Palestinian and Israeli Teens

Swam in the Same Pool. Then

Came Oct. 7.
The teenagers in the Greater Jerusalem
swim club made a point of not focusing on
their differences. That changed with the
war.
The rule was unspoken, but the Israeli and Palestinian
teenagers in the Greater Jerusalem swim club had abided by
it forever without even thinking.

No politics in the pool.

They lived on opposite sides of Jerusalem, coming together

six afternoons a week to train in lanes reserved for their team
at the Y.M.C.A. After two hours of laps, they plunged into a
Jacuzzi, where they joshed for a few minutes before calling it
a day.

They swam together, went on beach outings together,

barbecued together. The best Jewish swimmers represented
Israel in international meets. The best swimmers from East
Jerusalem competed for a team comprising Palestinians at
meets in the Arab world.

“We don’t think about the team as Israelis and Palestinians,”

said Avishag Ozeri, 16, an Israeli swimmer who recalled
being taught to swim by a Palestinian from East Jerusalem.

“It is so normal to be together,” she said before a recent

practice. “It’s weird even talking about it.”

But then came the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, the Israel

bombardment of Gaza that followed, and a series of social
media interactions that would test the team’s unspoken rule.

Swimming Together, ‘Just Human

Beings’
The swimmers train at the Y.M.C.A., a Christian nonprofit
open to people of all faiths, in the heart of Jewish West
Jerusalem, and Emanuel May has been the team’s volunteer
coach for years.

An experienced coach with a gentle demeanor, May, 70, was

raised in a farm collective, known as a kibbutz. Although he
has trained champion swimmers, he said his passion was not
to produce winners. It’s to foster unity among young people
in Jerusalem, a city where Israelis and Palestinians regularly
interact in the daily life of shops, restaurants and university
classrooms but remain divided by festering conflict.

“The spirit here is to swim together, just human beings,” he

said.
Emanuel May, a volunteer coach at the Greater Jerusalem swim club, instructing his group
at the Y.M.C.A. this month.

Four years ago, the team, which operates on a shoestring

budget, came to the attention of Shai Doron, the president of
the Jerusalem Foundation. The mission of the organization,
supported by philanthropists around the world, is to improve
the city for its almost one million residents. Bridging religious
and cultural divides is a core priority,.
After the war in Gaza ends, he said, “the 400,000
Palestinians in East Jerusalem are not going anywhere,” he
said. “The Jews will go nowhere.”

Doron acknowledges the tension in Jerusalem — particularly

at the site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to
Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, and sacred to both as
home to the Western Wall and the Aqsa mosque. But in his
vision, Jerusalem “can create the model for shared living and
coexistence.”

The Jerusalem Foundation supported the Greater Jerusalem

swimmers with a small grant. What appealed to him about
the swim team, Doron said, was that, as he sees it,
“swimming brings people together in the most natural way.”

Members of the swim club in the Jacuzzi at the Y.M.C.A.

In the pool, Doron said, “It’s impossible to tell who’s a Jew

and an Arab. There are no symbols that identify you, like a
skullcap or a hijab. You’re almost naked.”

At the Y.M.C.A., younger Israeli and Palestinian children take

swim lessons separately, because they lack a common
language. Once they are about 8 or 9 and communicating in
Hebrew and English, they begin to work out together. The
strongest swimmers join the Greater Jerusalem team.

On a recent Sunday, Shams Srour, 14, a Palestinian girl, said

she aspired to do just that.

“I want to compete, and I feel very comfortable here,” she

said. “I’ve been training with Jews since I was little. It’s
normal.”

Responding to the Oct. 7 Attacks

The Oct. 7 attacks tested that normalcy in ways that the
team is still processing.

That day, Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip breached the
border, killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers,
took over 200 hostages and hurt countless others,
according to the Israeli authorities. Videos show them
rampaging through villages, torching houses, shooting at
civilians at close range and hunting down partygoers at an
outdoor concert.

Most institutions in Israel, including the Y.M.C.A.,

immediately shuttered their doors amid a national
emergency.

The next day, Mustafa Abdu, 18, one of the Muslim

swimmers on the Greater Jerusalem team, uploaded a
photograph to his Instagram account. The photo showed an
angelic, unidentified Palestinian child being carried by men
wearing anguished expressions. The child was enshrouded
in a white cloth that Muslims use for the deceased.

Mustafa Abdu, a Palestinian swimmer, warming up before practice.

A caption above the picture read, “Where were the people

calling for humanity when we were killed?”

Mustafa also posted a blurb in stark block letters that said,

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating
the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people
who are doing the oppressing.”

The swimmers on the team follow one another on Instagram,

and Avishag recalled being shocked when she spotted the
posts. She immediately called Shira Chuna, a 16-year-old
teammate, to express her outrage, although she didn’t tell
her parents or anyone else.

Then she texted Mustafa in an exchange that she later

shared with The New York Times.

“Musta, do you know how bad the situation is in Israel right

now? I respect what you have to say, I’m truly asking you.”

Mustafa replied: Did she think, like some people on social

media, that all Palestinians were murderers?

“I didn’t say you were Musta,” Avishag wrote back. “It’s the
Hamas organization. And my people have been murdered by
the Hamas.”

Children, older people, entire families had been slaughtered

or kidnapped, she said. “I saw videos that are never going to
leave my mind,” she said, offering to forward them if he
wanted, but saying that she didn’t recommend watching
them.

“Av,” he wrote, “first thing, we are not the murder,” he said.

“Israel was attacking us from a long time, and everybody
know that.”

“What???,” she asked. “With all the respect, that’s not true.”

He said, “Always we are wrong and always you are the right.”

“That’s not what I said,” Avishag responded. “Right now

Hamas are in the wrong.”

She told him to tell her if he wanted the videos. She wanted
to prove her point, but also to preserve their friendship. She
texted him, “I have to ask if we are cool?”

He placed a heart on her message and typed “yes” in

Spanish. She hearted his message, too. It seemed they had
achieved an uneasy peace, although they couldn’t be sure
until they swam together again.

Shira Chuna, left, and Avishag Ozeri before swim practice.

In ensuing days, Israel launched a series of airstrikes on
Gaza and continued to block food, fuel and other supplies
from reaching the two million people crowded into the
narrow strip of land hemmed between Israel and Egypt.
Hamas continued to fire rockets at Israel, and an invasion by
the Israeli Army was imminent.

On Oct. 11 came another Instagram post, this one from a

different Palestinian member of the swim team. “The victory
of Allah is near,” the post said. (The swimmer did not agree
to participate in this article.)

When Shira saw what he had written, she recalled, “I felt like
they betrayed our friendship, like I trust them so much.”

She had always had good relations with her Palestinian

neighbors. After Shira was born, a Palestinian friend of her
father brought the family money, a traditional gift among
Muslims. When Shira told her parents about the Instagram
posts, they said that given the fraught history between the
two communities, “You don’t need to be surprised.”

As soon as May, the team’s coach, learned about the posts

shared by Mustafa and the other swimmer, he promptly
contacted them. Both immediately deleted the posts.

“I took it down, because I respect them,” Mustafa said in an

interview after practice in early November. “I don’t want to
talk about the war. I just want to talk about swimming.”

A Team Meeting
By the time the Greater Jerusalem swimmers reported to the
pool again on Oct. 16, the death toll from Israeli
bombardments in Gaza was reported to be 3,000 and rapidly
rising. The atrocities that Hamas had committed also
continued to convulse Israeli society.

But would the conflict breach the two Y.M.C.A. lanes allotted
to the team?

“I told myself, I’m going to behave as normal,” said Alex

Finkel, 17. “Outside it’s a bit scary, but I grew up with the
Palestinians. I’ll do everything we always do, and that’s it.”

Before practice, May convened a team meeting. “No one

here supports terror,” he recalled telling the swimmers. “No
taking sides.”

In the pool, the teenagers kicked into high gear, training

vigorously to make up for missed practices. But there was no
teasing, joking or chatting between drills. A heaviness hung
over them.

Yet the deep bonds formed over years were still there. By the
next day, several swimmers said, the atmosphere had
lightened. The tensions appeared to have dissipated, or at
least been submerged.

Alex Finkel, left, and Mustafa Abdu, right, after completing a swimming drill.

And at the pool last week, it was impossible to distinguish

Israeli from Palestinian swimmers. They all wore goggles and
swim caps as they completed sets of freestyle and
breaststroke. Conversations were cheerful and safe. Alex
teased Mustafa about beating him at butterfly.

At one point, when Avishag did not wait long enough before
pushing off the wall, she touched Mustafa’s toes with her
fingers as she completed a stroke. Mustafa turned, and gave
her a look as if to say, “Really?” before resuming. Avishag
broke into a playful smile.

Shortly after Israeli forces entered Gaza in late October,

Shira learned that her cousin, a soldier, had been killed, just
two days shy of turning 21. She missed a couple days of
swim practice.

On Shira’s return, Mustafa approached her and said he was

sorry for her loss.

“I felt he cared,” she said.

As a recent practice wrapped up, Mustafa emerged from the

pool, pulled off his purple cap and headed to the Jacuzzi
with the rest of the team.
“This is my second family,” he said. “If we have a problem,
we fix it like a team.”

The war in Gaza has tested the teenagers on the Greater Jerusalem swim team who have
been teammates for years.

Gal Koplewitz contributed research.

Miriam Jordan reports from the grassroots perspective on

immigrants and their impact on the demographics, society
and economy of the United States. Before joining The Times,
she covered immigration at The Wall Street Journal and was
a correspondent in Brazil, India, Hong Kong and Israel. More
about Miriam Jordan

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 16, 2023,

Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Teenagers Find Place of Peace At a Swim Club in Jerusalem.
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