Tag: West Bank

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.”

“Humanitarian intervention?” Imperialism still stinks, Part 4

Posted on by kathiemm

Final in the series by guest author Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

Gaza libera. Free Palestine
Photo from WikiMedia Commons, used under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

The people of lands whose riches are coveted by imperial powers must endure an almost constant battle among those vying for external control. In addition, they must bear the burden of indigenous struggle for independence. Such is the history of much of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Such is the root of much of the conflict in the Middle East today.

The colonial state of Israel continues to expand its borders with illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israeli government maps suggest planned annexation of the majority of this land. Through their expulsion from the 1940s through today, Palestinians remain the largest refugee population in the world.

Countries like Iraq, Libya, and Syria finally gained their independence from foreign powers and took control of their oil industries. Along with Iran (following the Islamic revolution in 1979), these three countries were the major forces countering Western hegemony in the region. But those Western powers—and their multinational corporations—want their profitable colonial relationship back.

In the early 20th century, to honor “the spirit of the age” of national independence[1], the imperialists called their colonial possessions “mandates.” Now in the early 21st century, imperialists—armed with far more advanced weapons technologies—call their re-domination of these countries “humanitarian intervention for regime change.” These imperialists  claim that we must save the indigenous people in the Middle East from their states, in particular, from the use of weapons of mass destruction by local powers.

Those claims proved false in Iraq and remain unproven in Syria. In Iraq and Libya, the people are much worse off today than before our “humanitarian interventions” via military assault. Bombing raids and the subsequent replacement of secular states with theocracies have resulted in death, destruction, and further loss of freedoms for the survivors. As Western oil companies and military industries reap the profits, the parasitic colonial relationships are re-established.

No matter what euphemism our government uses for its policy, it’s still imperialism. And it still stinks.

[1] Owen, Roger. “State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, 3rd Edition.” Routledge, New York. 2004. p.6

 

Giving voice to the silenced (Stories of engagement)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie MM: Today, in honor of Ramadan, which is being celebrated this month by Muslims around the world, we are proud to present another case study in moral engagement—in this instance by our young poet/activist contributor, San’aa Sultan. Ramadan Mubarak.]

Child holding poster and flag in West Bank protest
West Bank protest. Photo by Hamde Abu Rahmah; used with permission.

I’m San’aa Sultan, a peace activist, a writer, a poet and an artist but most importantly a human being. Being human means that I feel the pain of those around me suffering and that I cannot close my eyes to the pain nor can I silently submit to a system and a world where injustice is normal.

I’m a poet and my words are inspired by the struggles of those whose names, faces and voices we do not know or value. I write because I feel it is my duty to give a voice to those who have been silenced.

I tie myself  closely to the struggles of Palestine and Kashmir because I don’t understand how over 60 years later we still speak of the same struggles and still watch the same people live under such harsh conditions and do not speak against any of it.

I run a blog called “Today In Kashmir” to highlight the suffering of those in Indian Occupied Kashmir and I’m also involved in prisoner support work with the Ministry of Detainees in Gaza. Through this, a sister from Gaza and I have set up a Facebook page called “Support Palestinian Detainees and Their Families” with the intention to globalise the stories of those detained by Israel.

I was suffering from many personal losses when my activism begun and in May 2010 when the Mavi Marmara was attacked by the Israel Defense Forces in international waters, I could no longer remain silent. Our struggle became one.

San’aa Sultan