Atidna International, the campus affiliate organization of Roots, is proudly the first and only student-led organization operating on college campuses committed to bringing Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, and Arab students together for joint and civil dialogue and peace-building initiatives. Atidna International began in April of 2022 through a series of grassroots conversations between Jewish, Arab, Israeli, and Palestinian students at the University of Texas at Austin. Since then, Atidna has grown to universities across the United States where hundreds of students proudly count themselves as members of the Atidna family. Atidna hopes that by creating joint spaces for interaction between both communities on college campuses, one of the most polarized and tense areas to engage with this topic in America, that such unifying work can carry over to help break down the divisions and animosity gripping our two peoples in the Holy Land.
Atidna’s work at every campus chapter revolves around two main goals:
1)The first goal is to promote that Jews and Arabs are cousins, not enemies. We at Atidna International wish to solidify this bond between Arabs and Jews through a variety of educational/peace event-based avenues. Every Atidna International chapter is encouraged to work with supportive professors/academics at respective campuses or external organizations to host educational and peace events around this goal. Every semester, each Atidna chapter will host one large peace event on college campus surrounding the theme of our two peoples being one family and not enemies.
2)Atidna’s second goal is to provide both Arabs/Palestinians and Jews/Israelis a joint and civil environment to have a dialogue about anything and everything pertaining to Israel and Palestine. We hope to not only elevate both respective group’s voices together, but we further desire to produce progressive and civil dialogue to overcome the vitriol/hatred that has plagued our two peoples for over 75 years. In these conversations, we specifically desire dialogue that will allow both sides to understand the identity of “the other.” We at Atidna International firmly believe that both peoples’ identities and aspirations need not be perceived as standing in opposition one to the other, even while that is the way that they are commonly understood and practiced. We advocate for a re-examination of our respective identities in order to reframe them such that they do not come at the expense of one another but can actually be lived and practiced as complementary; furthermore, we believe that joint conversations are integral to seeing just how closely related both groups really are to the so-called “other,” thus transforming these so-called “others” into brothers. Concerning what topics such dialogue sessions can encompass, the specific topics of conversation must simply relate to contemporary, historical, political or identity-related issues/aspects pertinent to Israel-Palestine
Atidna’s efforts to forge dialogue and build peace on college campuses have been covered in a variety of media outlets including ABC News, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Forward, NPR, Axios, and others. Atidna thus hopes to spread its mission to every campus across the nation to enshrine amongst the youth of our two communities once and for all that we can perceive ourselves and practice our identities as one greater family.