9.9 Lessons About the Middle East from San Diego's House of Pacific Relations
There's a 1200 acre park overlooking downtown San Diego called Balboa Park. In 1892, a woman named Kate Sessions offered to plant 100 trees a year within the Park as well as donate trees and shrubs around San Diego in exchange for 32 acres of land within the Park boundaries to be used for her commercial nursery. She introduced several popular plant species, including the birds of paradise, queen palm, and poinsettia into the park.
Here is a picture of birds of paradise in San Diego county
Here is a picture of poinsettas in Balboa park.
In 1935 the California Pacific International Exposition was held in Balboa Park. The House of Pacific Relations was part of the exposition whose purpose was to promote international harmony. There were two reasons for the word Pacific in the name. San Diego is next to the Pacific ocean. The second reason is that Pacific is in the name is because Pacific means peaceful. In fact the Pacific ocean was named by Ferdinand Magellan as peaceful because it was peaceful, compared to the Straits of Magellan, at the southern tip of South America that he travelled through to get there from the Atlantic ocean. The House of Pacific Relations should be called The Houses of Pacific Relations because many Spanish-vernacular style cottages were constructed, each representing a different country.
Joseph Haddad is an Israeli Arab. He speaks below about what we can learn about the Middle East conflict from the House of Pacific Relations in the video below. He talks about BDS. BDS are the initials of a group for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. The idea of the group is to impoverish Israel by convincing people not to buy Israel products and not to sell Israeli things they need and not to invest in Israeli companies.
It is similar to The Arab boycott which was formally declared by the newly formed Arab League Council on December 2, 1945. That was an boycott of Jewish products and manufactured goods by Arab countries.
In November 2007, the Palestinians established the BDS organization whose purpose is to convince countries all over the world to boycott and sanction Israel.
Israel has survived repeated onslaughts from overwhelming Arab forces because of the heroism of its citizens.
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