Unity Club held its first meeting! The nine of us met at Delah and enjoyed Turkish coffee with knafeh on an unseasonably sunny and warm San Francisco day.
We had a range of perspectives from various origins: America, Israel, Kuwait, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates.
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These friends of mine came from different social circles, so we introduced ourselves. It was a fun “crossover episode” for me!
Unity On Social Media
Per our meeting’s theme, I seeded our conversation with my Unity Feed experiment, where I just follow social media accounts that focus on unity between Jews and Arabs. Here’s the spreadsheet with those accounts. I’ll highlight my favorites below:
Sulha: It translates to “reconciliation” in Arabic. If you’re looking to hear “both sides,” this is the channel for you. Adar is a peace activist who moderates debates between Palestinians and Israelis, Zionists and anti-Zionists, you name it. His long-form content captures the nuance behind these debates. I volunteered several years back to do some video editing for him and worked with another Berkeley student to design his logo. Can you spot the two heads/two speech bubbles/venn diagram in the design? :)
The Ask Project: Corey Gil-Shuster and his Palestinian translator, Mon Ami, go to Jewish and Arab cities to ask questions emailed from viewers all over the world. If you’ve ever wondered, “What do people actually think?” or “Is that actually true?” then pay a visit to this channel. To better understand Corey from “behind the camera,” watch his interview with Adar, which highlights both the insights and the limitations of his grassroots interview approach.
Insights from our First Meeting
In our first meeting, conversation flowed organically. Everyone was genuinely curious about each other’s perspectives.
We kicked things off with my Arab friends asking about Zionism. My Jewish friends and I shared our perspectives and our unique relationships to it. It’s such a super-charged word that has gotten in the way of discourse for me and others in the past. I was grateful for the open-minded dialogue we created around it. To those seeking conversations with their Jewish friends, I believe asking what Zionism means to them is a wonderful way to initiate dialogue. (Their answers may surprise you.)
Above: A snapshot of some of us at our first meeting at Delah.
From Zionism, we naturally veered into the topic of religious, secular, and ethno-states. Personally, I was surprised to hear how popularized a 2 state solution is in younger Arab circles. Beyond just Israel and Palestine, we expanded our exploration of secular statehood. We learned that— in Kuwait— a Muslim country, alcohol consumption is illegal, because it is “haram,” or unlawful. There is, however, one exception to that rule…
Embassies! In Kuwait, you can buy and consume alcohol exclusively in the embassies of other nations.
That’s one way to promote diplomacy 😁*
(*Before visiting, I would double check Kuwaiti laws, just in case 😅)
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Shortly after our meeting, a member of Unity Club posted to our group chat that he saw a public demonstration focused on unity. It was an encouraging sign. As polarized as San Francisco has been, we are not alone in our aspirations. ❤️
Above: the public demonstration promoting unity on 2/25/24, spotted by the SF Embarcadero