On Thursday, as I manned my post at the Activities Fair, I was interested to see students walking around with placards reading, “Ask me about a free trip to Israel.” Immediately I knew they were referencing Birthright, a 10-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Israel, run annually through Brown/RISD Hillel and offered to anyone able to demonstrate Jewish heritage. The entire Birthright program, exemplified by its name, is an attempt to engender strong connections between Americans and Israel based on the notion that the land is theirs by right.
On my end, I have no such privilege. In fact, demonstrating Palestinian heritage has radically different implications. When I arrive in Tel Aviv at the airport, I am not greeted by a welcoming committee who shuttles me by customs and chants with joy at my arrival. Rather, I am often detained for a few hours by gruff officials, interrogating my family and me as to the possible reasons why we would want to visit a country that my aunts and uncles and grandparents and their aunts and uncles and grandparents have been living in since long before the name Israel could be found on a map. The trek to my grandmother’s home in the occupied West Bank is complete with several military checkpoints — a reality that potential Birthright-ers need not fret over, as their route is strategically planned to bypass any road that meets a checkpoint.
That is a trivial example, a pinprick hole into the chasm of delight that the 10-day trip is supposed to provide. The sanitized, spoon-fed tour of the country is complete with beach outings, wine tastings and nightlife. The carefully planned itinerary hardly leaves any room for criticism, no entranceway for any skepticism that perhaps the situation might not be as glorious as it seems.
The hope is to foster continued relations between elite American Jews — Birthright is overwhelmingly attended by university students — and Israel. If generations of young Americans can continue to support Israel and legislate for military aid to the tune of $10 million a day, then the Israeli state can continue to get off scot-free with its apartheid policies, war crimes and racial segregation. After all, the young students who today are full of potential are going to be tomorrow’s congressmen, lawyers, academics and businessmen. Ensuring that the present generation has pro-Israel sentiment ingrained into its political DNA is necessary to maintain the status quo both in Israel and here in the United States, Israel’s greatest and most complicit ally.
Of course, Birthright-ers are oblivious to any of these happenings, in part because of the close relationship they form with the Israeli soldiers who lead them around the country — the same Israeli soldiers who gave 2,100 Gazans the right to a cold grave this past summer. At times, such discomfiting truth is avoided by maintaining that the trip is apolitical, simply a cultural experience. The Birthright website itself makes this eminently clear: “Taglit-Birthright Israel was born of a bold vision to make an educational trip to Israel an integral part of the life of every young Jew, in an effort to generate a profound transformation in contemporary Jewish culture and a connection between Israelis and their peers in the Diaspora.” This claim is misleading at best, insidious at worst and, crucially, simply wrong. Birthright-ers cannot claim to be apolitical when participating in trips that a religious center is fostering with a state 6,000 miles away. And more importantly, it is most certainly a political trip when their right to experience Israel comes at the cost of 66 years of ethnic cleansing and sociocide.
Also, since when is being Jewish synonymous with supporting Israel? As much as Birthright would hope to present that case, it is again an easily undercut falsehood. Some of the most powerful voices against Israel’s colonial endeavor have been Jewish, including Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler and Hannah Arendt. Groups of Jewish-Americans have started groups such as Renounce Birthright, a coalition that was founded, according to its website, “because (Jews) have no right to racism.”
So to those thinking about Birthright, perhaps it is time to think again. Perhaps it is time to awaken to the irony of sending bright, curious, insightful college students to a program that is tantamount to brainwash. Perhaps it is time to look at other options, at anti-occupation organizations such as Ta’ayush and Breaking the Silence that offer tours and more information about the country.
Remember, this free trip has costs: grave ones. Your ability to call Israel your “right” came at the expense of millions of Palestinian refugees; it came at the expense of lives and homes and villages and stories and memories. You have classmates at Brown who can never enter a land to which they have deep intrinsic ties. Others can enter only as guests, outsiders and foreigners, and we cannot forget one central question: Where is our Birthright?
Peter Makhlouf ’16 is a junior and insists that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement be supported until Israel’s unjust regime changes. He can be reached at peter_makhlouf@brown.edu.
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