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‘You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught’: Lessons from the court

The two rectangular tables set up in the dining room of the comfortable home in the Jerusalem Hills overlooking Mount Herzl looked the same — chicken, salads, rice dishes, grape leaves and hummus. The animated young people chatting and laughing did too — athletic, radiant and hopeful. But when dinner at the welcome reception began, most of the Jewish kids filled their plates at the kosher table and the Palestinian kids filtered toward the other table. That was the only differentiating moment of the night. Jewish and Arab mothers and fathers helped the Jewish hosts set the table, clean the plates and celebrate these children, many of whom play on the only integrated teams from Jerusalem in the Israeli Basketball Association youth league.

I sat with a group of non-English-speaking Arab mothers and next to Manar, the mother of Jacob. She did not speak much English, but regardless of the language gap, we established a simpatico and warmth, the likes of which I have felt many times on journeys like this. I had been visiting Israel for decades, but for the last six years, joined by family and friends, the goal of the visits has been encouraging and supporting the staff, children and families of PeacePlayers International, a nonprofit devoted to transcending conflict through youth sports. Accompanying me on this visit were various members of my family, including my 13-year-old grandson, Caden, a pretty good basketball player with a big 3-point shot and an even bigger smile.

Philadelphia 76ers coach Brett Brown speaks to children enrolled in the PeacePlayers International basketball program last year in the Middle East.

He was my roommate and shot coach (admittedly, I could use the help). On this night, Manar looked at him as he walked by and remarked to me and the other mothers, “That boy is too skinny. He should have something to eat!” as she stroked the cloth of her hijab. The other mothers somehow understood and nodded their heads in agreement. At that moment, I recalled countless occasions from my own childhood of Jewish matriarchs suggesting the same about me. I shared that thought with Manar and she winked at me and smiled.

Once we finished eating, the music started filling the downstairs rec room — a CD of pop music interspersed with Arab and Hebrew songs. The dance moves were universal, dozens of Palestinian and Israeli kids swaying, shaking and laughing. It reminded me of a party of racially mixed classmates during my high school senior year in the de facto segregation of suburban Philadelphia when the black and white kids started to mix on the dance floor as The Isley Brothers belted “Shout!”

I thought: Aren’t young people everywhere so often the ones to defuse the conflicts adults create?

The next day we sat in the gym at Jerusalem’s Hand in Hand School and watched Jewish and Arab 10- to 13-year-olds engage in warmup activities and play basketball. An amazing thing to me was the mixture of Arabic, Hebrew and English coming from all directions during the game. The point guard calling out plays, the coaches repositioning players, teammates cheering a basket — the jumble of languages and fluency made me wish linguistic harmony could forebode geopolitical reconciliation.

During a week of touring Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious and historical sites as well as visiting PeacePlayers’ basketball programs in Jerusalem and in Arab villages and Jewish communities, I encountered kids who recounted their memories of the fear and hatred they had been taught before their PeacePlayers experience.

“At first, I thought the Jews would come after me, or they would hurt me or my family,” a 14-year-old Palestinian told me.

“I thought we were supposed to hate each other and that Arabs would kill us,” a 15-year-old Jewish player said.

Shapiro has been involved with PeacePlayers for 14 years.
More importantly, each of these teenagers said that playing basketball alongside the supposed “enemy” had made clear the irrationality of those sentiments. Friendship and camaraderie had replaced distrust and disdain they had been originally taught.

In fact, these integrated PeacePlayers teams are no longer experiments in reconciliation but thriving, competitive fixtures in a society otherwise defined by segregation. On this trip, I realized the simple reason for the success of this program was not only the unity sports can foster, but also the enduring lessons great coaches and mentors can provide. The PPI leaders, coaches and staff, and the kids’ parents who buy in, are breaking down the stereotypes that these young people thought were truths.

On this trip, I spoke often with my son-in-law, former NFL head coach Eric Mangini, who accompanied me this year along with several of my children and grandchildren. We talked about how sports helps societies transcend constructs like race, class and nationality. One of the things Eric loves about football is how, even in the cutthroat world of the NFL, all the nonsense of identity disappears into the game’s demands of cooperation, concentration and, ultimately, joy or heartbreak.

One day, as we were walking through the holy sites in Bethlehem and chatting about our amazing trip, Eric grew animated as he discussed young leaders in the program like Arabs Fatima and Heba, Jews Toot and Liraz, and an exemplary coach from the program named Vito.

“More than the games, Ron, it’s leaders like them and coaches like him,” Eric said. “I remember how my own coaches shaped me and taught us to work as a team and transcend our differences. Don’t you?”

As much as there is an impulse among ethnic groups, religions and races to distinguish and isolate themselves, there is an equal and competing impulse deep in the human spirit, and especially in sports, to come together.

Be it among Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (where PPI has a program), Muslim immigrants and lifelong Parisians in France, African-Americans and police forces in America, or Arab and Jewish children and their parents in a dining room in Jerusalem, the most direct and effective way to transform society is with mentors. Whether they use sports, music, theater or dance, it is this magical mix of teaching and playing/performing that dissolves the false differences children inherit by introducing them to experiences during which they learn the “other” is really not so different. Sport certainly isn’t the cure-all for geopolitical problems, but I’ve come to believe that bringing kids together with strong coaching and mentoring is a vital first step. Brendan Tuohey, PPI’s founder, and Middle East leaders like Karen Doubilet and her Palestinian counterpart, along with their team of Israeli and Palestinian coaches are the truest agents of change in societies befuddled by how to overcome seemingly intransigent problems of identity.

On my flight back from Tel Aviv last month, I had an urge to listen on YouTube to a song from one of my favorite musicals, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific.” The song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” and its ironic lyrics stirred memories and reminded me of the truth of the ballad, most importantly, the stunning lessons in “un-teaching” I have been witnessing in the Holy Land every summer for the past six years:

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

I kept humming the song to myself, and started to think of troubled, divided cities in my country as we approached American soil. Descending from 35,000 feet, I took heart not in how similar the problems are in all our societies, but at how similar are the solutions.

Ron Shapiro is an expert negotiator, sports agent, attorney, educator, best-selling author, civic leader and founder of the Shapiro Negotiations Institute.

“You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”
Copyright © 1949 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
Copyright Renewed Williamson Music (ASCAP), an Imagem Company owner of publication and allied rights throughout the World. All Rights Reserved.

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