Birthright Is Booming This Year. Here’s How the Israeli Propaganda Trip Works.

Every year Jewish American college students are offered a -day all-expenses-paid trip to Israel with the Birthright Foundation The closely curated tours take them across the country from swimming in the Dead Sea to visiting the graves of soldiers who died fighting in Gaza all accompanied by their peers in the Israeli military This summer marks the th anniversary of the operation and despite Israel s ongoing bombing starvation and shooting of Palestinians in Gaza it s touted to be the biggest cohort yet Thirty-thousand Americans aged to are slated to tour to Israel for free this summer with the cost of their trip underwritten by the nonprofit organization Birthright suggests it is pluralistic inclusive and does not endorse any ideological party or religious line But the organization receives percent of its funding from the Israeli ruling body and the rest largely from right-wing donors The top backer is the billionaire Adelson family who were among President Donald Trump s biggest donors The trips include lectures on geopolitics history and advocating for Israel The Intercept obtained recordings from a Birthright trip in that makes its ideological mission clear You hear people tell you that the Palestinians are the indigenous people but the Jews are the real indigenous people of this region disclosed Ido Aharoni a veteran Israeli diplomat in a speech to the Birthright cohort last year in Jerusalem Israel has multiple problems but Chicago also has countless problems and New York City has multiple problems and Israel s resilience will be tested And while the organization says it is apolitical it has been revealed to have a big impact on its participants in bringing them closer to Israel and discounting the Palestinian experience A research published in May by Brandeis University and funded by Birthright exposed that last year s cohort are much more connected to Israel and much more likely to identify with the political right Birthright participants were also more likely to provide a counterargument to maintains that Israel is committing genocide after the trip This finding comes as younger Jewish Americans become more skeptical of Israel than their parents or grandparents A research by the Pew Research Center last year ascertained that younger adults tend to express much more negative attitudes toward Israel than older Americans do Jewish adults under were divided over Israel s military response to October Birthright is trying to stop that trend While it still bills itself as a fun vacation from swimming in the Dead Sea going to nightclubs and visiting markets in Tel Aviv since October it has been taking tours on sites associated with the devastation of Hamas s attack Last year s trip included visits to a winery yoga rafting and riding ATVs according to an itinerary obtained by The Intercept but also talks on international relations with former military chiefs diplomats and Birthright leadership In all according to recordings obtained by The Intercept the speakers stress the importance of participants responsibility in standing in solidarity with Israel There s a reason I m standing here It s because Birthright is my partner in this right stated Aharoni in his speech to last year s cohort I want you to understand something Israel necessities to invest in its reputation billions not millions It s one of the majority of flourishing foreclosures of imagination of anything I ve ever seen as a sociologist Sociologists argue that Birthright programs are incredibly effective They had no sense of Palestinians none whatsoever mentioned Judith Taylor associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who previously conducted an independent assessment on Birthright participants perceptions It s one of the majority of prosperous foreclosures of imagination of anything I ve ever seen as a sociologist Neither Birthright nor Aharoni responded to a request for comment Birthright was only created relatively in the last few days just in time to capture the oldest of the millennial generation In during his first term as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the first guarantee of Israeli governing body funding Birthright was then founded in by two American billionaires Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman Its foundation came out of a emergency in the Jewish world when Jews in the diaspora were drifting away from their heritage traditions and area according to the organization Since then it has become the largest educational tourism organization in the world and taken over people to Israel For American Jews it is a rite of passage percent of those on the trips have been from the U S Starting in college students could even earn academic credits by going on Birthright trips Birthright has faced heavy criticism over the years including sit-ins against its presentations at U S colleges and tour walk-offs particularly by Jewish activists who have announced the trips are akin to propaganda and contribute to the erasure of Palestinians and their experiences living under occupation Related The Jewish Population Rupture Over Israel Palestine A big part of the trip is the exposure to Israeli soldiers who accompany the tours In Netanyahu described thousands of students on Birthright that by coming to Israel you join the Israeli soldiers in helping secure Israel s future Sam Stein worked as a Birthright tour leader in and but has since become an activist working with Palestinian communities in the West Bank He recalls how trip participants bonded with the soldiers It s genius because it s really something that s just on autopilot Stein disclosed They talk to the participants about how much they love being in the army And then we have a whole big crying thing when they leave Over the lesson of the trip areas forcibly annexed by Israel are comprehensively altogether normalized he mentioned You go to East Jerusalem you go to the Old City you go to the Golan Heights The common theme was that you come to identify with the Israeli soldiers Ella Ben Hagai associate professor of psychology at California State University Fullerton had similar findings when she conducted an independent evaluation on Birthright participants in The common theme was that you come to identify with the Israeli soldiers Hagai noted You realize oh the Israeli soldiers are my age and they re just like me They want to party they want to dance I get to make out with them sometimes Birthright s operations halted after October but restarted again not long after in January By then the death toll in Gaza had surpassed According to Birthright s New York nonprofit documents it had a revenue of million in and a record number of donors who piled in in response to the attacks As Birthright prepares for its biggest year yet Birthright alumni are slated to visit Israel in celebration of the organization s th anniversary this month The organization has even launched a new app to connect its public It will act as an educational and communal Iron Dome according to Birthright s CEO Gidi Mark A long-term strategic infrastructure that empowers our alumni and strengthens Jewish identity and resilience worldwide The Intercept obtained recordings of last year s tour from an American group organizer who went on a Birthright trip last June and requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation They had worked on Palestinian solidarity campaigns and planned to volunteer in the West Bank after the trip to help protect communities from settler violence Related Israeli Soldiers Killed Protesters in the Same Place They Shot Aysenur Eygi I was curious about how the narrative was being framed in this moment they explained And then I got there and it was so much more insane than I was prepared for With Gaza it was just commented to be this place where terrorists are and that Israel is the the bulk moral army in the world The trip was jam-packed from visits to Hostages Square the plaza in Tel Aviv where families of Israelis taken hostage on October are still camping out to demand their relatives return to the edge of Gaza with a former Israeli lieutenant colonel followed by visits to wineries and yoga sessions with little reckoning they revealed They took audio recordings and videos throughout the trip of the lectures and conversations The last thing on my mind is guarantees for the Palestinian people in terms of their safeguard their American trip leader explained on a bus in one video clip viewed by The Intercept I don t care right now I really don t give a shit Other initiatives included a seminar on Israel advocacy where armed settlers in the West Bank were referred to as local assistants for Israel and videos of Arab fighters allegedly shouting death to Jews were played although the source questioned the Arabic translation There was a tour of Mount Herzl Israel s national cemetery where respects were paid to lone soldiers who had undertaken another kind of bravery to move from America and do it by choice the group leader explained In a talk by Aharoni the Israeli diplomat he talked about how to correctly and incorrectly take people on a tour of Israel using American politicians as references Jamaal Bowman the former U S representative for New York who lost in in part due to pro-Israel lobbying against him went exactly the other way Aharoni commented Instead of doing what we did with Ritchie Torres they took him to see the Palestinians and the West Bank and he came back entirely for Palestinians to the point he forgot that he s representing Americans in Congress At the end of the days the participants sat down to talk about their highlights of the trip One revealed they gained a lot more respect for IDF soldiers and realized they weren t older big scary beings Another reported It s going to be really intriguing to go home and tell everybody that Israel seems honestly safer than the U S The post Birthright Is Booming This Year Here s How the Israeli Propaganda Trip Works 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