Haaretz does a story the mainstream U.S. press should be doing: what is the effect of Birthright, which has so far brought 160,000 American Jews to Israel, and is gonna bring another 60,000 there this summer (many of them at the behest of birthright's biggest backer, Republican warlord Sheldon Adelson). Good questions. This story isn't that great, though it does quote a beneficiary of the trip saying that she knows the hidden agenda is to make Jewish babies (meeting the other Jews you see on the bus for 10 days) and foster the Israel lobby in the U.S. A relative of mine calls it "brainwashing." Another kid I know who took the trip says the tour guides spoke of Arabs in ugly terms. Check out the giant Israel puppets in the Haaretz photo. Yippee.
Some day Jews will read about this weird stuff and shake their heads. (Marc Ellis is right, Zionism is another paroxysm in the Jewish experience, like the Sabbatai Zevi movement of the 1600s.) Haaretz quotes the great Hannah Mermelstein in this article. She started birthright unplugged, to take American kids to the West Bank. And not just Jewish kids either. Note to the neocons, Hannah has no hidden agenda. Her agenda is right there on the website: to bear witness. You go girl!
Thanks to Richard Silverstein for pointing this out to me…
