this statement is available here.

   The Steering Committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility

August 13, 2014

 

Jihad Jane: Woman as terrorist

Posted on by kathiemm
Map of terrorist incidents, 2008
Terrorist incidents, 2008. Image by Ichwan Palongengi, used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Learning about the causes of terrorism is challenging, in part because of the co-option of the term to serve political agendas. Learning about female terrorism, particularly the U.S. homegrown variety, is an even greater challenge–but Colleen LaRose provides us with an instructive case.

Born in Michigan in 1963, LaRose grew up in Texas, dropped out of school after junior high, was married briefly at age 16 to a man twice her age, married again at age 24 and divorced after 10 years, moved to Philadelphia in 2004 to live with a boyfriend and help care for his aging father, became depressed and attempted suicide after her brother and father died suddenly, developed sympathy for the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel, and converted to Islam.

In 2008, using the screen name JihadJane, LaRose first posted messages on YouTube that she was desperate to help suffering Muslims and wanted to become a martyr in service to Allah.

In 2009, LaRose was arrested and charged with trying to recruit Islamist terrorists and plotting to kill the Swedish artist known for his demeaning cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. She ultimately pleaded guilty to the charges.

Karen Jacques and Paul J. Taylor [opens in pdf] studied female terrorists and learned that:

  • the majority of them had finished high school and college
  • they were mostly employed or completing their education when they became involved with terrorism
  • they were as likely to be married as not
  • a religious conversion did not seem to play a major role in the development of their terrorist beliefs

What do you think? Does “Jihad Jane” fit this pattern? Is she a typical female terrorist? Did she become a terrorist because she joined Islam or did she join Islam because she was angry at her government’s treatment of Muslims? What factors might have influenced her to choose violence rather than nonviolence to make her point?

Finally, what is gained by calling her a terrorist? What is lost?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Perspectives on violence

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Jenna Hassan

Professor Malley-Morrison’s seminar on the Psychology of War and Peace showed me how altering one’s perspective can instantly change one’s entire outlook on a situation.Forgiving Dr. Mengele DVD

Alan O’Hare showed us how just moving from inside the classroom to outside the building can change an entire experience. Once we left the classroom, all formality ceased and every student was eager to share views. When we returned to the classroom, the conversation reverted to a formal discussion.

In the film Forgiving Dr. Mengele, Eva Kor showed us how her perspective on the Holocaust and the Nazis changed from anger to forgiveness, giving her a greater sense of health and freedom—but not freeing her to listen to the perspectives of Palestinians regarding Israeli occupation.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned about perspective is how mechanisms of moral disengagement function in ways that allow people to view immoral and inhumane acts as morally acceptable.

I grew up with a Muslim father and an Irish-Catholic mother in Scarsdale, New York–-a predominantly Jewish town. I gained perspective from all three Abrahamic traditions. My connection with each often resulted in internal conflict but was ultimately beneficial, teaching me that we are all much more similar than different.

To achieve peace, it is important that we emphasize our human similarities and resist the messages attempting to persuade us that someone is an enemy because of a different religion, nationality, or ethnicity.

Jenna Hassan is an undergraduate student in the College of Liberal Arts at Boston University, majoring in Psychology and learning Arabic.  She took Psychology of War and Peace in the summer of 2013.