This is an amazing moment, though a very small one. The Nation has run a number of letters responding to Kiera Feldman’s excellent report on Birthright, “The Romance of Birthright Israel,” and the letter the Nation runs at the start is from Allan Brownfeld of the American Council for Judaism, the anti-Zionist warhorse organization of Reform Jews that began in the 40s.
Why is this so exciting? Because if you read these letters over, and Feldman’s response, you see the Actual Building of a Coalition inside Jewish life that is taking on Zionism’s intolerance hammer and tongs.
You see an older Jew like Brownfeld, keepin the faith after decades of isolation– and being rewarded by The Nation, our greatest publication on the left. And Brownfeld is teamed up with the Young, Brilliant, Assertive, Free-Swinging (i.e., everything we want in a young writer) Kiera Feldman. Reading this makes my day, it gives me incredible hope for the transformation of Jewish life, in a week that Tablet announces a new slate of writers that includes two leading warmongers (Judy Miller, Jeffrey Goldberg).
You will see in these letters too that the New Israel Fund (a liberal Zionist group) demurs from Feldman’s piece, to say, It’s complicated. But is complicated a reason to prolong oppression? No. But when Brownfeld and Feldman team up, who will win the battle for “selling Jewishness,” as Feldman put it? The non-Zionists.
Brownfeld excerpt:
Israel claims millions of men and women who are citizens of other countries as being in “exile” from their real “homeland.” Why is it not content to be the homeland of its own citizens?
There is a silent majority of American Jews who are not represented by the national organizations that speak in their name. Kiera Feldman’s report indicates why so many idealistic young people—seeking a world of justice for all, as the Hebrew Prophets did—are alienated from the Jewish establishment. They deserve something better.
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD, American Council for Judaism publications editor.
From Ralph Seliger, a liberal Zionist:
Although I’m a longtime critic of Israeli policies, I’m disturbed by Kiera Feldman’s article. It could have been written as straight fact, without the anti-Zionist innuendoes. If Birthright Israel has become an anti-Palestinian, pro-occupation enterprise, we need to know this. But Feldman also implies that it’s wrong for American Jews, part of a historically persecuted people, to promote a connection with Israel and their fellow Jews.
Ben Murane of New Israel Fund:
Without Birthright, we could not have inspired these young Jews to grapple with Israel’s complicated reality. The full picture of Birthright, its funders and the Jewish community, like the Middle East itself, is more nuanced than presented in Feldman’s article.
Feldman response:
As the recently nixed J Street trip demonstrates, ultimately Birthright is fabric of the same cloth of its founders and funders. Some of them might be considered liberal on issues unrelated to the Middle East, yet most share hawkish Israel politics and AIPAC ties. Seliger incorrectly uses “dove” to describe Birthright funder 
S. Daniel Abraham, an AIPAC board member. (Seliger also disputes my portrayal of Yossi Beilin, yet Labor Party “stalwart” accurately describes a politician who spent the bulk of his career—from 1977 to 2002—in the party.) In May, Israel Experts CEO Joe Perlov was named AIPAC’s “Ally of the Year.” “What did she expect when she accepted the free trip?” asks Leo Laventhal. (Answer: not the racist breeding project I encountered.)
