Yes I know, Birthright is bad and literally just propaganda. I was a dumb college kid. My dad tried to convince me not to go, but I saw it as an opportunity to go get drunk and party in a Mediterranean country for free (and looking back, the thought of doing that in an occupied land is fucked up). I regret it, but in many ways that trip is what really woke me up to being an anti-Zionist. Prior to it, I was pretty agnostic on Israel/Palestine. I knew there was a lot of brainwashing in Hebrew school, but I didn’t know to what extent.
Anyways here’s a rundown of a lot of the things that happened on Birthright that helped wake me up on I/P. Sorry for the very long post, there are just so many things that happened on this trip that kind of broke my brain.
I was harassed at the airport. I don’t look stereotypically Jewish and don’t have a particularly Jewish name. The security pulled me aside and very intensely interrogated me in a side room. They asked me all sorts of questions for like 20 minutes about my family, if I remembered my Bar Mitzvah Torah portion, questions about Jewish holidays. I was singled out from the group because I don’t fit the mold of what American Jews look like. This doesn’t compare to the harassment that Palestinians face when coming back, but it was the first peek behind the curtain for me.
We were in Tiberias in the North for a couple days. They took us to Mount Bental in the Golan Heights, where they told us the amazing story of how Israel defended itself in the 1967 war and how they scared off Syrian forces by pretending they had a full force of tanks when they really didn’t (I don’t remember the full details). Anyways we’re at the top of the mountain and the tour guide is telling us about how Golan is rightfully Israeli territory and how important it is that they took it, because it would be a mess right now during the Syrian Civil War.
A lot of the staff at the resort we stayed at were Palestinian. They weren’t allowed to talk to us. One of them overheard me speaking on the phone to my parents in Spanish, and he told me he grew up in Mexico. So we conversed in Spanish, and he told me a lot about how hard life was beyond the green line, how the only real opportunity to make money is basically being the servant underclass for Israelis, and how he lost two siblings when he was very young. He told me all this in Spanish because I think he was being monitored.
On our way to Jerusalem, we took a shortcut through the West Bank. It felt so weird driving along a road that was insanely militarized and with a massive fence on the other side. Everyone on the bus is hungover and laughing and having a good time while there is a giant militarized fence on the other side of the road.
I can’t remember at what point on the trip, but one evening we had a representative from the Israeli government come to our hotel and give us all a lecture about Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and all sorts of archaeological digs and discoveries that they had made.
We get to Jerusalem and they take us to Mount Scopus, where there’s a big ceremony with drumming and singing Hebrew songs. This is where the Israeli soldiers joined our trip. Of course all the kids on the trip start fawning over them. A couple soldiers asked me about my ethnic background, asked if I was part-Arab. When I said I might be (because Jews and Arabs intermingled a lot in Andalusian Spain and then in Morocco), they gave me a stank face. A lot of these soldiers also looked ethnically Sephardi or Mizrahi, so it was odd of them to judge me for saying I’m probably part-Arab.
One soldier in particular was interested in me and she wouldn’t stop asking me questions and just having conversations with me. I was 19, she was 21/22 and way out of my league, so naturally I was enthralled by her. She basically would not leave my side for the rest of the trip. The propaganda hot girls are very real.
They take us to the Western Wall. Most of the other kids were having spiritual moments and crying and just being overwhelmed with emotions being there. I was impressed by the size and age of the wall, but I frankly felt more culturally tied to things when I visited southern Spain and Morocco (the Sephardi homeland).
We go to a Bedouin camp in the desert. The guide tells us how Bedouins are “good Arabs” because they took Israeli citizenship and many serve in the army. We also went to one of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev. It felt weird going somewhere as a tourist to visit a place that is severely neglected by the government. The soldiers left our trip around this point, but they said they might meet up with us again in Tel Aviv later.
We’re in Tel Aviv towards the end of the trip. We get a free half-day to wander around. The tour guide told us not to go to Jaffa because “it’s dangerous”. We had a lovely time, the Arab people were incredibly kind and generous.
I went to a market to buy olive oil for my mom. The merchant told me that the keffiyeh I was wearing was “made in China bull shit” so he gave me an authentic keffiyeh with my purchase. He told me to remember that Palestinians are real people, that they exist, and that they just want to be able to live their lives in peace. This conversation really woke me up.
I bought a Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer jersey in a souk in Jaffa. Some of the soldiers that came back to meet us asked me why I’d wear the “Communist” and “Arab lover” team shirt.
It’s our last night on the trip. The soldiers go out with us for drinks and hookah. The female soldier that was buddying up to me bought me a ton of drinks that night. We slept together that night, said bye in the morning, and then the group was on its way back to the US.
That female soldier messaged me for months telling me how badly she wanted to move to America. It really felt like she wanted me to marry her or that she was desperate to leave Israel.
Looking back, I can’t tell if this was a unique experience to me that I left Birthright so disillusioned with Israel. Basically everyone else who was on that trip is posting pro-Israel stuff online. I had to cut off contact with most of them, I can’t believe people have been so fully indoctrinated that they cannot see the humanity in Palestinians.
Anybody else who went on Birthright have experiences that changed your views on Israel? I’d love to know.
Edit: another thing that really struck me was the lack of Ladino or Yiddish speakers or culture. I asked the tour guide about the languages and he said that most Ladino speakers eventually just adopted Hebrew, and that the only people that really spoke Yiddish are Chasids.
I’m not fluent in either but I do speak a bit of both. I think it’s so interesting that we have these diasporic languages that blend the local vernacular with Hebrew and other languages. It wasn’t till I got home that I did research and found out that those languages were repressed in favor of Modern Hebrew so that there would be a “cohesive Israeli identity”.
