Q&A with The New President of the Peacebuilding Club

By Isabelle Veloz

Iftach Solomon is a senior anthropology major at SUNY Purchase who founded the Peacebuilding Club. As an underclassman, Solomon was a member of the Anthropology and Media Services Club and regularly attended performances across campus. Inspired by studying abroad in Northern Ireland, Solomon developed the club in the 2023 spring semester. The Peacebuilding Club recently held its first meeting titled “There Are No Real Countries,” which highlighted the diversity of communities and experiences taking place globally.

Solomon presenting during the Peacebuilding Club's first meeting. (Photo by Isabelle Veloz)

What would you consider the main purpose of the Peacebuilding Club to be?

The purpose of the club is to discuss and practice strategies for peace-building on a geopolitical level, peace-building within your community, and peace-building within yourself following internal dialogue. My recent ‘There are no Real Countries’ presentation was an attempt to highlight the incredible diversity of communities and experiences in the world, and that no country's name and borders tell the full story of the people living there.

What led to your claim of there being no real countries?

The origin of the idea came from the way I experienced the Israel-Palestine conflict both online and in real life. In the Israeli political spaces, it is not unusual for people to have sentiments like ‘Palestine isn't real’ or 'there was never a Palestine, it was made up’. Likewise, in contemporary online activist spaces, it's very common for people to put Israel in quotation marks and share the same sentiments that Israel is not real or is made up. Seeing this type of language raised a lot of questions for me. What makes one country more real than the other? What does a community have to gain from its country feeling real? This has sent me down a rabbit hole to explore the origins and history of every country's national identity. The conclusion I have come to is that no country is more real than the other. In fact, when we use a country as a cohesive structure to represent a community, it leaves a lot of people behind.

What are a few goals you have for the future of the Peacebuilding Club?

A short-term goal would be to get meetings going consistently every Wednesday and to cultivate a community here at Purchase. A long-term goal would be to interconnect our community with other communities and to create an international dialogue on peace. I hope to continue collaborating with Peggy Stafford, who took me on Purchase's abroad program in Northern Ireland.

Solomon addresses members of the Peace Building Club. (Photo by Isabelle Veloz)

What impact do you hope students at Purchase College will receive from the Peacebuilding Club?

I hope that people will be open-minded and not just listen to each other's stories but take them to heart and put themselves in others' shoes. I want to be a good resource for people with their own peace-building endeavors and projects, but more importantly, I want to facilitate an environment where people can collaborate with each other and lean on each other.