Here’s an amazing piece from the Harvard Crimson: Sandra Y.L. Korn reflects on her birthright trip to Israel and Palestine, during which the group met only with Jews. Notice the moral clarity about refugees and racism and identity. There is also some good stuff in the full piece about the uses of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem. This woman is fearless and clear-eyed; she will help lead Jews out of this swamp.
However, I soon realized that a trip around Israel aimed at fostering Jewish identity cannot avoid politics. From its name—“Birthright” implies that all Jews have the right to the land of Israel, while ignoring the Palestinian refugees who have been prevented from returning home for decades—to its itinerary—which includes ventures into the disputed Golan Heights, where participants gleefully take pictures of the ruined shells of “abandoned” Syrian homes—Birthright advances the political agenda of the Israeli and American right. The fact that it does so in an insidious way makes its messaging all the more dangerous…
At the end of our trip, our tour guide brought us to Mount Herzl cemetery, Israel’s national cemetery. At the area of the cemetery reserved for civilian victims of acts of terror, our guide told us why it was important for us as Jews to support Israel: because “Arabs are different from us,” and teach their children to hate in school. As members of my group supplied other examples of “Arabs” killing innocents—“Syria.” “Iran.” “Al-Qaeda, 9/11.”—we reflected on the necessity of defending Israel from the Palestinians, who, after all, have plenty of Arab brothers and sisters to support them, right?
Throughout the rest of our tour, we spoke to young IDF soldiers who dismissed human rights abuses against Palestinians as a forgivable consequence of a Jewish state. We spoke to older Israelis who informed us that Israel was the only place in the world safe for Jews, invoking the racism that seems to run unquestioned through Jewish Israeli public discourse—one told us, “there could be another Holocaust in America any time. Jesse Jackson, or another one of those black people…” Our trip leader supplemented these interactions with a quip about Israel’s thriving biotechnology industry: “Israel doesn’t have many natural resources, but we do have the Jewish mind.” We posed for a picture atop an old tank, shouting, “Israeli power!” And meanwhile, throughout the entire tour, we were encouraged to return to Israel, to make aliyah…
Zionists look to Birthright Israel as a way to inspire Jewish pride among largely assimilated, ethnically Jewish college students. Even liberal Zionist Peter Beinart, when he came to speak at Harvard last semester, critiqued Birthright only for failing to expose participants to a Palestinian perspective (it’s true: we didn’t speak to a single non-Jew during a full ten days in the Middle East).
But Birthright’s idea of engaging with Israel means supporting an illegal and oppressive military occupation, claiming citizenship to a state that deports African immigrants, glorifying “the Jewish mind,” and decrying all Arabs collectively for their hateful terrorist tactics. Simply introducing a Palestinian voice could not begin to correct for the fact that Birthright is firmly entrenched in right-wing rhetoric, from racism to militarism.
Thanks. Will forward Korn’s piece to an unsuspecting young cousin (“assimilated, ethnically Jewish”) who has signed up for the free trip and infusion of Jewish identity. Her mother said they were assured that the programme is strictly “apolitical”.
Great report. Kudos to Sandra Korn for publishing it, and seeing clearly what Israel has come to stand for.
I noted this from her article:
We spoke to older Israelis who informed us that Israel was the only place in the world safe for Jews…
and
At the area of the cemetery reserved for civilian victims of acts of terror, our guide told us why it was important for us as Jews to support Israel: because “Arabs are different from us,” and teach their children to hate in school. As members of my group supplied other examples of “Arabs” killing innocents—“Syria.” “Iran.” “Al-Qaeda, 9/11.”—we reflected on the necessity of defending Israel from the Palestinians, who, after all, have plenty of Arab brothers and sisters to support them, right?
Yet another example of Zionists’ ability to hold two conflicting ideas at the same time. Israel is the only place a Jew is safe, but look at all the poor Israeli victims of terrorism. Jews outside of Israel must defend Israel from the threatening hordes of surrounding Arabs.
– “The tour guide at the [Holocaust] museum asked us, “Why did God let the Holocaust happen?” One American on my trip dutifully responded, “If it weren’t for the Holocaust, there might never have been a state of Israel.” – The Crimson article
I see, the Zionist God was siding with Hitler.
Sandra Korn wrote:
“Birthright advances the political agenda of the Israeli and American right.”
You know, Ms. Korn, but for your obvious good intentions and your likely youth one could get really irritated at you calling everything you saw and disliked in Israel as being products of “the right” or of “the Rightwing,” and your apparent viewing of the Left as being the repository of all wisdom and virtue.
It wasn’t all that long ago, Ms. Korn, that “the Left” that you so obviously believe is akin to some political Snow White was just absolutely wild about a few guys with names like Lenin and Trotsky and Mao and Ho Chi Minh and even to some degree Pol Pot. And until it no longer worked due to the facts becoming undeniable, your “Left” was up to its very snout in consciously lying its ass off about the fact that such guys were monsters, and this is something nobody even accuses the Right of having done with Hitler. And after such lying no longer worked it was your Sainted “Left” that, for a long long time, working night and day, tried to excusify such monsters. (Again something that “the Right” never really tried to do with Hitler even). Plus then we have your Sainted Left working for decades to disarm and indeed just ridicule the notion that its Lenins and Trotskys and Maos and etc. should be faulted for not recognizing any civil or democratic rights. Not least, your Sainted Left said then, was because such rights were passe, unnecessary and even evil “Rightwing” inventions. (Which, as to the last, was at least essentially true.)
But of course given the *current* crop of people calling themselves “of the Right” there’s enough truth to what you say to sustain it, even if it’s only a very narrow, non-comprehensive and even (unconsciously) misleading truth.
But one thing you still can’t do by labeling everything you are seeing and not liking vis a vis Israel as “Rightwing” is absolve your Sainted Left for enabling and supporting those *same* precise things, as if your Left has at least always stood like some virginal beacon on this Israeli/Palestinian issue at least.
The fact is, Ms. Korn, that the very people who founded the State of Israel were Leftists non pareil, and indeed I believe the clear majority of Israelis today would still see themselves as far more of the Left than the Right.
And insofar as the United States is concerned, it wasn’t a *Republican* who agreed to recognize the State of Israel 15 minutes after the announcement of its declaration over the fierce objections of our foreign affairs experts. Nor was it someone from “the Left”—however you define it—who,in 1956, told Israel to get its ass back to its borders and stop trying to steal the Suez Canal and made that stick. And it was most distinctly not anyone of “the Right” who as in power when, under JFK and LBJ, Israel so easily stole its nuclear weapon secrets.
True, it was Nixon who saved Israel’s bacon in the ’73 war, but since then, Ms. Korn, and not to put too fine a point on it, the biggest paladins of sending American money to Israel have indeed been people on “the Left” in Congress like Alan Cranston and Chuck Schumer and on and on. And it was the distinctly non_Lefty Ronald Reagan who backed off from keeping American boys in Lebanon, and it was the distinctly non-Lefty George H.W. Bush who at least tried to get Israel to stop expanding its settlements. (Which resulted on so many of your Sainted Leftys in Congress running roughshod over him.)
And even more to the point if still in general, if there is *any* discrete, identifiable, group that’s formed the very center and core of the American “Left” for so long as one can remember that would of course consist of American jews. Which in other words mean those coming from the very same group from whom, for so long now, those individuals sprung who have perhaps been the *most* important in helping the U.S. create and perpetuate the very wrongs and evils you now see in Israel.
So face up to it, Ms. Korn: Your Sainted “Left” has been and still is right up to its eyeballs in producing and sustaining the Israel and the Israeli behavior you see today. Indeed, in any number of ways far *far* greater than “the Right” you so love to disparage. So maybe you ought to rethink your use of pronouns in writing further upon this subject.
“there could be another Holocaust in America any time. Jesse Jackson, or another one of those black people…”
The schizophrenia of those people is staggering. The sum total of Israel’s foreign policy is to influence American politicians and use the obtained leverage elsewhere. With the policy of uninterrupted human right violations that enrage neighbors, what is the fate of Israel without American support? Nukes will not help to open trade embargo, and Israel is not a self-sufficient economy. All of it makes sense only in the perspective “Messiah will come soon, so the only worry is what He will approve.”
Perhaps Mezuzas will help. Particularly puzzling is aliah of Messianic Jews and Reform Jews from a country where people really do not care about them one way or another to a country where they are reviled.