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ISRAEL

Palestinians’ Real Enemies: Arabs by Khaled Abu Toameh

The Arab heads of state and monarchs do not like to be reminded of how badly they treat Palestinians and subject them to discriminatory and apartheid laws.

It is not comfortable or safe to be a Palestinian in an Arab country. Scenes of lawlessness and anarchy inside Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank have also driven many residents to move to nearby cities and villages. Most refugees in the West Bank no longer live inside UNRWA-run camps.

Let us end where we began: with the Palestinian (non)leadership. What has it done to help its people in the Arab countries? Nothing. No Palestinian leader will urge an emergency session of the UN Security Council to expose the ethnic cleansing and killing of Palestinians in Arab countries. No Palestinian leader will demand that the international media and human rights organizations investigate the atrocities perpetrated by Arabs on their Palestinian brethren. We are sure to see more such criminal silence when Abbas meets with the president of the United States.

Palestinians living in refugee camps in the Arab world are facing ethnic cleansing, displacement, and death — but their leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are too busy tearing each other to pieces to notice or even, apparently, care much.

Between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, it looks as if they are competing for the worst leadership, not the best. Clearly, neither regime gives a damn about the plight of their people in the Arab world.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who is scheduled to visit Washington in the coming weeks for his first meeting with US President Donald Trump, spends most of his time abroad. There is hardly a country in the world that he has not visited since he assumed office in January 2005.

Hamas, for its part, is too occupied with hunting down Palestinians suspected of “collaboration” with Israel, and arming its members as massively as possible for war with Israel, to spend much time on the well-being of the two million people living under its thumb in the Gaza Strip. Hamas does have resources: its money is otherwise designated, however, to digging attack tunnels into Israel and smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip.

The globetrotting Abbas, treated to red-carpet receptions wherever he shows up, has no time to attend to his miserable people in the Arab countries. Abbas devotes more than 90 percent of his speeches to denunciations of Israel, uttering barely a word about the atrocities committed against his people in Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Iraq. The 82-year-old PA president is, as always, fully preoccupied with political survival.

Abbas’s real enemies are his critics, such as estranged Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan, and Hamas. Abbas is currently focused on undermining Dahlan and preventing Hamas from taking control of the West Bank. In the past few years, Abbas has also demonstrated an obsession with isolating and delegitimizing Israel in the international arena. For him, this mission is more sacred than saving the lives of Palestinians.

Extracting water from air, Israeli firm looks to quench global thirst By Shoshana Solomon

Water-Gen, controlled by Russian-Israeli billionaire Michael Mirilashvili, eyes mass assembly of water-producing units by year end.

Water-Gen Ltd., an Israeli company whose technology captures humidity in order to make drinking water out of air, is not likely to experience the cash-flow squeeze many fast-growing companies are afflicted by.

That’s because Russian-Israeli entrepreneur and billionaire Michael Mirilashvili, who is also the vice president of the World Jewish Congress, bought control of the company last summer, and because it has high-profile advocates: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned it in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” about Israel’s high-tech prowess. At the AIPAC conference last month, Harvard Law professor and Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz took the stage to showcase its technology. In September, the company presented its solution at the United Nations.

Not bad for a firm that employs some 30 people, mainly engineers, in the central Israeli city of Rishon Lezion. It was set up in 2010 by Israeli entrepreneur Arye Kohavi, a former combat reconnaissance company commander in the Israeli Army who previously set up a firm that developed e-learning software.

“Whatever it needs, we will finance,” said Maxim Pasik, the executive chairman of Water-Gen in an interview at the Herzliya offices of Beer Itzhak Energy Ltd, when asked about financing options for the firm’s growth. “Water-Gen’s potential is endless. Water from air is the next source of water for the world.” Beer Itzhak Energy is the unit of Mirilashvili’s business that bought a 70 percent stake in Water-Gen.

Water covers 70 percent of Earth, but only three percent of the world’s water is fresh, and two-thirds of that is unavailable for use, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. As a result, “some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year,” the WWF says. At the current consumption rate, by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages, the WWF estimates. Roughly 1.2 billion people — almost one-fifth of the world’s population — live in areas of water scarcity, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Water from air, not from a stone

After the biblical exodus from Egypt, Moses made water for the people of Israel in the desert by striking a stone. Now Water-Gen is striking water from air.

The technology, developed by Kohavi with the help of engineers, uses a series of filters to purify the air. After the air is sucked in and chilled to extract its humidity, the water that forms is treated and transformed into clean drinking water. The technology uses a plastic heat exchanger rather than an aluminum one, which helps reduce costs; it also includes a proprietary software that operates the devices.

The atmospheric water generators developed by Water-Gen allow the production of 4 liters of drinking water (one gallon) using 1 Kilowatt of energy, Pasik said.

Other atmospheric water generating devices, by comparison, consume three to four times more energy, or effectively three to four times less water per energy unit, he said. This makes Water-Gen cheaper than similar solutions offered by other companies. The price of the water depends on the price of electricity.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Huge boost for stroke diagnosis system. (TY Hazel) I reported previously (July 3) on Israel’s MedyMatch Artificial Intelligence platform for diagnosing strokes from CT-scans. MedyMatch has just signed separate 5-year agreements to integrate the groundbreaking technology with IBM and Samsung equipment.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/samsung-to-integrate-israeli-tech-to-spot-strokes/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-medymatch-inks-deal-with-ibm-watson-health/

Early diagnosis of Autism can save lives. (TY Jacques) Dr Hanna Alonim founded Israeli non-profit Mifne Center – the world’s first organization to diagnose and treat toddlers on the autism spectrum, and use a family therapy approach to treatment. Alonim’s ESPASI Screening Scale is used in Israel, the USA and across Europe.
http://israelbetweenthelines.com/2017/02/02/early-diagnosis-of-autism-has-88-chance-of-saving-lives
https://www.youtube.com/embed/dO6m_o-fasE?rel=0

Releasing Glaucoma treatment automatically. I reported previously (Mar 5) about Israel’s Eximore which is developing a tiny device that is implanted into the tear duct to treat eye diseases such as Glaucoma, without the patient’s knowledge. Eximore’s Chairperson, Dr Daphne Haim-Langford went on ILTV to explain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgRUQ6Tpau4
https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-israeli-company-develops-system-to-replace-daily-eye-drops/

Manage your diabetes efficiently. Israel’s GlucoMe has developed a “Digital Diabetes Clinic” that monitors diabetics and recommends treatment programs. The platform uses a smart glucose monitor, an insulin pen monitor, a mobile app and a cloud-based management system. It has completed trials and is Europe approved.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startup-uses-big-data-minimal-hardware-to-treat-diabetes/
http://www.glucome.com/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/l750q5YgG2M?rel=0

The next generation in cancer diagnostics. I reported previously (July 31) on Israeli-founded Cleveland Diagnostics and its improved early prostate cancer test kit. Cleveland’s CEO Dr Arnon Chait went on ILTV to explain more and to announce the company’s new Israeli operations.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/CVe117kQaP4?rel=0

A robot to traverse the small intestine. Scientists at Ben-Gurion University are re-designing their Single Actuator Wave-like (SAW) robotic snake to carry a camera and squeeze through the human small intestine. It could extend and improve the effectiveness of colonoscopy tests.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientists-design-robot-to-squeeze-through-small-intestine/

UK lawyer has MS treatment in Jerusalem. Top UK Lawyer Mark Lewis (Director of UK Lawyers for Israel) suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, walks with a limp and cannot write with his right hand. He travels to Israel every six weeks to participate in the MS trial at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/uks-foremost-libel-lawyer-sets-his-sights-on-israels-enemies/

Bone marrow tests from Czech Republic in one day. Israel’s Ezer Mizion found a likely DNA match on their database for a bone marrow transplant patient. However, the donor was in the Czech Republic. Using their “Linked to Life” WhatsApp group, volunteers rushed the sample kit from Tel Aviv to Vienna to Prague to Brno and back again in less than 24 hours. http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/czechoslovakia-no-problem/

Emergency app can save lives on the beach. A volunteer with Israel Emergency Medical Service United Hatzalah has developed a smartphone app to quickly locate swimmers in trouble off Haifa’s beaches, and navigate paramedics to that location.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-ems-volunteers-create-lifesaving-app-for-haifa-beaches/

Paramedic’s first patient was his nephew. Ben Shetiat’s first call, after completing his 6-months Emergency Medical training course, was an infant having seizures – at Ben’s sister’s house! He arrived in two minutes. After treatment, Ben’s nephew was taken to hospital and was well enough to be discharged later that night.
https://israelrescue.org/blog/newly-trained-emt-responds-to-first-call-and-saves-his-own-nephew/

VICTOR SHARPE: PASSOVER’S GIFT TO THE JEWISH PEOPLE

Millions, perhaps billions, of the world’s population still do not know the meaning of the towering festival of freedom and liberty known as Passover; a festival recognizing an event that has blessed the world for some 3,300 years.

The festival begins at eventide on April 10th of this year and always on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Nissan. Jews and Christians know from the Bible the story of the Exodus and of the salvation of the Jewish people from centuries of slavery under the Egyptian pharaohs: This was the creation and deliverance of an entire nation.

Such a seminal event in humanity’s history became the foundation for freedom and liberty – created many centuries before democracy was first enunciated by Greek philosophers who nevertheless lived within a polytheistic society.

Many people know in varying degrees the Passover story and the birth of the Jewish people and of their undying faith in the One and Only God; invisible and indivisible. Judaism has given the world monotheism in its purest and Editmost undiluted nature. The Unity of God is what Jews have defended against all who attempted to suggest a plurality: even to enduring martyrdom.

The long suffering Jews under Egyptian bondage were led to freedom by the Jewish prophet, Moses, who brought them to their own very special and promised Land of Israel. Moses spoke with God in Sinai and brought a wondrous divine gift to the Jewish people and through them to all humanity – the Decalogue; the Ten Commandments, and the basis of today’s laws of Western and Judeo-Christian civilization and jurisprudence. These ten brief commandments – a mere 120 Hebrew words – are written on the walls of synagogues and churches.

But, as in all Jewish practice, Moses was never deified. He was shown in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, as a man; nothing else. Indeed in order not to deify him or exalt him over others he is shown in the Holy Bible with human failings and his burial place remains unknown.

He sought the mountain top and beheld the Promised Land of Israel, yet was never to enter. In fact, in the Torah Moses is described merely as “the humblest and meekest of all human beings.” For in Judaism, only God is divine and besides Him there are none other.

Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) is the first of the Jewish holidays and festivals, coinciding with the coming of the Spring in the Jewish people’s ancestral, biblical and native land: the land given by God in an everlasting Covenant to the Jewish people; a land extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and including Gilead (the possession of the tribes of Manasseh, Gad and Reuben) east of the river, in the present day Arab state of Jordan.

The Passover festival precedes two other harvest festivals based upon the agricultural cycles of ancient and modern Israel. Next comes Shavuot, Pentecost, which records and commemorates the giving to Moses of the Ten Commandments followed by Succot, which is known as Tabernacles. Mankind was, and is, blessed through the Passover for it is a veritable gift to those who accept its divine message and perform the ritual meal, the Seder, recording the Exodus story.

But there is an evil in men’s hearts, and it is a profound evil, for those who hate and envy this Jewish gift to humanity and its message of freedom, liberty and foundational democracy. They have chosen since time immemorial to rise up to destroy all that it stands for and persecute those – the Jews – who received it from God and who have shared it with all humanity.

Let me recount what Mary Antin wrote in 1911 about the horrors inflicted upon the Jews in Russia as they celebrated the festival of liberty in the Exodus story during the festive Seder meal. Ms. Antin wrote of what routinely took place at Passover and of how Russian neighbors reminded the Jews that for them it was another Egypt:

“… in Russian cities and even more in country districts, where Jewish families lived scattered, the stupid peasants would hear lies about the Jews, fill themselves with vodka, and set out to kill their Jewish neighbors.

The Israel-Palestinian Peace Process Has Been a Massive Charade So long as Palestinian rejectionism runs rampant, debates about one-, two-, and three-state solutions are for naught. Daniel Pipes

Daniel Polisar of Shalem College in Jerusalem shook the debate over Palestinian-Israeli relations in November 2015 with his essay, “What Do Palestinians Want?” In it, having studied 330 polls to “understand the perspective of everyday Palestinians” toward Israel, Israelis, Jews, and the utility of violence against them, he found that Palestinian attackers are “venerated” by their society—with all that that implies. https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2017/04/the-israel-palestinian-peace-process-has-been-a-massive-charade/

He’s done it again with “Do Palestinians Want a Two-State Solution?” This time, he pored over some 400 opinion polls of Palestinian views to find consistency among seemingly contradictory evidence on the topic of ways to resolve the conflict with Israel. From this confusing bulk, Polisar convincingly establishes that Palestinians collectively hold three related views of Israel: it has no historical or moral claim to exist, it is inherently rapacious and expansionist, and it is doomed to extinction. In combination, these attitudes explain and justify the widespread Palestinian demand for a state from “the river to the sea,” the grand Palestine of their maps that erases Israel.

With this analysis, Polisar has elegantly dissected the phenomenon that I call Palestinian rejectionism. That’s the policy first implemented by the monstrous mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, in 1921 and consistently followed over the next near-century. Rejectionism demands that Palestinians (and beyond them, Arabs and Muslims) repudiate every aspect of Zionism: deny Jewish ties to the land of Israel, fight Jewish ownership of that land, refuse to recognize Jewish political power, refuse to trade with Zionists, murder Zionists where possible, and ally with any foreign power, including Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, to eradicate Zionism.

The continuities are striking. All major Palestinian leaders—Amin al-Husseini, Ahmad al-Shukeiri, Yasir Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and Yahya Sinwar (the new leader of Hamas in Gaza)—have made eliminating the Zionist presence their only goal. Yes, for tactical reasons, they occasionally compromised, most notably in the Oslo Accords of 1993, but then they reversed these exceptions as soon as possible.

In other words, the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” that began in 1989 has been a massive charade. As Israelis earnestly debated making “painful concessions,” their Palestinian counterparts issued promises they had had no intention of fulfilling, something Arafathad the gall publicly to signal to his constituency even as he signed the Oslo Accords, and many times subsequently.

So longas rejectionism runs rampant, debates about one-, two-, and three-state solutions, about carving up the Temple Mount into dual sovereign areas, or about electricity grids and water supplies, are for naught. There can be no resolution so long as most Palestinians dream of obliterating the Jewish state. Indeed, this makes negotiations counterproductive. The Oslo Accords and other signed pieces of paper have made matters much worse. The farce of negotiations, therefore, needs urgently to end.

Palestinians Exploiting Children to Fight Israel Where is the international outrage? Noah Beck

Originally written for the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

The new Palestinian curriculum for grades 1 to 4 “is significantly more radical than previous curricula,” concludes a new study by Hebrew University’s Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se). It “teaches students to be martyrs, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel, and focuses on a ‘return’ to an exclusively Palestinian homeland.”

In response to pressure from President Trump, Israel reportedly is preparing a series of concessions to Palestinians in a bid to re-launch peace talks. Trump may want to consider pressuring the Palestinians for parallel gestures, including correcting educational policies that are antithetical to peace.

Indeed, the IMPACT-se study warns that the “educational system has created a Palestinian nationalism that absolutely rejects the Other and is therefore incompatible with Israel’s existence.” Even more alarming, the report notes that the “Struggle against Israel and its disappearance is the main theme,” and “The 1974 PLO’s Phased Plan for the conquest of the Land of Israel/Palestine is taught. The curriculum reflects a strategy of violence and pressure in place of peaceful negotiations.”

The “Palestinian school curricula are inspected by the international donors who finance the Palestinian Authority and, by extension, its public education system,” the Times of Israel reported.

That includes huge investment from Britain, the Daily Mail reported, money that goes “into Palestinian schools named after mass murderers and Islamist militants, which openly promote terrorism and encourage pupils to see child killers as role models.”

Incredibly, European countries pressure Israel to freeze settlement growth and take other steps towards peace, while funding pro-war messages targeted at future generations of Palestinians.

Islam is not used as a radical political tool in grades 1–4, but the educational message “includes biases towards non-Muslims,” the IMPACT-se study says. And, in grades 11-12, “Religion is clearly abused…to foment hate amid calls for eternal war in the Levant.”

The Palestinian curriculum of violence and hate highlighted by the IMPACT-se study is just one of the many ways in which Palestinian leaders have forced their violent agendas onto children.

David Singer: European Union Declares Diplomatic War on Israel

Ambassadors to Israel representing 28 European Union States (EU) behaved most undiplomatically in ambushing the recently appointed Director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and former Ambassador to Australia – Yuval Rotem – at a meet and greet function Rotem had organised at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv last week.

Instead of the pleasant banter over drinks and canapes usually associated with such events on the diplomatic cocktail circuit the function erupted into an explosive EU protest against Israel’s plans to evict Arab squatters from 42 structures that had been illegally erected between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem at the strategically narrowest point in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) known as E1.

Lars Faarburg-Andersen – the EU Ambassador to Israel – took the opportunity to read out to Rotem the following one-page document which had been approved by the EU political-security committee – in which all 28 member states are represented.This gauche and uncivilised behaviour was certainly uncalled for and not conduct that one would ever expect to come from refined and cultured Europeans.

Reading this carefully-crafted statement at the function was a cavalier action aggravating the already strained relationship between the EU and Israel following the EU’s introduction on 11 November 2015 of labelling requirements for goods produced in Judea and Samaria entering Europe.

The statement revealingly exposes the hypocrisy of the EU for the following reasons:

1. It was presented as a “demarche” – a diplomatic or official initiative – a protest normally delivered through diplomatic channels – not at a cocktail function.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Told-You-So Moment The Israeli leader could be opportunistic and vulgar in pressing his case against the Iran deal. He was also right. By Sohrab Ahmari

Benjamin Netanyahu will never be popular in America’s major newsrooms. Or among most of the think-tankers who set the tone and parameters of foreign-policy debate. His name is a curse on college campuses. So it’s worth asking whose vision of the Middle East has held up better under the press of recent events.

His or theirs?

The question comes to mind as Western governments confront this week’s chemical atrocity in Syria, and as footage of children’s bodies convulsing in agony once more unsettles the world’s conscience. Even President Trump, who generally lacks a moral language, was moved, though whether he will act remains to be seen.

His predecessor had a rich moral vocabulary and a coterie of award-winning moralizers like Samantha Power on staff. But President Obama refused to act when Bashar Assad crossed his chemical red line. He wanted to extricate Washington from the region, and he saw a nuclear deal with Mr. Assad’s Iranian patrons as the exit ramp.

Such a deal came within grasp when Hassan Rouhani launched his presidential campaign in Iran four years ago this month. The smiling, self-proclaimed “moderate” was the Iranian interlocutor the Obamaians had been waiting for. Mr. Netanyahu posed the main obstacle.

The Israeli prime minister warned that Mr. Rouhani didn’t have the power to moderate the regime even if he had the will. He reminded the world of Mr. Rouhani’s role in Iran’s repressive apparatus and his history of anti-American rhetoric. He insisted that Iranian regional aggression wouldn’t relent if sanctions were removed. Iran, he predicted, would pocket the financial concessions, then press ahead in Syria and elsewhere.

The Israeli could be opportunistic, given to hyperbole and not a little vulgar in pressing his case. He was also right.

It’s instructive now to compare his account of the regime with the baseless euphoria in the Western media that greeted Mr. Rouhani’s election in June 2013 and marked coverage of the nuclear deal over the next four years.

Start with Iran’s role in Syria. Writing in September 2013, the New York Times editorial board suggested that Iran’s intentions “could be tested by inviting its new government to join the United States and Russia in carrying out the recent agreement to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons. It seems like a natural convergence: Iranians know well the scourge of poison gas.”

Well, apparently they didn’t know the scourge well enough to restrain their chief Arab client from systematically gassing his own people, even after the Russian-brokered chemical deal. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump’s Push for Mideast Deal Perplexes Israeli Right Many in ruling coalition, and West Bank settlers, are content with the way things are By Yaroslav Trofimov

BEIT EL, West Bank—President Donald Trump’s interest in solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem is running into a stubborn fact: Much of Israel’s governing coalition is pretty happy with the status quo.

The Israeli economy is booming. Jewish population growth has nearly caught up with Palestinian birthrates. And the level of violence remains at historic lows. The wars ravaging the wider Middle East, meanwhile, have distracted regional attention from the Palestinians’ predicament and have even pushed countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia toward more cooperation with Israel.

To many Israeli voters who have repeatedly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and particularly to the influential lobby representing more than 400,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, this means there is little reason to fix what they see as working just fine.
“There is nothing more sustainable than the current situation that has already existed for 50 years and that is getting better all the time,” said retired Brig. Gen. Effie Eitam, Israel’s former minister of national infrastructure and housing who now runs a private intelligence company in Jerusalem.

That’s why Mr. Trump’s ambition to resolve the intractable dispute—a solution that would likely require Israel to accept Palestinian statehood and give up most of the territory it has occupied since 1967—has confounded Israel’s right-wing coalition just months after it celebrated the U.S. election as divine deliverance from international pressure.

“They’ve been surprised. They’re a bit uneasy,” said Daniel Shapiro, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel until January and is now a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Arab Boy on the Israeli Tennis Team Sports can change the world—as they did my life—by helping us see each other differently By Fahoum Fahoum see note please

Are there any Jewish players on teams in any Moslem/Arab nation ? Sounds nice and lofty but the only team sport Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIs know is team Jihad…..rsk
Mr. Fahoum is a graduate of Columbia University’s master’s program in negotiation and conflict resolution.

Tennis changed my life. Growing up as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, I struggled with an identity crisis, feeling caught between two worlds. But when I was 8, I started playing tennis in Haifa. Eventually I became the first Arab Muslim on the Israeli junior national team, representing the country in European and world championships.

This was a personal success. More important, though, it gave me a platform for building bonds with Jewish youth. The tennis court was an island where everyone felt like they belonged. My teammates and I embraced the same identity. I built trust with my doubles partner and the people on the other side of the net, too.

Once my parents realized the sport’s potential to bring people together, they established the Coexistence Program at the Israel Tennis Center in Haifa. It introduced young Arabs and Jews to the game, while transforming on-court partnerships into off-court friendships. The program, which began in 2001 with around 10 children, now operates nationwide with hundreds of participants.

When I was growing up, Israeli high schools and colleges did not have organized sports. But Americans know well the power of sports, as I learned when I came to Quinnipiac University in Connecticut on a tennis scholarship. Even though my teammates and I came from different corners of the world, we were all Bobcats. Social psychologists have a name for this phenomenon of a shared, complex identity. They call it a “superordinate identity.”

Playing sports can help reframe a conflict. It builds the groundwork for cooperation by putting teammates in the same boat. To paraphrase the late Morton Deutsch, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, this creates a positive interdependence: If you swim, I swim, and if you sink, I sink. It galvanizes people to do what is best for the team. If another player is in a better position to score than you are, you will pass the ball.

Sports recognizes no language barriers. Drop a soccer ball into a group of kids in Israel, South Africa or Ireland, and watch what happens. There will be no need for an introduction, let alone an explanation of the rules. Instead players communicate using their bodies within an established system of rules that makes them “speak” soccer fluently. Just as sports altered my path, it has the power to change the world.

That’s why the United Nations has declared April 6 the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace. Athletics can provide entertainment and exercise, yes, but also so much more. It can be used as a tool for tackling social issues—fighting obesity, empowering women, integrating refugees or promoting peace. Sports are more than mere games. They’re essential to the healthy transformation of society.