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Jordan Farmar, Los Angeles Lakers
Jordan Farmar, Los Angeles Lakers
NBA’s Farmar Shooting for Peace in the Middle East
by
Josh Katz
Jewish basketball player Jordan Farmar is one of many athletes and organizers worldwide using sports to help foreign nations overcome religious and ethnic rifts.
30-Second Summary
Farmar, a guard for the Los Angeles Lakers, will lead basketball camps in Israel August 4–11 for Israeli and Palestinian children. The camps are being run in association with the Peres Peace Center, created by Israeli President Shimon Peres to promote peace in the Middle East through “social programs, cooperation and interaction between Israelis and Palestinians,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Farmar said, “If you can have a good time with someone you’re supposed to be enemies with, and you guys can work together, things can be better for your future.”
It’s not the first time sports will be used to bridge cultural divides.
Football for Peace, created in 2001, creates soccer teams of Jewish and Arab Israeli children in the hopes that the healing power of sports will help the children grow up to better understand one another. Columnist Kevin Mitchell of The Guardian described the children at a Football for Peace event: “consumed by the joy of their football, they left behind the prejudices that often go with religion.”
The organization PeacePlayers also utilizes basketball to mend conflicts. In Northern Ireland, two athletes, Protestant Trevor Ringland and Catholic Dave Cullen, have spearheaded PeacePlayers’ efforts to build friendships between Catholics and Protestants through basketball.
Sports’ unifying power is also evident in the war-torn Ivory Coast. Soccer player Didier Drogba has become a symbol in his country of a “new, post-civil war Ivory Coast,” according to U.K. paper The Daily Telegraph.
And famously, China invited American ping-pong players to a friendly match in 1971. The event, known as “ping-pong diplomacy,” helped improve relations between the nations and led to President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China.
Farmar said, “If you can have a good time with someone you’re supposed to be enemies with, and you guys can work together, things can be better for your future.”
It’s not the first time sports will be used to bridge cultural divides.
Football for Peace, created in 2001, creates soccer teams of Jewish and Arab Israeli children in the hopes that the healing power of sports will help the children grow up to better understand one another. Columnist Kevin Mitchell of The Guardian described the children at a Football for Peace event: “consumed by the joy of their football, they left behind the prejudices that often go with religion.”
The organization PeacePlayers also utilizes basketball to mend conflicts. In Northern Ireland, two athletes, Protestant Trevor Ringland and Catholic Dave Cullen, have spearheaded PeacePlayers’ efforts to build friendships between Catholics and Protestants through basketball.
Sports’ unifying power is also evident in the war-torn Ivory Coast. Soccer player Didier Drogba has become a symbol in his country of a “new, post-civil war Ivory Coast,” according to U.K. paper The Daily Telegraph.
And famously, China invited American ping-pong players to a friendly match in 1971. The event, known as “ping-pong diplomacy,” helped improve relations between the nations and led to President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China.
Headline Link: ‘Lakers’ Jordan Farmar to Go on Peace Mission to Middle East’
“Like other NBA players, Jordan Farmar will head overseas this summer, only with a different mission—to facilitate peace in the Middle East,” writes the Los Angeles Times.
Source: Los Angeles Times (free registration may be required)
Related Topic: Sports as a worldwide tool for peace
Football for Peace was created in 2001 and it uses soccer to bring Israeli Jews and Arabs together. A recent event featured a ceremony in Nazareth involving 500 young Arabs and Jews, 34 British and German coaches and 80 Jewish and Arab instructors. “The main focus is on the children at the grassroots level,” said John Sugden, co-founder of the organization. “We’re interested in forging relationships between the kids but equally important is using that as an opportunity to develop networks at the adult level through the sports community.”
Source: The Jerusalem Post
Athletes Trevor Ringland and Dave Cullen have been using basketball to ease Protestant–Catholic tensions from the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland. Both men received ESPY awards for their efforts. Maura Mandt, executive producer of the ESPYs, said, “Trevor and Dave have seized an opportunity to help children realize that their ‘enemy’ has a face that is just like their own."
Source: ESPN
Soccer player Didier Drogba is considered a hero in his native Ivory Cost, and throughout the 2006 World Cup he stressed the ability of sport to bring national unity and pride to his war-torn country. “Seeing both leaders side by side for the national anthems was very special,” Didier said of an African Nations Cup qualifier game. “I felt then that that the Ivory Coast was born again.”
Source: The Daily Telegraph
The week of June 9, 2008, the United States and China commemorated the anniversary of “ping-pong diplomacy,” a historic ping-pong match between Chinese and American players during the Nixon administration that helped to thaw relations between the two countries.
Source: findingDulcinea
Opinion & Analysis: The power of youth
Guardian columnist Kevin Mitchell comments on a Football for Peace event held in 2007. “The symbolism ran deeper than the obvious football analogy suggests when 160 kids, aged between 10 and 14, from Arab and Jewish villages in northern Israel arrived in the capital to take part in the sort of cross-community tournament that makes you wonder where on God’s earth our decency disappears to once little boys start growing facial hair.”
Source: The Guardian
Reference: Peres Center for Peace, PeacePlayers International, Football for Peace
The Peres Center for Peace asserts that “Sport has an unparalleled ability to overcome barriers of language, politics and religion and as such, is a powerful tool in the modern day challenge of peacebuilding.”
Source: The Peres Center for Peace
PeacePlayers International, created in 2001, “uses the game of basketball to unite and educate young athletes and their communities.”
Source: The Ireland Funds
Football for Peace claims that it “builds upon the experiences of South Africa and Northern Ireland in that it seeks to make grass-roots interventions into the sport culture of Israel and Palestine while at the same time making a contribution to political debates and policy development around sport in the region.”
Source: Football for Peace
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