The other day we reported the dramatic Birthright bailout, when five American Jewish women left their “Birthright” trip to Israel near the conclusion on June 28 because they had not gotten honest answers to repeated questions about the occupation. As they announced their decision to their fellow travelers, in a video posted on Facebook, the young women were answered with belligerence by their Israeli tour guide, who warned them about the violence in the occupation, and a fellow Birthright participant told them, “You will get killed. You will get raped.”
One of the Birthright-bolters, Bethany Zaiman, a doctoral student in anthropology, has given an interview to David Kattenburg at Green Planet Monitor and answered some questions re the action.
The action wasn’t planned ahead of time, Zaiman implies. She joined the trip as a critic of Birthright hoping for answers. “I was very fortunate on the trip to meet a few other women who had similar reservations and questions.”
All were stunned that what Zaiman calls the largest Jewish educational program in the world had no ability to deal with the reality, let alone engage Palestinian interlocutors.
Their group left the States for Israel on June 18, and “from the very beginning,” Zaiman asked questions about the occupation. No traction. On the first day of the trip “we drove past the West Bank and the separation wall, and no one even mentioned it,” Zaiman says. “Finally another participant brought it up and the person they were sitting next to… said, Yeah that’s a Trump-sized wall. Which spoke volumes to me about the reality that we were ignoring as we drove by.”
After a few days of adventure– the Bedouin camel ride, the hike, the beach– the group of skeptics asked to have a conversation on the Sabbath about the occupation. “That was actually a disheartening experience.” The guide agreed to have an open conversation, but when the young woman who initiated it said that she was bringing in some Israeli friends to speak, “the tour guide got very angry.”
“You can’t have friends, or foreigners coming in,” he said. The participant responded, “These are Israeli Jewish friends. They want to talk to us about their experience.” Zaiman: “He said absolutely not…. ‘I can’t have anyone coming to contaminate the group’.”
Originally 18 people on the trip showed interest in that discussion. In the end only seven showed up. That’s when the five skeptics decided to leave the trip and join Breaking the Silence for a tour of occupied Hebron.
They didn’t go without making a statement to their fellows. They wanted to engage their Jewish community and explain that it was “morally irresponsible to ignore the occupation” and provide “lies or propaganda.”
“It’s a miseducation and an incredibly problematic one, to be the largest Jewish educational institution in the world, and to not be talking about the occupation.”
When they said they were leaving, the skeptics received various veiled threats about their plans, that they would get killed.
“That speaks volumes about the…. miseducation the young Jewish community is getting about Palestine through Birthright,” Zaiman says.
She elaborated that every time the skeptics had asked about visiting the West Bank, the tour guide had said No. “If I were to walk into the West Bank, I’d be shot in the head.” The skeptics countered, there are illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, so clearly there are Israelis there.
“Well that’s their choice,” the guide said. “I’d be shot in the head.” He was, Zaiman says, constantly giving the message to trip members that Palestine is “an incredibly violent and dangerous place for Israelis.”
Kattenburg asks, “Were there islands of sympathy in the group?”
“There were not,” Zaiman says.
He also asked her if she saw apartheid in Hebron. Zaiman evades that word, though she notes that she and Israelis are allowed to walk down Shuhada Street, formerly the central street of downtown Hebron, and Palestinians are not.
“I would say that the displacement and emptiness of the area we were in really spoke volumes… speaks to the level of military control… It really was a visceral example of what military control looks like in the daily reality of occupation.”
Why did she go on Birthright and should others go?
She went because she “hoped to engage and make incremental change in the conversations we’re having in the mainstream Jewish community about the occupation.” But as much as the skeptics pushed for that discussion, “Birthright was unwilling to move on their stance…they claimed they were apolitical, all the while selling us propaganda about Palestinians and Israel that was very untrue.” Including a map of Israel without the West Bank marked on it.
Zaiman’s challenge:
“If you are already signed up for a Birthright trip — I know there are tens of thousands of you out there– please, please, please push, ask questions, make Birthright uncomfortable.”
Because “it’s not acceptable in any way, to be the largest Jewish educational institution in the world and not talk about Palestine, and not engage with any Palestinian speakers.”
And if you haven’t signed up for Birthright, “I would strongly consider not going.” Because the program is not willing to address these questions.
Zaiman concludes saying she’s been involved with Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. “Now I’m going to get more involved.”
Breaking the Silence issued a statement on the dissenters.
This tour single-handedly provoked outrage in Israel and throughout the Jewish Diaspora. MK Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) said that this was no less than an attempt to harm the state of Israel and the Jewish people!
Meanwhile, right-wing organizations published the names and faces of the participants, and Birthright blocked a Haaretz reporter from their twitter account after she covered the story.
Clearly, they’re panicking….
One single tour in a sea of Occupation propaganda drove the Right-wing crazy.
This article and the one from the other day about the Birthright dissenters is just fantastic. These young women are on their way to undoing the mythology of Zionism, and hopefully in time, they will use the word apartheid to describe what they saw.
“MK Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) said that this was no less than an attempt to harm the state of Israel and the Jewish people!”
Always this conflation. They are frightening in their delusion.
I sincerely hope Ms. Zaiman makes it past opposing only the occupation and eventually arrives at:
– opposing Jewish supremacism (Zionism) and the “Jewish State” project in its entirety; and
– advocating the universal and consistent application of justice, accountability and equality.
Will those 5 girls have to eat kosher hemlock?
The strategy of avoiding all discussion of the Palestian people, the human sacrifices in the “sacred” project, comes straight from the top. Jacob Rothschild, on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour declaration (a letter to his uncle Walter Rothschild), explained why his family had bankrolled the establishment of Israel. It was specifically NOT to rescue Russian Jews, but rather for the “that sacred goal, the return of Israel to its ancestral homeland”. He never mentions the Palestinian human sacrifices made in pursuit of this “sacred goal”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FMVhjv42Gs
Every single Zionist in public life follows Rothschild’s lead on this point exactly. Coincidence or influence?
Among my Jewish friends I notice a strong interest in Buddhism, and I can see why. It’s been around as long as Judaism (longer if you consider the older yoga tradition from which it grew). It emphasizes compassion for every living creature. It does not advocate genocide, slaughtering every man, woman, and child, leaving “nothing left alive that breathes”. It does not claim an inherent ethnic superiority, with which it justifies treating other people as animals (not having a human soul). It does not teach that a non-Buddhist life is worth less than a single Buddhist fingernail. It does not advocate living in a segregated Buddhist community. It doesn’t try to restrict your marriage partner to only Buddhists. And it doesn’t require you to believe in God if you’re not comfortable with that. You can simply do the practices to calm your inner being and see where that takes you.