This semester, six extraordinarily brilliant students and I
came together to write four blogs that travelled through the historical
territorial battle between two religiously and politically different groups:
Palestine and Israel. In our blogs, we
covered how the Jewish state of Israel and the Muslim state of Palestine have
constantly clashed to establish both a place of belonging and united
acceptance. We discussed the Gaza Strip
and how Palestinians believe that their historical presence in Gaza over powers
the Israeli desire to establish a territory of their own. Continuing to battle for power and often
times resorting to violent means, our group also researched the territorial
disputes in the West Bank that justified violence through religious affiliation,
which has caused this historical tension to erupt even further. And of course, amongst the violence and fight
for greater representation, our group closed the semester by informing readers in
depth about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which, in
essence, strived to raise Palestine-Israel conflicts to a global scale where
international law would effect how these to nations exist with relation to each
other. Our goal was to emphasize that
besides our nation’s concerns, the conflicts that exist within, between and
amongst nations internationally and abroad is just as important. Especially as students at the University of
San Francisco, our group took a deep understanding of international politics —
especially the Palestine-Israel conflict — because we are well aware of our
ability to change the world from here.
Every time
our group decided on a topic for each blog post, we collectively split up the
research to cover the issue in depth.
More than just meeting the minimum criteria, we put a lot of time and
effort into making sure each one of us understood the topic at hand. For me, I began by finding out what is
currently going on with regard to the Palestine-Israel conflict, moreover, the specific
topic we chose to focus on. From there,
I would travel back and see all the events and happenings that led up to these
particular events; doing this actually helped me become more familiar with
other historical aspects of the Palestine-Israel conflict because each piece of
information or each event branched off into several other conflicts, which all
pointed towards the foundation of the issue.
Because I would get so wrapped up in what happened in current news, I
often took on the role of writing about what is new for the two nations. Working as a group was beneficial in this
sense because for each topic we chose, there was an extremely dense and
detailed amount of information to cover.
In some ways, we all contributed to more than just one aspect of the
respective topic, and that helped each of us grasp the problem in its
entirety. I have always had bad
experiences in the past working in groups, but for these blog posts, my group
was phenomenal — and even that is an understatement.
In writing
these blogs that summarized the general conflict between Palestine and Israel, I
obviously gained a better understanding of the underlying issues that are often
over-simplified or over-exaggerated through media outlets and other news
sources. It was beneficial for me to
work as part of a group in doing so because, as the blogs made evident, there
is an overwhelming amount of information to summarize in just a few paragraphs. The most rewarding part of writing each of
these blogs was reading the final, posted product. What began as four blank documents became four
summarized pieces of history. With the
Palestine-Israel conflict as a viable example, history is the best part of
ourselves we leave behind because it has the power to make the greatest
difference for all time — it’s the part of us that lives on, that provides
wisdom for the future, substance for the present, and progression from the past. As much as we look at history as part of the
past, history begins now. It’s up to us
to change the world from here.
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