Gaza Strip: Surfing as International Diplomacy

I will confess that I love surfing and that I find it to not only to be a wonderful sport, but also a wonderful way to build camaraderie and a bond with your surf buddies. It relieves stress and often helps you get a proper perspective on things as you are surrounded by the elements, narrow your focus on the waves, and realize your own insignificance compared to the power of the sea. Spend a day in the water with someone and you will always have a special shared experience. Interestingly enough, CNN has a story on a small band of Palestinian surfers who surprisingly enough are getting aid from surfers in Israel. For the Palestinian surfers, surfing offers a short term escape from the often unpleasant lives. For the Israeli surfers, it sends the message that we are all human. Surfing knows no dogma and one is recognized for one's skill and ability. Religion in contrast focuses on differences and the "otherness" of those of different faiths and in the process all too often dehumanize the "other." Would that focus was on our similarities as part of the human family rather than our differences. Religious based hate has caused so much misery over the centuries. Here are highlights from the CNN story:

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In Gaza, a handful of Palestinian men have found a way to escape temporarily from the hardships of life in their conflict-wracked home. They go surfing. Dirt poor and mainly from refugee camps, they find joy riding waves, often on makeshift boards, in the green waters off Gaza's beaches.
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Over the past few years, a number of groups, some based in Israel, have made it their business to try to help the Gaza surfers. Explore Corps and Jewish Surfing 4 Peace have sent surf boards and wetsuits to the 20 or so Palestinian wave riders, hoping to extend the hand of friendship across the bullet-pocked border.
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U.S. filmmaker Alexander Klein managed to get in to Gaza to film the latest mission, the story of which he tells in documentary "God Went Surfing with the Devil." "It seemed like an important story to tell," he told CNN. . . . "Here was a story about young guys who could have been coming together to shoot at each other, but instead all they want to do is surf together."
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But the club is about more than just helping a few beach guys have a good time.
Matt Olsen, of Explore Corps, one of the founders of the surf club, believes small acts of friendship, like this, can help the peace process from the bottom up.
"We think that this is a great way to get people to connect and get people to talk," Olsen told CNN.
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Veterans of the tiny Gaza surf scene have been riding for many years, using anything from 100lb windsurfers with the sails taken off to old broken surfboards with pieces of plywood for fins. Under an economic embargo enforced by the Israeli government, only basic foodstuffs and humanitarian supplies are allowed into Gaza, making it almost impossible for the surfers to get hold of equipment themselves.
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"They have a real community down there," said Olsen. "It's really wonderful to go there and hang out." The tiny Gazan surf community couldn't be more different from the scene in Israel. Israeli surfer Arthur Rashkovan, one of the founders of Surfing 4 Peace estimates there are some 30,000 surfers in Israel, a tiny land of just over seven million people.
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Despite working with the surfers of Gaza, Rashkovan has never met any of them. He has never been across the border. "They cannot get out of Gaza and I cannot get in," said Tel Aviv-based Rashkovan. "Hopefully, one day we will meet and go surfing together."

Pope Says Abortion, Gay Marriage Are 'Obstacles' to World Peace

Just when you think the Vatican cannot come up with any more nutty pronouncements, Pope Benedict XVI steps into the breach and lets off yet another ridiculous statement. In addition to gays and abortion, I guess single parent families and grand parents raising children are also threats to world peace. So too it would seem is celibacy. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has this summary (http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=14597):

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Nuclear arms proliferation, environmental pollution and economic inequality are threats to world peace -- but so are abortion, birth control and same-sex marriage, Pope Benedict XVI said in a statement released by the Vatican Tuesday (Dec. 11). "The Human Family, a Community of Peace" is this year's papal message for the World Day of Peace, which will be observed Jan. 1. Presenting the nuclear family as the "first and indispensable teacher of peace" and the "primary agency of peace," the 15-page document links sexual and medical ethics to international relations. "Everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of new life ... constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace," Benedict writes.

The full text of Bendict's conflated language - why can't the Vatican ever speak in normal language - can be found here: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20071208_xli-world-day-peace_en.html. Here are some highlights:

The family, society and peace

The natural family, as an intimate communion of life and love, based on marriage between a man and a woman(2), constitutes “the primary place of ‘humanization' for the person and society”(3), and a “cradle of life and love”(4). The family is therefore rightly defined as the first natural society, “a divine institution that stands at the foundation of life of the human person as the prototype of every social order”(5).

The denial or even the restriction of the rights of the family, by obscuring the truth about man, threatens the very foundations of peace.

Consequently, whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace. This point merits special reflection: everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace.

Here, however, we cannot forget that the family comes into being from the responsible and definitive “yes” of a man and a women, and it continues to live from the conscious “yes” of the children who gradually join it.