Soccer brings Jewish, Arab kids together
Whether you believe Jerusalem should become the capital of both Israel and the Palestinian state, or you proclaim it as “Israel’s eternal and undivided capital,” Arab-Jewish coexistence is essential for the city’s future. However, other than the flowery rhetoric by which each side blames the other for the failure to make peace, the politicians don’t seem willing or able to bring the parties closer to a solution.
That’s behind the often modest yet poignant joint Jewish and Arab initiatives to break the deadlock in search of viable ways of living together, not in the arena of history but in ordinary pursuits. “Women Wage Peace” is one such initiative. Perhaps having in mind the women in Northern Ireland who helped to bring about the Good Friday Accord in 1998, the aim is to penetrate some of the barriers that stand in the way of Palestinians and Israelis being good neighbours.
Another initiative of the same sort is the effort to bring young people together around the game of soccer. Partly to counteract the racism on many soccer fields, a group of Jerusalemites have formed a club, Hapoel Katamon, that is owned by its fans and is committed to promoting peace and tolerance. It’s also the host of some 100 children from Jewish and Arab neighbourhoods in Jerusalem who come together to play there.
The captain of Hapoel Katamon explained to the online daily the Times of Israel that “it is essential that Jerusalem lead the message of unity and reconciliation.”
He elaborated: “Soccer contributes to the advancement of coexistence and equality, and it is great that children in the city, Jews and Arabs, have the oppor- tunity to meet each other and see that common ground, including the love of soccer, infinitely outweighs the differences.”
The program, aptly named “Kicking out Racism and Violence,” is supported by the New Israel Fund, which is also active in Canada. Its press release states that the purpose is to “introduce Jewish children from West Jerusalem and Arab children from East Jerusalem in order to combat the division and hostility between them and advance a shared life in the city.”
Similar programs have been brought to other parts of Israel where Jews and Arabs live in proximity.
Rachel Lasry Zahavi, who hails from Canada and now works in Israel for a British charity that supports this initiative, has written, also in the Times of Israel, that bringing Druze, Arab and Jewish children together is “challenging and difficult.” But she’s determined to persevere in the knowledge that it helps to promote tolerance and mutual respect.
Soccer may not have the same appeal to children in the GTA as it has in Jerusalem, but the Leo Baeck (Jewish) Day School in Thornhill, together with the nearby As-Sadiq Islamic School and the St. Joseph the Worker Catholic School have initiated a program designed to build bridges and promote mutual understanding.
The problems of Toronto aren’t the problems of Jerusalem, but being a multicultural city it, too, needs to educate its young to respect the other and work together instead of quixotically seeking to fight Israeli-Palestinian wars on its streets.
More than 40 years ago, an American table tennis team visited China as a prelude to the historic encounter between U.S. president Richard Nixon and the Chinese leader Mao Zedong. It may be too much to hope that playing soccer in Jerusalem in 2015 and learning from each other in Toronto will have the same effect as the “Ping-Pong diplomacy” of the 1970s, but at a time when politicians falter and conventional diplomacy fails, it is the small gestures that may yield the big results.
Bringing kids together on the soccer field helps promote tolerance and mutual respect