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...
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Again, my son went on a birthright trip, in which conflicts with Arabs and Palestinians were relatively candidly discussed.
It was wonderful for him, a great charitable example.
"Some" is the key word.
On the guided tour that you took to Hebron Phil, were the arguments of the settlers presented?
Granted, there is no excuse for brutality.
What are the arguments of the settlers, Richard? Pleases clarify for us.
The arguments of the settlers vary. There are 450,000 of them.
Presuming isn't sufficient to understand clearly.
The point was on the assertion that the birthright tours are solely brainwash trips, and that the tour that Phil took was fair-minded.
Maybe it was. Maybe the tour included a visit and candid discussion with a settlement, and maybe Phil went out of his way to learn their arguments, so as to distinguish the elements that are reasonable, from the elements that are suppressive and cruel.
re colonizers, ie, thieves, occupiers, what are reasonable elements?
"birthright"? birth right to what? to occupy? to invade?
To "5-D-Shlomos"
While it is true the Palestinian Arabs are indeed what you described ("invaders, colonizers, thieves", etc), I don't think it is useful for dialog to throw terms like that at us. While it is true that the Arabs swept out of the desert and invaded Eretz Israel, forcing their language and religion on the country with the sword, (just like they did in Spain, North Africa, the Balkans, India, etc, etc) we should avoid namecalling.
its not a big story unless its iranians or another ethnic american community doing it..if its the chosen frozen people then its all cool and groovy and maybe even patriotic.
which nation do you owe allegiance to?
bar_kochba132 | June 01, 2008 at 11:58 AM
walking nyc as a tourist last summer, i was stopped by a smelly and unpleasant looking fellow offering to sell me lies: big lies, small lies, repeatable lies, ethnic lies, and silly lies. he was obviously delusional in a new york state of mind. i motioned for the police man near by. the officer came over and apologized."sorry, sir, he is not one of nyc's finest. he is the worm in the apple. we have many like him, too many. it's the education, you know. their minds are gone by the time they are 3."
I have known a few squatters. Most of them abhorrent, proud of serving in the IDF, proud of zionist conquest, born in places like Long Island and completely fucking ignorant of their the human geography of conquered home (like the Iberians of the 16th century in the new world).
From what I've heard, the arguments of the squatter conquistadores go something like this:
-God gave it to us
-It's in the Scriptures
-That? That's not Palestine, that's Judea
-Jewish people deserve this land
-Jews have no other country
-The Holocaust makes it necessary
-Holocaust II could happen any minute
-The Arabs attacked us
-Arabs are sub-human
-The goyim don't understand
Richard uses a few of these, including the last. That's the dead give away that it's his subconscious that's behind the wheel. Pure goyiphobia.
MM, you forgot 2 arguments:
"We are the chosen people."
"It is our birthright."
At the end of the Haaretz article the hyperlink for "Birthright participant turns pro-Palestinian activist" is non-functional.
I discuss Shabtai Tzvi in the context of "Creating the Ethnicity and National Consciousness of Judonia."
See link to members.aol.com
.
The question is whether Phil has talked to them, MM, your speculations aside.
Anyone who honestly wants to know the settler line (not Richard, who is just engaging in his old passive aggression routine) just needs to listen to that Mearsheimer interview on Israel National Radio that Phil linked to a few days ago. Those two settlers run through all the standard arguments. (Don't forget to listen to the second half, after Mearsheimer has left and they're talking among themselves.)
I'd say MM has nailed it pretty accurately.
"What's the deal with birthright?"
is the content of the post.
I like that it exists.
I asked my son again today if he felt that the trip that he went on was propaganda, and he stated that there was one gathering at the end that he felt was propaganda, but the rest was not.
We talked about what he didn't get to see, as ALL programed tours present bias, birthright and alternatives. He didn't see the West Bank, East Jerusalem, etc, but he knows its real.
The point is to learn more than what is programmed, whether dissenting or conventional.
To question one's OWN assumptions, not just others'.
birthright: ??????:
The Promised Land
By Robert Thompson
Jun 1, 2008, at axis of logic
"Whatever limitations rabid preachers may wish to place upon it, the biblical promise was that the Holy Land should belong to all Abraham's heirs as theirs forever. On looking around the world, we can see that they could never, in their millions, all settle permanently on such a small patch of land. This leads us to ask what it means for the Holy Land to belong to us all.
If a choice has to be made as to who should be entitled to live there full-time, we can first exclude all those who follow Christianity (as I do) or Islam outside the Holy Land, and the Ashkenazim, those descendants of Caucasian tribes who adopted Judaism about a thousand years ago. They later spread throughout the old Russian Empire, and then other parts of Eastern Europe, before moving on to Western Europe and the Americas. None of these groups has any biological descendance from Abraham. He was, nevertheless, our common ancestor in faith.
For centuries, this never troubled those living outside its boundaries. When it was still an open land, before becoming the object of exclusive greed, each of us could always go there to seek spiritual renewal by visiting the holy places, whether we be Jew, Christian or Muslim. On the other hand, the indigenous people living there, who had mostly become Christian or Muslim, had (and still have) a solid "biblical" claim to the land through having a strong dose of Abraham's blood in their veins, quite apart from the human claim arising from their long, peaceful, and unchallenged occupation of their lands and homes.
This can be likened to the attraction, whether merely touristic or more profound, like every place of pilgrimage, of many sites around our world. To these we make no claim to possession, but we are very happy to enjoy the possibility of free access.
Without ever having personally had the privilege of visiting the Holy Land, I have visited each modern state bordering on it. The reasons for my having been excluded were closely connected with its steadily increasing occupation (since the late nineteenth century, but especially after the end of the Second World War) by invaders who claimed to be fleeing from persecution in their countries of origin. It is clear that they could have gone to other countries where they could have integrated much more easily. But some such countries, including the USA, were fearful of such a massive wave of new immigrants. It is certain that the very close collaboration between the growing Zionist movement, almost entirely composed of Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe, and the Nazis, resulted in many Zionists (who had, in the majority, abandoned the practice of Judaism) arriving at the decision to move to the Holy Land, since it was obvious that the peaceful inhabitants were unlikely to be able to withstand such an assault.
Like most thieves, the Zionists are greedy, and their ruthless attempts to remove the indigenous people continue to this day, as they apply their system of apartheid coupled with ethnic cleansing to the lands conquered in 1948 and to those occupied since 1967. With the unfaltering backing of successive highly corrupt administrations in the USA, they have no intention of giving back the stolen property."
If 10% of Birthright Israel beneficiaries became activists on behalf of Israel, the number would be 16,000.
The Israel Lobby is a well-designed machine. It really does not need a large number of people in paid command and control positions to function effectively.
'I like that it exists.'
If you approve of Birthright for young diaspora Jews, what would you say to Birthright for young diaspora Palestinians as well?
Obviously, some of their birthright lies on land your co-religionists now occupy, which means those Israelis would need, perhaps a few times each year, to open the houses that once were owned by Palestinians, allow access to land once farmed or planted by Palestinians, etc.
What do you say Richard?
Glenn: Sounds good to me. But seriously, I remember reading somewhere recently that Palestinians ARE working to create a Birthright equivalent. I wish I could remember more about it.
I wanted to say that what was important to me about this Haaretz article is that the reporter raised the question: how much impact will this truly have on participants? The answer is: not much. Yes, there will be some for whom it will be a life-changing experience. But that number will be small, very small.
The problem is that American Jewish leaders are always looking for the silver bullet: how can we jumpstart Jewish identity with the least amt. of effort & maximum amt. of effect. Birthright is the flavor du jour for doing that. No question about it–it looks flashy, it sounds good. Kids come back raving about it. But it's no panacea.
The only way to draw young American Jews closer to Israel and Jewish identity is to make Israel into a place that is attractive and desirable to them. There is simply no way to do this for the vast majority of Jewish young people who are turned off by a nation constantly at war with its neighbors and out of step with the world.
Here's that Birthright Palestine link:
link to toursinenglish.com
there are two new sites: birthright brooklyn and birthright odessa. jewish kids in israel can go to their homelands.
"he [Richard's son] didn't see the West Bank, East Jerusalem, etc, but he knows its real."
That's the thing – we all know the occupation is real, have all seen and heard the stories of abuse by soldiers at checkpoints, seen the images of house demolitions, trashed infrastructure, settlement colonies looking like Southern Californian gated communites.
But to actually see it and experience it for yourself is a most powerful experience. No wonder they didn't take the kids there!