pre-trip thoughts and preparations

Many of the participants on my trip recognized that they were unprepared. Quite a few asked for a reading list where they could follow up on the two sanctioned political discussions we had on the trip. Our guides mentioned that there was a reading list on the Birthright website. Unfortunately, my group wanted more wide-ranging viewpoints on Israel and its policies and the Birthright-approved reading list presents a fairly narrow perspective. You can examine the list for yourself:

The Case for Israel & The Case for Peace, Alan Dershowitz
Still Life with Bombers: Israel in the Age of Terrorism, David Horovitz -- (This book does have some discussion of the living conditions of Palestinians)
Coming Together, Coming Apart, Daniel Gordis
Exodus, Leon Uris
O Jerusalem!, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
The Source, James Michener
My Life, Golda Meir
In The Name Of Sorrow And Hope, Noa Ben Artzi Pelosoff
Warrior, Ariel Sharon
Walking The Bible, Bruce Feiler
Nimrod Flip-Out, Etgar Keret
What Israel Means To Me, edited by Alan Dershowitz

As for me, I did a little preparatory reading. I read this article in Salon as well as Noam Chomsky's Fateful Triangle. I also looked at quite a few Wikipedia articles (especially 1948 Palestinian Exodus, Second Intifada, History of Zionism and Israel. I also read a book called Jerusalem Calling. I thought about these works in relation I had been taught in 8 years of Hebrew school. As I continue to read more, I may be able to put together a more eclectic reading list which I will post in the future.

I made my first journal entry on the plane ride to Israel:

I begin the trip in a defensive position. What is the spectrum of debate going to be? How far will I be allowed to go in my questioning before I'm chastised? How closely will the guides connect a Jewish identity to the state of Israel? How much will they "tug at the Jewish heartstrings?" And what will be the extent to which they mention or even discuss the Palestinians?

I notice that other people on the plane are journalling as well, so perhaps there will be a documentary history of the trip to refer back to. Ultimately what I'm wondering is: will I be the odd man out? A Hasidic man walks around the plane offering tefillin and I secretly hope that he takes the time to approach me. [Not because of any piousness, but because it satisfies me in some way to don this symbolic uniform. At times I like to assert my Jewish identity.]

An "artist's" depiction of me wearing the tefillin

I put on the tefillin, say the blessings, the shemah and the viahaftah. After I sit down, other members of my trip start asking: "What were you doing? What were those things on your head and arm?" So I explained.

good jew bad jew

As mentioned in a Salon article, a group of Birthright participants have used their trips to Israel in different ways than those intended by the organizers. Some have extended their trips to see the separation wall, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, or to volunteer with organizations like the International Solidarity Movement .

One organized trip, Birthright Unplugged, directed toward North American Jews, visits "Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps in the West Bank and spends time with internally displaced Palestinian people living inside Israel. Throughout the journey, we help participants develop an understanding of daily life under occupation and the history of the region."

Personally, I was never apprised through Birthright's advertising or orientation sessions on what I was allowed to do politically during or after the trip.

The Birthright response (in this case, Gidi Mark, marketing director of Birthright) to these incidents gives clear insight into its agenda:

"Birthright is a Zionist program and we want the students to go back to their campuses and be able to answer questions from a Zionist perspective. There's a lot of gray area, because we want to be pluralistic, but at the same time make sure that people aren't taking advantage of us."

How "pluralistic" can your program be if you want your participants to argue from a Zionist perspective? When representatives of Birthright Israel define their Zionist agenda in opposition to Palestinian cultural exchange/community service programs, they imply that Zionism cannot exist alongside Palestinian rights.

In these "Birth-Left" scenarios in question, the participant took part in the Birthright trip, then went off on their own during the trip extension (up to 3 months) that Birthright offers. Yet Mark still considers this "taking advantage." As the Salon article notes: "Potential [Birthright] candidates who are discovered to have a 'hidden agenda' are not allowed onto the trips."

If the Birthright trip is a gift, the purpose of which is to allow participants to see Israel, and the living conditions of Palestinians under the occupation are a concrete reality of Israel, and a bunch of kids motivated by their humanistic values (in some cases springing from their Jewish upbringing) want to have dialog with or give support to oppressed people, then what moral higher ground does Birthright think they have? How much of a gift is Birthright if there are strict limits and on how you can use it?

Leaders on my Birthright trip tried to emphasize how everyone on the trip should think of themselves as part of a family. However, the love of this family is conditional. If you go "astray" like some participants have, then "you're out of the family" or if Birthright doesn't like your politics you can't join in the first place. It reproduces the "Good Jew" versus "Bad Jew" dichotomy illustrated here.

"Good Jew" ----------------- "Bad Jew"

In the Salon interview, Mark states that the practice of "Birth-lefting" is "taking advantage of the Jewish money that sends people to Israel, exploiting this money to promote an agenda which is not the agenda of the people who funded Taglit,"

Mark has made his point perfectly. Birthright has not only an agenda, but a very specific one. A participant fraternizing with Palestinians on their own terms does not fit Birthright's agenda and is a misuse of "Jewish money." This is occasionally forgotten during these programs; as when someone on my trip asked: "Why can't we focus on why we're here [in Israel] instead of politics?"

In response I wrote:
You take a bunch of Jews from America, send them to Israel for free (on the the dime of two Jewish businessmen in cooperation with the Israeli government) in an effort to get them to connect with and thus support the State of Israel-- the situation can't be anything but political!

I support the acts of these "Birth-left" participants, who act on their consciences and reclaim their trips. Thinking back, I wish I would have extended my trip even a few days. I'd be interested to hear about what kinds of ways other people have used their trip extension.

A former Birthright participant said it best: "If Birthright is going to weed people out according to politics, then it's not really about Judaism anymore."

the opening

We sit in a circle staring at each other awkwardly, exhausted from the 10-plus hour plane ride. We are situated on a promenade with a beautiful view of Jerusalem, but it's hard to appreciate. After name introductions, the leaders of our Birthright trip explain to us that they just want to show us the various ways of being Jewish and that they are there to answer all our questions. They used a marketplace analogy to explain themselves. The trip is like a marketplace; you take what you want off the shelf and leave what you don't want. Ultimately it is up to us to make our own decisions. We'll see how that holds up.

I have a feeling that it will turn out like this: as soon as controversial stuff is brought up, it will be oh-so-subtlety shot down with phrases like, "well, I respect that but..." In this way, those in command end the argument without actually responding to it. Instead, they use their power, which needs no public explanation. However, they may actually take the comments and questions to heart and listen, but not let the subject get taken further, to the point where people feel empowered enough to actually get off their asses and do something. Instead, the controversial discussion will just sit on the shelf behind two other more mainstream opinions in the marketplace of ideas.

At the end of our little introduction, our guides point out the various parts of Jerusalem in the distance. One guide points to a concrete block and asks anyone if they know what it is. No one answers, so I chime in, "the separation/security/apartheid wall."
"Yes" our guide says. I knew this was the closest we'd ever be to that wall, so I took a picture.

The actual wall is that concrete stuff waaaay back in the haze of the background

a few hours at yad vashem

The pace of the this trip is relentless. Days have begun to meld together. Today we spent a few short hours on the grounds of Yad Vashem. A tour guide lead us through the Holocaust history museum rather quickly, but at least he had a few interesting stories to tell. He talked about how the Nazi regime mailed each German citizen a free radio (the equivalent of sending everyone now a free flat-screen television). This gift radio could receive only one Nazi-controlled frequency.

The front entrance to Yad Vashem

The endpoint of the Yad Vashem's Holocaust history museum opens onto a sunlit vista of the city of Jerusalem, an ambivalent image of both the collective Jewish effort to survive the Holocaust, and a city held in part by a brutal military occupation.

Nahum Goldman, former president of the World Zionist Organization, expressed this strife over Israel's use of the Holocaust:
"We will have to understand that Jewish suffering during the Holocaust no longer will serve as a protection, and we certainly must refrain from using the argument of the Holocaust to justify whatever we may do. To use the Holocaust as an excuse for the bombing of Lebanon, for instance, as Menachem Begin does, is a kind of "Hillul Hashem" [sacrilege], a banalization of the sacred tragedy of the Shoah [Holocaust], which must not be misused to justify politically doubtful and morally indefensible policies."

While I disagree with Goldman about the sacred nature of the Holocaust, I agree with the sentiment that this past act of genocide does not give the Israeli state license to oppress others. Yad Vashem is a required site on all Birthright trips; and while I think it's an important visit, it is also important to recognize how memorials and museums may construct histories to support the status quo.

A cement pillar at Yad Vashem: "I will put my breath into you and You shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil" (Ezekiel 37:24)

After a whirlwind tour through the history museum , we circled up on the lawn for a discussion about our feelings. I thought: how can I talk to anyone respectfully about the fact that the reasons the Holocaust happened all make sense to me? And since the Holocaust was an aberration only in its scale, events like it can happen again. Large-scale genocide continues to happen in the post-World War II world.

Later in our circle discussion, one guy said the whole experience made him want to go out and kill some Germans (how ironic). I made the case that the Holocaust could not be claimed as an exclusive event of Jewish suffering. The Nazis targeted for death homosexuals, Roma, trade unionists, communists, and disabled people among others. However, it seemed to fall on deaf ears. A bit later in our discussion, someone asked, "why didn't the Jews resist?'
"Actually, they did." I said.

However, the resistance did not have broad support in the Jewish community, and was heavily suppressed by the Nazis. Jewish and non-Jewish resistance to the Holocaust occurred on a number of levels: including underground presses, sabotage, and armed revolt. For more information, I suggest reading Resisting the Holocaust which contains essays on a number of different kinds of resistance to the Holocaust including a piece on the demonstrations of German gentile wives of Jewish men.

The book also does an excellent job of complicating the Jewish role in the event. On all too many occasions, Jews have been depicted as passive victims. In fact, the word "holocaust" itself comes from a Greek term that refers to a sacrificial burnt offering. Jews were not just victims; some were collaborators (in a number of cases community leaders hoping to buy more time for their village), some insurgents, and others were not as easy to classify.

I expect to come to back to discussing Holocaust Tourism in more detail later.

the "debate"

What a conversation we had today. Uzi, an executive from our trip organizer came to talk to us as a guest lecturer on "politics." He prefaced his talk by stating that he was "neutral" in his views of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. He jumped right into discussing the current security dilemma of Israel and a story began to emerge:

Uzi (our guest speaker) -- Those [Arab] countries don't have existential questions. Israel is a unique bastion of "purity of arms."
[by "existential", I'm not sure whether he meant that Israel's existence is still uncertain (a paranoid and hyperbolic claim), or that Israelis engage in profound thought over their lives and their ethical choices whereas Arabs do not (a racist claim)].

But Uzi didn't even need to say very much since the guides and participants on the trip were helping bolster his narrative thread. I sat scribbling furiously in my notebook, hoping that their words would be incriminating enough:

Rivkah (Israeli tour guide) -- They [Arabs] don't value life like Israelis do.
Uzi -- I don't understand why Palestinians see the return of political prisoners as a victory, instead of Israeli goodwill.
Richard (trip participant) -- When are the Israelis going to say 'enough is enough' trading terrorists (ie. Palestinian political prisoners who are accused of being terrorists) for Israeli soldiers?
Leah (Israeli guide) -- There's a third party that's involved in this conflict; the media. The media is antagonistic to Israel, and holds the Israeli military to a higher standard.
[I find it hard to believe that anyone could say this after watching only a few hours of American cable news. I have no qualms about saying that I have never heard anything positive said about a Palestinian group on an American news show, and I have never heard anything deeply critical about Israel.]

Uzi -- Absolutely right about the media. It's extremely frustrating when the media takes politicians to task. We just need to trust our leaders to make decisions about Israel's security policy.

I could not stand it! All of these assertions were going unchallenged as facts. The authority figures were monopolizing the conversation and telling 21-25 year-olds how to think. I needed to stop this farce in progress, so I raised my hand to ask what I thought was a particularly soft question: "Since you're referring to the existential crises of Israel, is there anything that the Israeli military has done which you are deeply ashamed of? I'd appreciate it if the soldiers want to speak on this as well."

Uzi spun right into the old "every country's military does bad things" hustle, while jumping straight into a laundry list of the various atrocities that Arab terrorists have committed. He lists these atrocities for about ten minutes. Then, perhaps realizing that he is completely evading my question, finally gets into talking about a specific case of Israeli wrongdoing, Jenin. However, his entire discussion of the events at this refugee camp focused on the fact that this "massacre" was exaggerated by the Palestinians, Arab media, and international community. [He was probably right. What happened in Jenin was not large-scale mass murder, however there is agreement among human rights groups that there were civilian deaths, dozens of destroyed houses, and instances of war crimes. He spoke of Jenin, but could not bear to talk about things like the Deir Yassin massacre, or the current occupation's day to day violations of human rights.

Uzi motioned toward the soldiers to speak, but we were faced with a wall of silence. Our medic, a former IDF soldier, spoke vaguely of soldiers who are bored and at times "act like children," but nothing more was said.

Not even allowing this meager accusation to go unchallenged, Uzi assured our group that every offense by IDF soldiers gets investigated and that the guilty are punished justly. He was invoking a judicial Disneyland. At this point, time ran out and we had to travel to our next stop on the trip.

Luckily, he looked so absurd that people realized he was totally biased. Our group leader apologized and even offered an extra discussion session about politics. Sadly, it's exactly how I assumed Birthright would present things: through only one fairly consistent framework; that it's Israel versus the "terrorists."

i've never felt so much like a kid

Everything on the trip was finely choreographed; from the bathroom times to the eating times. If you go on a Birthright trip you should expect this. Even our "free time" was constrained. We were allowed to do what we wanted within a 3 block radius and had to be back at the meeting point within 2 hours. The lack of sleep can be very disorienting. I probably got an average of 4 hours per night. I started to feel powerless to make decisions without the guides around me; I didn't know exactly where I was, what day it was, or how I could possibly travel in Israel without the Birthright bus.

Birthright organizers attempt to be the gatekeepers of Israeli identity. Throughout the trip I felt disconnected from the Israeli population. I knew there were Israelis out there who agreed with my views (Anarchists Against the Wall for example), but I didn't meet any of these people on my way.

Unfortunately one of the only spontaneous interactions I had with an Israeli was as follows:
I had to get directions from a stupid old man who told me a joke on the way:
"Why are the signs in Jerusalem written in Arabic?" He said.
"Why?" I said.
"So the terrorists shouldn't get lost!"
"Oh good one. All along, I thought it had to do with the fact that a large percentage of Jerusalem residents speak Arabic." He didn't say anything.

Despite the barely concealed racist assumptions of the man in this conversation, there are many admirable enclaves of the Israeli population that agitate against the oppression of the Palestinians. In fact, there are Israelis that would debate our guides and guest speakers on the exact same points that I did.

The Shuk (outdoor market) in Jerusalem

Unfortunately, tourists can get trapped into homogenizing a country's population, and it's in Birthright's interest to lure you right into this trap. If hypothetically everyone in Israel is a Jewish nationalist (read: Zionist), then that coincides perfectly with Birthright's ideology. Then Birthright can claim they are only representing the population of Israel. It's all so perfectly uncomplicated, unlike reality. Every country has its debates (and of course its limits around what is considered acceptable, sane, or mainstream debate). However, when a chorus of Israeli citizens you meet on your trip all sing the same tune, its hard to imagine where the debate happens.

In part it occurs in the Jerusalem Post (Israel's largest distribution English-language newspaper). In this "Right of Reply" article an Israeli anarchist (Uri Gordon) defends the anarchist community from the vilification of a previous article. Now imagine for a second a major American newspaper, say the Boston Globe allowing an anarchist the right of reply. Actually, I can't imagine it.

During the course of the trip we were able to see one Jewish organization (Yad Sarah) which rents out medical equipment to those who need it in their homes. We went on an extended tour of their facilities, with only half an hour left to actually volunteer.

There are other kinds of the trips, that may allow you to meet with different segments of the Israeli population. In another blog, heeb'n'vegan summarizes the events of his trip:

We went to a Tel Aviv peace rally marking the 40-year anniversary of the Six Day War and the Occupation and got to talk to different protesters as well as representatives from groups that were tabling...We met with a representative from Meretz...We were hosted by an Arab-Israeli family at their home as they talked about their perspectives on the conflict. We drove along the Israel-West Bank border with Lydia Aisenberg of Givat Haviva and saw the security fence close up, looked out to the West Bank on one side and to the Mediterrean Sea (a mere 15 miles away from the border) on the other, and heard Aisenberg's stories about her interviews with Palestinians who wait for hours to get past checkpoints and who are separated from their families by the controversial fence. We attended a Parents Circle Family Forum event featuring a Palestinian woman and an Israeli man who had lost their siblings in the conflict and who shared their desires for peace.

Be careful in your trip selection. There's likely to be another post on other cool things Israelis are doing, but for now I'll move on to other aspects of the trip.