Birthright Unplugged

Queers Resisting Zionism: On Authority and Accountability Beyond Homonationalism

Oct 10 2012, by Heike Schotten, Birthright Unplugged's Director of Communications and Haneen Maikey, Director of Al Qaws

[This article was written as a response to a recently published article by Maya Mikdashi and Jasbir Puar on the intersections and impasses between US centered pinkwashing and pinkwatching activism.  Click here to read Mikdashi and Puar's rejoinder to this response. Clear here to read the original article by Mikdashi and Puar]

Jasbir Puar and Maya Mikdashi’s recent “Pinkwatching And Pinkwashing: Interpenetration and its Discontents” challenges those of us who work for Palestinian liberation to re-think our practices of solidarity and queer resistance.  The authors suggest that pinkwatching, as a form of political activism, fails to be sufficiently radical. That is, pinkwatching fails to get at the roots of pinkwashing, which lie in settler colonialism, Islamophobia, and homonationalism. Pinkwatching therefore reproduces the discourses and dynamics that enable pinkwashing, thereby perpetuating it. 

We fully appreciate the importance of self-critique, especially for activist movements.  However, we think Puar and Mikdashi lean rather too heavily on the conceptual framework of homonationalism in their analysis of pinkwatching, making it do more work than it can bear. This overreliance on homonationalism obscures specific, politically relevant features of pinkwatching activism that are particular to Palestine and Palestine solidarity work.  Moreover, we believe the authors’ self-exemptions from activist struggle pushes their criticisms dangerously close to a rehearsal of academic critique at the expense of contributing to movement building. Finally, the lack of a single example of the kind of work they critique renders their argument impossible to actually assess, leaving us grasping at straws – and, as we shall argue, straw caricatures of ourselves and our movement.

We write this response as activists, writers, and thinkers who are committed to justice for Palestinians.  Haneen is a queer Palestinian activist living in Jerusalem, while Heike is an American queer academic and activist located in Boston.  Both of us participate in and organize anti-pinkwashing activism. Haneen’s work in this area is much more extensive (as co-founder of alQaws and Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions [PQBDS], as well as a member of Pinkwatching Israel's coordinating team).  Heike has focused more generally on various BDS campaigns, but she has also incorporated Palestine and pinkwatching activism into her academic life as both teacher and researcher. Together, we have carefully considered Puar and Mikdashi’s claims. We have also engaged friends and comrades (activists and academics alike) in discussions about this piece. Our response, then, reflects our views as well as the views of activists and academics from our respective communities. We offer this piece, in part, as a response to Puar and Mikdashi. We hope, too, that it will serve as an invitation to further engagement, collaboration, and collective struggle for the liberation of Palestine. 


Homonationalism and Pinkwashing:  On Palestine and Solidarity
Puar and Mikdashi’s virtually exclusive reliance on homonationalism to evaluate pinkwatching leads to a number of difficulties. First, this framework obscures the specific manifestations of pinkwashing in the Palestinian context, rendering Palestine somehow beside the point. Second, the focus on homonationalism allows for easy—but misplaced—critiques of Palestinian “authenticity” and pinkwatcher solidarity.  Finally, the authors’ failure to cite a single example of the pinkwatching activism they critique further compounds the problems engendered by the narrow confines of this theoretical framework. The lack of concrete evidence raises not simply logical questions for their argument, but ethical and political questions as well. 

Pinkwashing is more than a branding campaign that queer Americans can congratulate themselves for opposing.  The conventional depiction of pinkwashing as an attempt to divert attention away from the occupation is simplistic and one-dimensional. In Palestine, pinkwashing is part of the ongoing Nakba. Both Zionism and pinkwashing depend on a notion of the prior destruction and continued negation of Palestine and Palestinian belonging. This is the case whether one interprets Zionism as homophobic, gay-friendly, or—in its popular narrative form—as having followed a historical trajectory from an originary homophobia toward ever-increasing tolerance. Zionism must be understood as a historically specific, racialized process through which different discourses of sexuality emerge that bolster, rather than undermine, Zionist ideology.  

In this context, pinkwashing is a tactic of Zionism and an influential discourse of sexuality that has emerged within it.  As PQBDS/alQaws consistently point out, the disavowal and erasure of (queer) Palestinian bodies and subjectivities constitute pinkwashing. This invisibility of Palestinian bodies and images is matched only by a hypervisibility when they do appear. Palestinians are seen only as “backward” or “threatening,” while queer Palestinians only become legible as either “gay” or “victims of culture.”  Invisibility and hypervisibility are results of the ongoing erasure of Palestinian belonging.

 
Pinkwatching, then, is neither a narrow rejoinder to pinkwashing nor a promotion of global queer solidarity. Pinkwatching reframes queerness as a politics by revealing the sexual politics inherent to contemporary Zionist ideology. Pinkwatching’s attention to the biopolitics of Zionism disrupts the latter’s regime of surveillance. Pink-watchers return the gaze; they disrupt the hierarchical positioning of subject and object. Initially, pinkwatching activism was based on the dismantling of Palestinian erasure, the reclamation of international queer spaces, and the promotion of new queer Palestinian bodies, images and voices.  Today, pinkwatching continues to uncover and make visible the racial, ethnic, and sexual violence that informs Zionist ideology.  

For these reasons, the authors’ focus on “authenticity” (sorry–at least one of us does not know how to articulate a non-authentic queer Palestinian voice) is limited by a critique of homonationalism that ignores the specificities of Palestine. This oversight may be read as slightly patronizing, suggesting that Palestinian queers are either too naïve or lacking in enough critical insight to discern between activist commitments that are appropriate and those that tokenize them. More problematic still are the ways in which an emphasis on authenticity ultimately overlooks queer Palestinians’ strategic uses of recognition and visibility.  Beyond simply “making our voices heard” or claiming "authenticity,” these tactics are intended as a direct and immediate challenge to the presumptions of pinkwashing’s Zionist logic.  Finally, such claims overlook the fact that Palestinian queers daily work against, and re-define, fixed notions of queerness as well as narratives of the closet, coming out, and rights typically associated with a politics of visibility and recognition. For example, in the face of repeated questioning by members of the first LGBTQ delegation to Palestine (in January 2012), local activists continually challenged the delegation by refusing to engage in discussion about “the situation of LGBTs in the West Bank.”  Instead, the work was repeatedly framed as solidarity with Palestine (the outcome of this work is evident in point two of the delegation’s solidarity statement). Similarly, in New York, SiegeBusters asked PQBDS to take part in their action protesting the LGBT Center’s ban of their event during Israeli Apartheid Week. PQBDS felt this was a clear example where such work is not the role or the responsibility of queer Palestinians. Participating in such actions, we felt, might have resulted in tokenizing us, despite the organizers' good intentions.

The authors’ homonationalist emphasis also misconstrues pinkwatching activist work.  The authors contend that pinkwatching activists myopically focus on Israel and neglect the larger, enabling frames of imperialism, racism, and Islamophobia.  But why does activist focus on Israeli pinkwashing entail a neglect of US pinkwashing, Islamophobia, neoliberalism, or the difficulties of rights discourse?  This is faulty logic. It is simply untrue that focusing on one struggle precludes concern for, or work towards, other struggles, much less does it entail a limited analysis of local or global politics.  Rhetorically, such an assertion is reminiscent of the oft-repeated Zionist objection “Why Israel?” or “Why don’t you protest X country’s human rights violations?” It is almost as if the authors view pinkwatching work as problematically “singling out” Israel.  Empirically, however, this claim is simply untrue.  Just as BDS activists resist the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, protest the United States’ hidden wars in Pakistan, Bahrain, Yemen, and Somalia (among others), and actively resist the impending US-Israeli war on Iran, so too are pinkwatchers vigilant regarding the United States and Europe’s deployment of their own Islamophobic versions of pinkwashing to justify war, imperialism, and discriminatory immigration policies. Indeed, the only example of supposedly neglected pinkwatching activism the authors cite in their article concerns a float in the 2011 San Francisco Pride Parade. Sponsored by Zionist front-group Iran180, the display featured a blow-up doll of Ahmadinejad being beaten and sodomized with a missile by a white dungeon master, ostensibly in protest of Iranian oppression of LGBT people and to manufacture American LGBT support for war on Iran.  This grotesque – and strangely homophobic – instance of pinkwashing was, however, systematically de-bunked by BDS and pinkwatching activists.  In other words, the single piece of evidence cited in Puar and Mikdashi’s article only confirms the opposite of what their argument contends.  

Finally, the authors claim that pinkwatchers compromise on divisive questions “in the name of political expediency and coalition building.”  Again, the authors offer no examples of such compromise.  By rebuking imaginary activists for failing to broach subjects like the legitimacy of violent resistance, such criticisms simply appear untethered to the difficult and complex processes that face any developing movement, this one in particular. Two years ago, we collectively began to raise awareness about Palestine, colonialism, and Israeli apartheid through the example of pinkwashing and the politics of sexuality. To the audiences we addressed, Palestine was the divisive question. It continues to be the most challenging aspect of this movement.  In other words, divisive issues are far from avoided in pinkwatching work. The divisive issue is Palestine. Indeed, as Haneen argued in the “Queer Palestinians Talk Politics” speaking tour, LGBTQ communities should be divided over Palestine. Her claim entreated audiences to link organizing on justice in Palestine with the organizing of people of color, anti-war activists, HIV activists, and more.  In pinkwatching work, we bring Palestine and the relentless attempts to erase it to the foreground.  It is the very naming of this erasure, the calling out of Zionism, that “divides” people. Certainly, violent resistance, refugees, and “final status” issues are also divisive, but they are parasitic on the primary issue of Zionism itself, which pinkwatching, by its very character, is committed to uncovering. To pinkwatch is precisely to talk about Palestine, and to force the divisive issue of Zionism into the conversation.

A very concrete example of such inter-movement negotiation of Zionism is the writing of the LGBTQ Palestine delegation’s solidarity statement (with which Puar was involved). For Palestinian participants, a lot of compromising happened in this process, one of which was the group’s repeated assertions (throughout the text) that they support Israeli progressive activists. We understand activists’ fear of being labeled "anti-Semitic.” But for Palestinians, these comments put Israel and Israelis on an equal footing with Palestinians. They expressed a “coalition” interest that distorted the meaning of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. Nevertheless, the announcement of “acknowledging and resisting US complicity and settler colonialism” was actually one of the crucial parts of the statement that was included and, moreover, added a new layer to the growing debate. It is worth noting that here, the “divisive issue” of Zionism was implicitly on the table, and what is evident in the statement is both an egalitarianizing of Israelis and Palestinians and a simultaneous critical acknowledgment of (US) settler colonialism.  Such compromise and negotiation is part and parcel of this work.  Such interactions allow us to develop a sharper discourse, expose its limitations, and construct a future vision together that is compatible with long-term movement building.   

We are well aware of the problematic hegemony of particular gay Western notions and strategies.  It is true that a significant challenge of pinkwatching activism has been to draw a line between queer involvement in the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the tendency to make pinkwatching about queers and sexuality in Palestine/Israel. But we find this to be a problem much more in Israel than in the US or Europe.  There are still many gay Israeli activists who insist that “Israel does have gay rights, and we as gay activists worked hard to make it happen,” doing what we call “pinkwashing in reverse” (see, for example, this interview with Hagai El-Ad and the writings of Aeyal Gross).  But careful examination of most of the pinkwatching materials, statements, and actions produced in the last three years reveals a movement committed to channeling all of our capacity and vision to expose Israel’s colonial project, occupation, and apartheid.  

Pinkwatching is not about gay rights; it is not about gay Israelis (progressive or not); it is not about the status of homosexuals in Palestine; it is not about self-congratulatory gay Americans or Europeans. Indeed, Queer BDS and Pinkwatching are part of a Palestinian-led campaign. Pinkwatching originated by promoting the Palestinian liberation struggle as relevant to worldwide queer movements by highlighting our responsibility to engage in and fight other struggles. From the beginning, BDS was a key practice that shaped pinkwatching activism. Rather than viewing pinkwatching as homonationalist, then, we understand it as an act of solidarity, akin to the BDS work of people of conscience all over the world. Pinkwatching activists  defer to the leadership of (queer) Palestinians in their work not as an exercise in homonationalism, but rather from a commitment to working in solidarity with those most affected by violence and domination, a central principle of anti-oppression organizing. This work is undertaken not “in the name of” Palestine, a Palestinian nation, or an exceptional Palestinian sexual subject (much less from a superficial celebration of identity politics). It does not commit one to any particular state or state formation whatsoever (just as BDS work does not commit one to a one state solution). It is instead a form of holding ourselves accountable to the needs and requests of those most affected by violence and oppression.  We see such acts of solidarity as, if anything, a deflection of US homonationalist practices.


Positionality and (Self-)Critique 

The authors’ acknowledgements of their positionality was perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this article. Despite the fact that both authors are themselves part of pinkwatching efforts (through writing and by participating in the first queer delegation to Palestine), they nevertheless offer their article as a series of “observations.” Such a choice locates the authors outside the movement, a convenient position that relieves them of complicity or responsibility for the problems they point to, while explicitly dissociating themselves from the questions and complexities of activist struggle.  This disassociation is confirmed by their reference to “divergences between academic and activist concerns and strategies.”  What precisely are these divergences? As “observers” of pinkwatching, are the authors claiming a (solely?) academic perspective? Is academia (or are academics) outside of or beyond activism? Do the authors (or academics more generally) have an analytical framework that activists lack?  We are concerned that the authors are implicitly presenting activist work as less thoughtful or intellectually sophisticated than academic work, and thus needing to “learn from” the lessons being taught in this piece.

 
The intended audience of this article is also unclear, as pinkwatchers have waged similar critiques. Haneen has written publicly about these issues. The compiled statements, writings, and activism of PQBDS and pinkwatchingisrael.com (including the latter’s new Pinkwashing Kit) offer vast resources for thinking through issues of pinkwashing and pinkwatching in ways that clearly resist homonationalism.  Both the recent LGBTQ and the Indigenous and Women of Color Feminists delegations to Palestine have offered anti-homonationalist opposition to pinkwashing. Globally, queer Palestinian groups succeeded in re-locating the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Youth and Student Organization's (IGLYO) General Assembly that was planned to take place in Tel Aviv outside of Israel.  US-based queer theorist Judith Butler refused to accept the Civil Courage Award from Berlin’s Pride Committee in 2010 because of complicity with racist and homonationalist formations. Various Arab and Muslim queer organizations from around the world resisted and effectively shut down a panel on LGBTQI Liberation in the Middle East by Zionist front-group Stand With Us at the 2010 US Social Forum.  Meanwhile, within the United States, smaller pinkwatching actions have questioned homonationalist assumptions and fought pinkwashing in an anti-colonialist frame, whether through clever guerrilla art in the Bay Area or the ongoing efforts of Boston activists to get Israeli films out of the city’s LGBT Film Festival. 

This proliferation of existing critical theory and activism raises the bar for arguments like Puar and Mikdashi’s, challenging all of us not simply to re-hash familiar critical terrain, but to begin to speak the language of complicity, contradiction, and, crucially, strategy. In other words, what now? Indeed, the article left us wondering, “how can this criticism help to advance our work?”  Part of the reason we believe we can find no answer to this question is because the critique of “they” and “them” unfolds in a moralizing manner that would otherwise have been impossible if the authors had included themselves within the movement.  Our fellow activists felt blamed, humiliated, or singled out by this piece. Some were unsure if they were the target of critique, given that the authors did not cite any examples. The authors may have been legitimately cautious about naming specific people or organizations in an already small movement.  However, the lack of concrete evidence for their claims leaves us wondering just where the finger is pointing. And it is clear that finger-pointing is going on.  Although the authors are careful to specify that their argument about the homonationalist structure of pinkwatching is not a normative one, by the end of the article, pinkwatchers’ alleged complicity with homonationalism emerges as an egregious intellectual, political, and strategic error. This error needs to be called out, but apparently lacks any solution or productive mode of address (or at least none the authors care to offer).  Such finger-pointing is, we believe, very different from invitation or constructive critique.  

Unfortunately, this dynamic is nothing new in solidarity work.  Many of us may recall working under the powerful shadow of Joseph Massad’s work on the Gay International.  For many, Massad’s work effectively produced a straw image of the “Gay Arab” who is, by definition, complicit with cultural imperialism and an agent of international gay organizations. Massad's discourse reinforced an academic/activist hierarchy that obscures the ways in which academics' privileged position can force activists to spend their time measuring and assessing themselves according to the academic’s discursive rubric, putting themselves on trial before one another and the academy. However, Massad’s critique did not by any means promote a new discourse, more aware communities or better queer activism in Arab societies. This came from within activist fields of experience, through activists’ efforts to analyze their own needs and explore their internal and external working dynamics.

We want to suggest that the “homonationalism” and “normalization of settler colonialism” of Puar and Mikdashi’s article have the potential to operate in much the same way. To praise the piece for its properly critical perspective (i.e., for its willingness to provoke disagreement and divisiveness) is a familiar academic positioning that we ought to be cautious about reproducing. As well, the claim that homonationalism is not only a contemporary critical model but, moreover, the state of things today might be understood as a form of bolstering one’s own academic brand.  Puar and Mikdashi’s vague generalizations, academic authority, and general lack of evidence have the potential to produce a new set of straw caricatures—not the Gay Imperialist and Gay Arab this time, but the Homonationalist Pinkwatcher and Token Palestinian Queer.  Moreover, these new characters seem to be offered not in the spirit of furthering a movement, but rather from a position of academic observation, analysis, and judgment. It is almost as if the task has become to differentiate the “proper” pinkwatcher from the “improper,” homonationalist pinkwatcher (much less the “proper” Palestinian queer from the patsy for homonationalist gay American activists). 

We appreciate Puar and Mikdashi’s vigilance in holding us accountable to our principles in our activist work. However, we are troubled by the ways in which they fold pinkwatching into a homonationalist framework. While they offer a worthy critique of pinkwatching activism, because of the implicit valorization of academic theorizing and analysis and the gaping lack of specific examples of homonationalist pinkwatching, we end up wondering not only to whom, but about whom, this article was written.  We worry that a set of straw caricatures is being erected, and entreat the authors to specify in greater detail to what (or whom) they are referring.  Such vague, critical musings seem less productive to us than an engaged critique that implicates its authors even as it prods a movement to look more closely at its own workings and motivations.  The relationship between academia and activism is potentially a positive and interactive one, wherein both sides can inspire and sustain one another organically, with the ultimate goal of pushing our movement(s) forward together. We hope that this exchange can initiate precisely such a constructive and self-reflective process regarding pinkwashing, pinkwatching, and homonationalism within our movement.

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Birthright Unplugged Communiqué – Winter/Spring 2009-2010

Dear All,

We are writing to update you about our most recent Birthright Unplugged trip, fill you in on some of the our alums’ work, and let you know what’s on the horizon. 

Our January Unplugged trip
We recently returned to Palestine with a group of mostly college students in the wake of the one-year anniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza.  The living conditions in Gaza remain devastating for all who are living there, including a largely contaminated drinking water supply and Israel’s continued siege that closes Gaza to trade and travel.  The siege has prevented Gazans from importing building materials, making it impossible to rebuild the 3500 homes that were destroyed and the 56,000 homes damaged during Operation Cast Lead.  Gazans have resourcefully turned to building houses out of mud in yet another demonstration of their unwillingness to be defeated.  

In January, 1,400 protesters from all over the world arrived in Cairo to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, an attempt to break the siege and stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza.  Hundreds also traveled from the West Bank and ‘48/Israel to the Erez Crossing to participate as well.  One of the results of this organizing effort was the Cairo Declaration, a statement produced by marchers in conversation with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which condemns Israel’s illegal actions against Palestinians and affirms its commitment to the right of return for Palestinian refugees.  The Cairo Declaration is also a call to the international community to focus our work on BDS. 

To learn more about the water crisis in Gaza and to pitch in:
http://www.mecaforpeace.org/project/maia-project

To learn more about the housing crisis in Gaza:
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88032
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10974.shtml

To learn more about the Cairo Declaration:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10988.shtml

Our trip was filled with poignant and educative experiences. As is typical for us by now, during the trip we spent time in Occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank (in Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps), and inside Israel/’48 in historically Palestinian cities, Tel Aviv, villages destroyed in 1948, and the Naqab (or Negev).

Some especially stirring conversations on the trip were when we were in touch with Gaza during two video conference calls.  The first of these was with Berlanty Azzam of Bethlehem University.  Berlanty is a student from Gaza who was in her final semester of university when she was arrested by the Israeli Army and deported to Gaza.  We spoke with Berlanty around Christmas time.  Her mother had been granted a permit by Israel to go to Bethlehem for the holiday and was using the trip in order to collect Berlanty’s belongings from her room.  We asked the university to facilitate the video conference call so that we could speak with Berlanty from the campus where she had studied. Our conference call to Gaza was the first live conversation with Gazans held from the University, and it drew many faculty members who wanted to see Berlanty, talk with her, and send her good wishes.  Our conversation was emotional—filled with information, laughter, and tears—and a reminder of the possibility of building relationships despite the profound barriers Israel imposes.

Our second conversation with Gazans was a video meeting with Dr. Haider Eid, a Palestinian professor living in Gaza, and a group of Gazan students from the Palestinian Students for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI).  Some of the students were from the Islamic University, which was bombed by Israel in January.  Their message was loud and clear:  they spoke of the horrors of the 2009-2010 attacks, their inability to build and live normal lives, and their feelings of isolation, referring  to all the people of Gaza as “orphans.”  Their demands are also crystalline:  they reiterated that non-violent, punitive measures like BDS should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law.  They reminded our group of the demands of the 2005 BDS call, which have been many times re-printed in our humble Communiqué.  These demands are that Israel must comply with international law by:

Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
Respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Several of our recent alums have also had their reflections on the trip and the situation in Palestine/Israel published and we encourage you to check out their words.

Lauren Costello has published work in community and college campus newspapers:
http://www.wickedlocal.com/west-roxbury/news/lifestyle/columnists/x2077695697/Breaking-the-silence-The-Israeli-and-Palestine-conflict

http://bcgavel.com/2010/02/27/column-immersion-trip-calls-bc-students-to-action/

David Willner communicated his experiences in Palestine/Israel in another campus paper: 
http://www.bcheights.com/2.5479/a-student-perspective-on-an-international-crisis-1.1174560

And Mark Tilsen received coverage in Indian Country Today with the headline, “Oglala Lakota traveler sees ‘deep parallels’ in Palestine”:
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/content/83032447.html

January 2010 was also the 10th anniversary of Birthright Israel and NPR felt their story would not be complete without some voices from Birthright Unplugged.  NPR interviewed Dunya, one of the travelers on the trip, and Noam, our one and only Israeli alumnus from the Carter Peace Prize-funded Brandeis trip in January 2008, who happened to have joined us on the trip that day. Noam’s unequivocal verbiage helps to closes NPR’s piece.  The piece aired on Sunday’s Morning Edition:    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122416343

On the horizon
Stay tuned for details of our Unplugged trip.  We will again travel extensively and learn from a wide swath of Palestinians and also share in several strategy, tactics, and organizing workshops to facilitate participants’ work in justice movements and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns in their home communities. Our upcoming dates will be released in about a week!

Important Campaign Developments
BDS is catching on like wildfire, both around this country and around the world.  The number of cities building BDS movements is growing tremendously, just as the campuses observing Israeli Apartheid Week continues to increase.  There are campus divestment campaigns, state government divestment initiatives, and consumer boycotts happening in multiple places across the globe. 

Proof that BDS is working has been made abundantly evident by the Israeli Reut Institute’s criticism of what they called the “Delegitimation Network”—an “unholy alliance” with the Palestinian “Resistance Network”—which consists of the broad, decentralized, informal movement of peace and justice, human rights, and BDS activists all over the world. Citing protests against Israeli officials visiting universities, Israeli Apartheid Week, faith-based and trade union-based activism, and “lawfare”—the use of universal jurisdiction to hold Israeli war criminals accountable for their actions—the Institute made clear that the effects of BDS are palpable and a credible threat to Israel’s legitimacy:  http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11080.shtml

Across the country, our alums are involved in this campaign work, from the Minnesota Break the Bonds campaign to Hampshire College’s historic divestment from Israel that has provided inspiration and insight for the Michigan and Berkeley initiatives currently in the works, to the Israeli Apartheid Week programming in several cities, and more.  This is a very exciting time in Palestine/Israel justice work and there are initiatives springing up everywhere.  The momentum is really building.  If you are not already involved, we encourage you to find ways to get on the train!

Opportunities to Learn and Work With Activists and Organizers from Across the U.S.

There are three gatherings/conferences being held back to back in Detroit this June that we encourage you to participate in and spread the word about.  Each will draw activists from across the country and have supporting campaign work for justice in Palestine/Israel.  We encourage you to check them out and if you attend, watch for  Birthright Unplugged as we’ll have offerings at all three. 

Allied Media Conference, June 18-20
http://www.alliedmediaconference.org/node/4284

Jews Confront Apartheid, June 19-June 22
http://jewsconfrontapartheid.org

United States Social Forum, June 22-June 26
http://www.ussf2010.org

Ways to stay in touch and support Birthright Unplugged’s work
Thanks, as always, for keeping up with our work!  We hope you will consider joining our Facebook group.  We post campaign updates and calls there and we welcome you to do the same. Check us out there too!

Also, Birthright Unplugged is looking for a volunteer or two to help us with the website.  We are looking for a commitment of a only couple of hours per month.  If this person is you (or you know someone who could do it), please get in touch with us:  info@birthrightunplugged.org

Finally, we want to thank you for your continuous and generous support.  Thanks also to those who have pledged their annual contributions – we are extremely grateful for these contributions, which allow us to keep the focus of our work on justice rather than fundraising.  To donate to Birthright Unplugged, please visit us at:  http://www.birthrightunplugged.org/donate

With all our best,

Dunya & Heike

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Should Israel Birthright Include Implication For Occupied Territories?

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, National Public Radio
January 10, 2010

There was a massive celebration this week for the 10-year anniversary of Birthright Israel. The nonprofit program, which pays for young Jews to come to Israel to connect with their Jewish roots, is a runaway success. But not everyone thinks that's a good thing. Birthright Unplugged is a program that takes Jewish-American university students to the occupied territories to show them what they say is the reality Birthright Israel ignores in its quest to bring Jews from around the world to Israel. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports.

TRANSCRIPT
LIANE HANSEN, host:
In Israel this past week, the non-profit program Birthright Israel marked its 10th anniversary. The program pays for young Jews to go to Israel to explore their roots. More than 250,000 Jews from all over the world have been on Birthright tours. A new study shows that alumni of the program are much more likely to feel a continuing connection to the Jewish state. But the program has its critics.

NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports.

LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO: The auditorium is packed with young men and women chanting - Israel, Israel, in front of a massive stage. The MC leaps around exhorting the crowd to cheer louder.
(Soundbite of cheering)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The participants are from countries that span the globe: Brazil, Russia and the United Kingdom. But by far, the largest group are the Americans where 75 percent of young Jews outside of Israel live.
(Soundbite of cheering and music)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" blasts out over the speakers, thousands of young people leap to their feet.
The past 10 years, Birthright has offered free 10-day trips here for Jews between the ages of 18 and 26. The goal is to have them reconnect with their Jewish identity, and a new study from Brandeis University shows that it has the desired effect. Participants are 57 percent more likely to marry a Jew and 23 percent more likely to feel a strong connection to Israel.
Speaking at the celebration, Israel's president Shimon Peres lauded the program.

President SHIMON PERES (Israel): All of you are participating in one of the most brilliant (unintelligible) and the most successful experience in the history of the Jewish people.
(Soundbite of cheering)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Gidi Mark is the CEO of Birthright Israel, called Taglit in Hebrew.

Mr. GIDI MARK (CEO, Birthright Israel): It all started by out of the concern that more and more young Jews decided to marry non-Jews. And, as you know, unfortunately we are as many as the Chinese. We want to keep our family strong and thats what we are doing.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: As they tour sites like Masada, the Holocaust Memorial - Yad Vashem, the Western Wall and the Golan Heights, participants are accompanied by young Israeli soldiers.

Unidentified Man: It's like normal to go to the army and they have friends in the army. And they have friends in Gaza Strip that may get killed every day. And they have friends that diedinbus bombs and...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: At the end of the trip, the soldiers and the visitors say good-bye with testimonials from each side.
Nineteen-year-old Ellen Faulchy(ph) is from Northern Virginia.

Ms. ELLEN FAULCHY: Any time I watch the news now it's not going to be just another four people killed in a suicide attack. Like, you guys are here. Like you're doing the unbelievable to protect all of us. And I think I can say for all of us, thank you so much.
(Soundbite of applause)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The Israeli who led the tour, Ronan Malek(ph), ends the session with this message to the group.

Mr. RONAN MALEK (Tour Guide, Birthright Israel): Who are the soldiers of Israel? These are the soldiers. You think that those soldiers can kill somebody innocent?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Birthright Israel says it is a non-political organization, but critics say it espouses a particular point of view. To give the Palestinian side of the Mideast narrative,one group has started an alternative tour. It's called Birthright Unplugged.

Ms. DUNYA ALWAN (Director, Birthright Unplugged): Today is a really good day to see how settlements are functioning.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Dunya Alwan is an American of Jewish and Iraqi heritage. Today, she's shepherding a group of students from Boston College to the City of Hebron andelsewhere in the occupied West Bank.

Ms. ALWAN: The idea is to give them a breath of understanding of Palestinian voices through all of that travel. We speak with people from all sectors: government, social, social service. they have family home stays in a Palestinian refugee camp. Thats what theyve done last night.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Nicole Fisher(ph) is a Jewish student who decided to come on this tour rather than the one offered by Birthright Israel.

Ms. NICOLE FISHER (Boston College): Being able to see what goes on in these camps and being able to talk to people firsthand, you learn so much more. You know whats going on, as opposed to just seeing the Israeli side of it. It's good. It's good balance.
(Soundbite of traffic)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: In Hebron, the group walks through the center of the Old City. Twenty-two-year-old Maram Shuster(ph) is an Israeli who studies in the U.S. and is an alumni of Birthright Unplugged. She says Birthright Israel does more harm than good.

Ms. MARAM : These people made the trip all the way here. They're not being informed with any kind of truth, any kind of criticism about this country. And they're going to go back and be ambassadors and fall in love with a land that they know what about? They no nothing. So, for me, I have no other word than propaganda.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Birthright Unplugged is tiny in comparison to its rival organization. Only hundreds of young people have participated in this program, compared to the tens of thousands who go on Birthright Israel trips every year.
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Jerusalem.

To listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122416343

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Many Questions, No Easy Answers. Sociology class West Bank trip underscores debate on Israel, Palestinian conflict
Melissa Beecher, The Boston College Chronical
January 2010

West Bank youth see Israel with "Birthright Unplugged"

Erika Solomon
August 21, 2009

Fourteen-year-old Jum'a Ismail lives 50 km (30 miles) from the Mediterranean but had never seen the sea. The Palestinian youth had never set eyes on an Israeli civilian or an airport. Juma'a's horizons expanded this summer, when he left Jalazoun refugee camp in the occupied West Bank with "Birthright Replugged" on a trip taking Palestinian refugee children to Israel to visit the villages of their ancestors. "It's an attempt to get out, while they still can," said the program's creator, Dunya Alwan. Once Palestinian children turn 15, they must carry Israeli-issued West Bank identity cards and are no longer able to travel through Israeli checkpoints without special permits. "Birthright Replugged" is partially funded by the Carter Center's Peace Program, founded by the former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. It takes groups of 20 Palestinian children into Israel twice yearly. Alwan, an Iraqi-American from a Jewish-Muslim family, calls her work a counterweight to "Birthright," the program offering Jewish youth from around the world an all-expenses-paid, two-week trip to Israel to foster ties to the Jewish state.

EYE-OPENER
Movement from the West Bank to Israel was easier before the second Palestinian uprising that began in 2000. Suicide bombings on Israeli buses and cafes triggered a security clampdown that is only now loosening, under international pressure. Palestinians must still carry ID cards to move around the West Bank. Getting into Arab East Jerusalem, also captured by Israeli forces in the 1967 war, or into Israel itself, is nearly impossible for most. That puts the Mediterranean coast and Israel's international Ben-Gurion airport, out of range. Alwan says her little trips may be the first and last opportunity for the youngsters. On their return to the West Bank, they cannot stop talking about the sea, the airport, how Israeli Jews and Arabs coexist, and how they have no roadblocks to worry about. "They don't ever seem to think about if there is going to be a checkpoint ahead or not," says 14-year-old Haneen al-Nakhla. "We're always worrying and calculating those kinds of things." They are puzzled to see Israelis who are neither soldiers carrying weapons, or settlers, who also tend to be armed.

REALITIES
Some 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. Israel is home to 7 million, of whom 20 percent are Arab Israelis. "We had no idea how many Jewish people there would be. There are more than Arabs," said Haneen. "The Arabs and Jews talk to each other, like it's normal. I thought it was really strange. We don't ever talk to Jewish people at home." Alwan's tour does not alter sentiments; the students all support a Palestinian "right of return" to homes and land lost in the 1948 war over Israel's creation -- a demand Israel says would destroy the Jewish character of the state. For Alwan, simply showing the teenagers the former homeland turns an idealized dream into realities they can discuss. Lydda, or Lod in Hebrew, was where their grandparents once lived. It's now part of the sprawling airport outside Tel Aviv. "These kids see the challenges and complexities. They see that what they have rights to now has an airport on it," Alwan said. Sobering it may be, but the airport is a big hit. Most of the teenagers have never flown or even been close to a plane, and they take countless photographs. "I had to take pictures to show my family. They've never seen an airliner either," said Jum'a, who at home hardly notices the watchtowers, razor-wire fences and high concrete walls of the barrier Israel has erected in the West Bank. The normality of Israel's heartland shocked them. "I really felt how much I live under occupation," says Haneen. She has decided she "would really like to become an airline stewardess," and Jum'a says: "I definitely want to be a pilot." Back home, the Jalazoun kids seem conflicted. They start a sentence arguing for peace and freedom for Palestinians and Israelis, then end up saying there's no hope of it. But a talk with participants of past trips, who are a bit older now, suggests that ideals of coexistence tend to develop. Ahmawd Ghazawy, 19, from Jenin refugee camp, was on the first Birthright Replugged trip in 2007. "Before 1948 there were Jews and Arabs and they lived in peace," he says. "It could happen again."

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West Bank youth see Israel with "Birthright Unplugged"

Erika Solomon
August 21, 2009

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Birthright Unplugged Communiqué – Summer/Fall 2009

Dear All,

We are writing to fill you in on Birthright Unplugged’s recent summer season, to let you know what’s on the horizon for us in the upcoming year, and to put in a plug to make us part of your end of the year donations.

This spring, we expanded our Re-Plugged program significantly.  Based on our past work and in conversation with our partners, we developed a curriculum for a pilot project of Birthright Re-Plugged called “Rehearsing Return.” This summer, we launched the new program with 20 children from Jalazone Camp, just north of Ramallah.  As usual, we started our journey by traveling to Jerusalem and then headed for the sea.  Most of the children had never visited any of the places we traveled to and were thrilled to do so and, as we have come to expect, braved jellyfish in order to spend the maximum time possible in the surf. 

Prior to our departure, the children had researched the villages and towns their families fled in 1948 by interviewing their families and searching the archives of palestineremembered.com. Upon their return from the Re-Plugged trip, the children then made a study of the past and present uses of these lands in order to prepare themselves to imagine the future of these lands. The children’s families are originally from four villages with different histories of expulsion and land confiscation. They found that between 1948 and 1952, three of these Palestinian villages –  ‘Abbasiyya, ‘Innaba and Bayt Nabala - were depopulated and destroyed, and in their place Israel had built seven exclusively Jewish towns, among them Kefar Truman, named after U.S. president Truman.  The fourth village, Al Lydd, is where the Jewish Armycommitted its biggest massacre in Palestine, in which 426 men, women, and children were murdered.  Soon after the massacre, most of the residents of al-Lydd fled, although some were able to return.  Of the 19,000 people who used to call al-Lydd home, however, only 1,052 were allowed to stay. Al Lydd’s name was subsequently Hebrewized and is now a city called Lod with a predominantly Jewish population. The village’s lands have been parceled out to the Jewish-only towns of Zeitan, Yagel Ahi'Eser, and Ginnaton (and the Ben Gurion International Airport).

When we returned to the camp, the children reviewed their photos and reflected on what they had seen.  They began a process of developing ideas, drawings, and proposals for their imaginings and hopes for the future based on these historical developments,given what they had seen of the land’s post-1948 development and who is now living there.  While we plan to continue to work with Palestinian young people and facilitate their travel to Jerusalem, the sea, and their ancestral villages, we hope to develop this component of the program, which supports them to explore and express their aspirations to end their refugee status in accordance with international law.

We are pleased to report that this year, for the first time, all of our Re-Plugged staff, chaperones, guides, drivers, hosts, and trainers were Arab and predominantly Palestinian.  We worked with people from ’48/Israel, Jerusalem, and the West Bank.  Given increasing Israeli travel restrictions on people of Palestinian descent, constraints that divide Palestinians from one another, we were especially proud to have been able to thwart Israeli segregation efforts in this way.

As we often do, we put out calls to the media in an effort to have these children’s stories be told widely.  Despite past efforts to garner media attention, Re-Plugged has not attracted interest from English-language media, which have only sought to cover our Unplugged program.  Re-Plugged has previously been covered by Arabic media, and this summer for the first time two English-language outlets expressed interest in Re-Plugged.  There were many challenges presented by this interest and ultimately, in order to prepare the children for conversations with journalists, we held some media trainings for the children.  We worked with a former grade school teacher and staff journalist at the Palestinian Broadcast Service to develop and conduct a training session with the kids, in order to help them consider the kinds of messages they might like to share with the media.  Following the training, the children were so excited about working with press that when the journalist asked for two or three children to be chosen to speak with her, so many raised their hands that the interview became a collective conversation.  The piece that resulted was based largely on the children’s conversation with the journalist and was circulated widely around the world. 

In English, the piece appeared in news outlets in Singapore, India, Switzerland, Lebanon (The Daily Star) and the U.S. (ABC News, MSNBC, and the New York Times).  The piece was also translated into Portuguese, Indonesian, Arabic, and Spanish, and was featured by Reuters Arabia.  Link to the story in English and in Arabic:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108955.html
http://ara.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idARACAE57K0BU20090821?sp=true

As far as we know, “Rehearsing Return” is the first program of its kind to be conducted with residents of a Palestinian refugee camp and we look forward to its next phases. 

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This summer’s Unplugged program also went well. 

We traveled with our largest group ever and yet still maintained a scale and atmosphere that encouraged conversation amongst ourselves and with our hosts.  Our group included students, an organizer, a college professor, a judge, and a lawyer with an illustrious resumé that included defending the rights of indigenous North Americans against the U.S. federal government in the Wounded Knee case.  We also traveled with many members of a family comprised of both Native North American and Jewish people.  All of our participants were committed to working on social justice issues.

As usual, our trip focused on Palestinian lives and first person accounts from a wide swath of Palestinian communities and perspectives.  We spent time in occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and increased time in ’48/Israel.  Gaza was represented by Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian human rights lawyer, activist, and organizer with the Free Gaza Movement.  The Free Gaza Movement is one of several efforts to break the siege on Gaza.  Specifically, they have attempted to sail from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip in order to deliver food, water, and medicine, traversing international waters essentially closed by Israel.  Since August 2008, there have been several successful voyages, and they have also brought international witnesses with them to see firsthand the devastating effects of Israeli violence against the Palestinian people. In 2008, their ship The Dignity was brutally rammed by the Israeli navy, inflicting considerable damage to the vessel and later causing it to sink. In 2009, another ship of theirs, The Spirit of Humanity, was confiscated by the Israeli navy, and efforts are currently being made to recover it.

We started our trip in East Jerusalem.  Our last several groups have seen firsthand the aggressive evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.  This summer the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood continued to be besieged by settlers and bulldozers. These activities elicited international condemnation, including by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, who called them "provocative," strong words from an administration that has otherwise set a low bar for Israel.  On our last several trips our groups have met with Um Kamel, a refugee from ’48 resettled by the United Nations in the 50’s to Sheikh Jarrah.  Her home was bulldozed, and we have met with her in recent years in the tent she lives in with her family near the rubble of her home.  This summer, however, when our group met with her, her tent had been bulldozed, and the area where it once stood was fenced off.  In other words, Um Kamel and her family were again made refugees, and the Israeli settlers next door had picked through the furniture of the displaced to use in their burgeoning neighborhood.

Our travelers also learned about Israel’s tightening travel restrictions insofar as they themselves were confronted with the government’s latest experiment: “West Bank Only” visas.  Issued this summer, these visas - given at the border crossing from Jordan to the West Bank, a passage controlled by Israel - restrict the travel of foreign nationals to only the West Bank.  While this measure seems have been temporary, it has been threatened for years, and one can only suspect that it was an experiment in curtailed movement that, unless the trajectory shifts, will resurface in one manifestation or another. This new development signals the greater reach of Israeli segregation efforts to divide people based on their identities.  This has been the case for Gazan, West Bank, Jerusalemite Palestinians, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, and Palestinians in diaspora. This latest initiative, to limit the movement of foreign nationals, will further divide people from one another and puts both Birthright Unplugged and Re-plugged in jeopardy.

In addition to spending time in occupied East Jerusalem, we also spent time in communities in the occupied West Bank affected by the Wall, and rural and urban areas. We also spent time inside ’48, meeting with Palestinian citizens of Israel, Bedouins in the Naqab/Negev, people in unrecognized villages, and internally displaced people, learning about the lack of rights they have relative to Jewish citizens of Israel. Finally, we stayed in a refugee camp and learned about the critical importance of respecting and promoting the rights of all refugees, including Palestinian refugees.

In contrast with Re-Plugged, our Unplugged program has a history of press interest by Western outlets, and this summer was no exception.  Most prominently, our work was featured in an article in Ha'aretz English, an Israeli daily paper: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1110632.html.
In addition, the Palestinian Broadcast Corporation did an interview focusing on the Unplugged trip and BDS, broadcast in Arabic.

Our Unplugged trip continues to include information necessary to understand and support the Palestinian Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.  This summer, we held our second three-day BDS institute, which was comprised of workshops designed to develop resources and strategies to support the international BDS Campaign.  Our participants were from relatively diverse communities; all came prepared to develop skills to apply to campaign work and all left poised to work on BDS in their own communities. 

Right now, we are preparing for our winter Unplugged trip, when we will be working with Boston College once again on a travel program connected with a course this Fall entitled Social Justice in Israel/Palestine.  

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In 2009, AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr addressed a capacity crowd and spoke about the BDS movement.  He said, “This is more than the simple spewing of hatred. This is a conscious campaign to shift policy, to transform the way Israel is treated by its friends to a state that deserves not our support, but our contempt; not our protection, but pressure to change its essential nature.” 

Staff members of Birthright Unplugged have just returned from the recent Student Divestment/BDS Conference organized by the Students for Justice in Palestine at Hampshire College (Amherst, MA, Nov. 20-22, 2009). In February 2009, Hampshire became the first college or university in the U.S. to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and we are extremely proud to report that two of our alumni were part of that groundbreaking work.  Not only this, but seven of our alumni were involved in the conference itself, as organizers, attendees, organization representatives, and workshop leaders.  Forty colleges and universities from across the U.S. and Canada were represented at the conference and many more have expressed interest in this work. We believe that 2010 will be an important year for BDS work and hope all of you will consider finding ways you can participate in your own, local campaigns.  For example, there are many Israeli products on all kinds of grocery shelves throughout our communities.  One easy thing you can do is to carry coupons that say “DON’T BUY INTO APARTHEID.” When you check out, simply hand the coupon to the cashier with your money or credit card. You can also request that the store not stock Israeli products.   Coupons for downloading and printing can be found here: http://www.quitpalestine.org/dbia/coupon%20side%201.pdf

While the international BDS campaign has already had a number of early triumphs, there are also casualties.  In particular, we want to draw your attention to the case of Mohammed Othman.  Mohammed has worked for ten years in the non-violent struggle against the Apartheid Wall, is a staff member at Stop the Wall working on BDS, and has met with a number of our Birthright Unplugged delegations and groups.  On  September 22, 2009, Mohammed was on his way back from a trip to Norway where he was doing BDS work when he was detained by the Israeli military.  Norway had recently announced that it was pulling all of its investments from Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense company that manufactures the monitoring system installed on rural sections of the West Bank Wall.  The Norwegian Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen was quoted as saying, "We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law" (Associated Press, September 3, 2009).  After 61 days of detention for the purpose of interrogation by Israeli Security Agency officers, Mohammad was placed in administrative detention for a three-month period, during which time he is being held without charge or trial. To support Mohammad and follow his case, you can join the Facebook page: Free Mohammad Othman2

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We will continue to do the work for which you have come to appreciate us. And, as always, we need and cherish your support.  A number of you have pledged annual contributions, for which we are extremely grateful.  These grants sustain us, and allow us to be able to focus our work on Palestinian liberation, rather than on fundraising. We hope you will continue to give.  To donate to Birthright Unplugged, visit us at: www.birthrightunplugged.org/donate.

Please also spread the word about our work.  The more people involved in the struggle for justice, the better.

With all our best,

Dunya Alwan & Heike Schotten

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Whose birthright is it anyway?

By Raphael Ahren | Haaretz | September 3, 2009
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1110632.html

It's a hot summer morning, somewhere in the Holy Land. Rivka, Lea, Aron, Dan and other American visitors are sitting on a bus. They are participating in a seven-day trip; the guide, holding a map, explains the scenery, pointing out certain communities and discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

What may sound like a run-of-the-mill Birthright Israel trip is anything but. This particular group is not on its way from the Western Wall to Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, and Hebrew is not permitted. The 16 participants are riding in two vans with Palestinian license plates, traveling from the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem to Hebron - or "Khalil," as the organizers say it, using the town's Arabic name. And instead of aiming to strengthen young Diaspora Jews' connection with Israel - the goal of the free 10-day Birthright Israel trip - Birthright Unplugged offers North Americans a pro-Palestinian narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict, to "help participants develop an understanding of daily life under occupation," as the brochure explains. "We encourage participants to be deeply reflective, and after the program we support their involvement in human rights and justice-oriented efforts."

Founded in 2005, Birthright Unplugged hosts twice-yearly trips of about 20 people each. Most participants are Jewish. They visit the West Bank and East Jerusalem, see the separation fence and some checkpoints and meet with Palestinian officials and families who discuss the difficulties they have with the Israeli authorities. This particular trip's participants range in age from 17 to 83, but they hold similar views on the Middle East conflict. Everyone appears to agree that Israel oppresses the Palestinians for no apparent reason, and that terror attacks intended to kill Israelis are "understandable" and even "definitely justifiable" sometimes.

Abdulhadi Hantash, an "expert on land and settlement" for the Land Defense General Committee-Palestine, is one of those who addressed the group. Standing near an Israeli roadblock in Hebron, he explained that settlers hope to connect the settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Harsina, and are trying to uproot the Palestinians who live between them.

"The Palestinians have a choice: Either stay home and live like in a prison, because the settlers put up fences everywhere, or leave. The settlers here are very bad, they are more aggressive than elsewhere. They're all bad - but here they're even worse." The participants nodded silently.

"Whoever believes the Israeli government wants peace is foolish and doesn't know anything about politics," Hantash continued zestfully, adding, "We still extend our hand in peace."

After Hantash was done with his presentation, Mark Tilsen, of South Dakota, raised his hand. "Does the Israeli army supply the settlers with weapons?"

"Yes, I saw it with my own eyes," Hantash answered. "About six months ago, I saw soldiers taking settlers in their trucks to a Palestinian neighborhood and telling them to attack the residents there."

'A different light'

Supported by donations from private individuals and small organizations, Birthright Unplugged was conceived by two Jewish Americans as a reaction to the success of the original Birthright trip, which once tried to force Unplugged to change its name.

"A few years ago, my aunt was in Israel on a free trip for Jewish educators," said Unplugged co-founder and director Dunya Alwan, who was born to an Iraqi-Muslim father and an Ashkenazi Jewish American mother. "I told her she's lucky that her niece has done human rights work in the West Bank, and that I would like to help her see the area in a different light."

But her aunt was not ready to spend even 30 minutes looking at the separation fence or a checkpoint, said Alwan, 46. Disappointed, she told her friend Hannah Mermelstein, who later became her co-founder, about the incident.

"Hannah said: Dunya, there are so many trips for educators and young people that show a very particular narrative - it's part of state-building."

Due to her age, Alwan never had the chance to participate in the original Birthright. "I didn't know how travel was used to support a Zionist narrative," she said. "It was so painful for me to hear about the existence and the purpose of Birthright Israel - to bring people here and to patriate a land and to give full citizenship rights to people who are Jewish when the vast majority of Palestinians are either in diaspora or refugees. I very much wanted a Jewish presence to refute that idea."

Alwan and Mermelstein decided to provide an alternative to the vastly successful Birthright project, which has brought 240,000 Jewish young people from the Diaspora to visit Israel since it was founded in 2000.

"We're Jewish and we have worked in the West Bank and know it well," Alwan said. "Whenever we talk to [Palestinians] and ask them what we can do to support them they always say, tell our story. I am not comfortable telling other people's stories, but I am comfortable with supporting the telling of others' stories."

On this particular morning, Alwan took her group to the rooftop of a Palestinian family's house, showing them some buildings recently built by Jewish settlers, describing how the army protects them and obstructs the path to a local Muslim cemetery and how local Palestinian merchants were forced to leave their market. The family said that the night before, 11 settlers from an adjacent building threw a Molotov cocktail into their house, causing a fire that destroyed many of their possessions. They pointed to a room with blackened walls and debris.

Tilsen observed that there was no burnt smell in the room. There could have been a fire there a few days ago, but not last night, he remarked. He also commented that would have been nearly impossible for settlers to have thrown a bottle through the windows, since they were small and protected with bars. Settlers could not have thrown something into the room from outside the premises, he concluded.

Kathy Cohen, 24, later said damage from the alleged Molotov cocktail damage in the room was the most shocking thing she had witnessed. "It was just completely charred and black," said the Philadelphia teacher. "The possessions were completely destroyed on the floor, what little possessions they had. The mother looked like she was about [to break out] in tears. The boy told us that his brother was hurt and was in the hospital because of it."

"The settlers didn't even care if somebody was in there who could be hurt," Cohen continued. "They have so little respect for human life."

She added that someone had told her he saw Israeli soldiers shoot a teacher in front of his students "for no apparent reason."

Why would soldiers do that?

Cohen: "I don't know. I feel occupation corrupts people."

Like the original Birthright, Unplugged has an agenda. "We're not trying to be objective at all," Alwan acknowledges. "This is the premise: There are narratives that have been suppressed, politically, journalistically, socially ... The people who travel with us can easily get a [book about Israel] and have access to a pretty broad [range] of Israeli narratives of all kinds. It's intentionally much more difficult for that to be the case in terms of Palestinian narratives. And that's a gap that we're trying to fill."

Some participants are in the Middle East for the first time, and while they might have been critical of Israel before the trip, their experiences appear to intensify and cement that view.

Jim Bour, 57, of Wisconsin, spent some time with an Israeli-Arab coexistence group before joining Unplugged, in what he described as an effort to understand both sides. After three days of Unplugged's "straight and not one-sided" programming, he concluded that "the bad guys are in the army outfits ... I don't see the Palestinian army and the Arab gun-toting teenagers and the Arab checkpoints - I see Israeli [forces] controlling people's lives to a point that makes [Palestinians] redundant and miserable."

When asked whether Israel alone carries the blame for the current state of affairs, Judy Tilsen, a 57-year-old judge from St. Paul, Minnesota, said Israel is actually not the only oppressor in the region. Once it was Jordan and before that there was someone else. "But now, during the last 60 years, Israel has taken the role of the oppressor," she said.

Other participants expressed feelings of guilt. Amber Michel, 29, said she witnessed many of her fellow travelers "crying from the first day we met - crying in the bus, at dinner, at people's homes." Strolling along the Hebron souk, where she bought a carrot juice and six keffiyehs, she explained: "It's painful to be here and to be so obviously American. It's uncomfortable because I feel responsible. We pay. My American money goes to Israel."

Israel is guilty, the U.S. is guilty - what about terror attacks by Palestinians? Does Unplugged ever address blown-up buses with dead civilians?

Michel: "In a word, no. But we've only been together as a group for three days. And we have four more days. So we have time to talk about it. But I think those of us who come to this trip already from an activist perspective feel that those acts are [committed] in desperation and frustration."

While they are not necessarily justifiable, they are certainly understandable, she says.

"It's hard because I'm a privileged American, so sometimes I don't really feel like I have a moral right to say one way or another. I don't have to live like this, I don't know what it's like. Honestly, I can't imagine what I would do if my house were broken into and somebody took my father and mother to jail. Maybe I don't have a moral stance on this. I don't want any loss of innocent life. At the same time, I don't know what I would do if I were in the same position they're in. I don't know how you live that way."

Alwan says a discussion of violent resistance has been "an element in the itinerary a couple of times," but adds that because "the Western world tends to overrepresent the occurrence of Palestinian violent resistance relative to other Palestinian expressions of resistance, we are hesitant to contribute [to] this misrepresentation."

Some Unplugged participants seemed keen to avoid discussions of Palestinian terrorism. Not so Aron Rosenberg, a 19-year-old student from Vancouver, who says he used to be pro-Israel, but switched sides when he started college and realized that virtually all activists support the Palestinian cause. One person's terrorist is another one's freedom fighter, he says, adding keenly that in light of the occupation, "quote-unquote terrorist attacks" against Israel were "definitely justifiable."

So in the name of resistance it is legitimate to kill innocents?

Rosenberg: "Who is saying they're innocent?"

He then mentions Gilad Shalit - the soldier "who was kidnapped, or arrested, however you want to put it." Shalit's fate, Rosenberg says, is no worse than that of hundreds of imprisoned Palestinians - "artist, intellectuals, people who maybe have no involvement in the conflict other than being Palestinian." Israel cannot be a democracy and a Jewish state at the same time, he concludes.

Indeed, several Unplugged participants said they initially supported a two-state solution, but after seeing what they saw and speaking to Palestinians, they changed their minds.

"Just one state [in which] everyone is an equal citizen - I think it's the best idea," Michel says. "Our [Palestinian] guide last night said he doesn't want a two-state solution - because if I accept that I will be recognizing a purely Jewish state and I don't want to set a precedent for that for all over the world. Then someone wants to have a purely Christian state and I don't want that."

Asked whether she doesn't have the same problem with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Michel doesn't answer. Instead, she quotes the guide again: accepting a Jewish state would set a precedent of exclusivity. "I see the consequences of that kind of exclusivity here: poverty and oppression and death, and I don't want to support that."

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March 2009

Birthright Unplugged Communiqué – Winter 2009

Birthright Unplugged’s winter season was dominated by Israel’s war on Gaza. 

Israel’s attacks started on a Saturday.  The following Monday morning, Dunya called Sumer in Beit Lahia, a village in the north of Gaza.  Sumer has been a regular presence on our trips, doing her best to “host” us in Gaza  through the phone lines. Because Israel has denied entry to visitors to Gaza for many years, Birthright Unplugged has arranged conference calls between Unplugged participants and residents of Gaza in an effort to include Gazans on our trips.  While Sumer lives in Gaza, like most Gazans the rest of the members of her family are refugees.  In 1948, Sumer’s family fled al-Masmiyya al-Kabira, a village about twenty miles north of Gaza.  The village she now lives in is adjacent to the pre-’48 Palestinian city Isdud (now the Israeli city of Ashdod).  When Dunya spoke to Sumer, her voice was shaking and she found it difficult to speak.  She tried to be reassuring but she was clearly frightened.  Later that day, Hannah phoned Sumer only to learn that her family had sought refuge with other extended family members because their home had been shelled by the Israeli army and destroyed.   The United Nations estimates that some 50,800 Gazans were made homeless as a result of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Sumer’s family is still homeless, and, like most of the tens of thousands like her, it is not the first time this has occurred at the hands of the Israeli state.

Despite the war, our Unplugged program was undeterred , and our trip this winter was comprised of students from Boston College. The group spent their fall semester on campus studying Palestine and Israel and then joined Birthright Unplugged for a trip during their January break.  They are now back on campus developing social justice projects related to their experiences.  The group arrived one week into the war on Gaza, a situation that understandably generated some trepidation on the part of the students about their trip.  They soon understood, however,  that - as with all of our Unplugged trips - the danger our groups face is from Israeli settlers and soldiers, and that our Palestinian hosts will do everything in their power to protect us as friends and guests.

Although the first portion of our trip took place in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, we spent the rest of our nine day trip in Israel (or “’48” as it is called in Arabic).  This is a change for us, since in years past we have spent only a single day of our Unplugged trips outside of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. We made this shift in order to better highlight the racist structures, policies, and attitudes to which Palestinian citizens of Israel are subject, constraints that are often neither understood nor acknowledged in the West.   However, we will continue to ensure that the oppression and disenfranchisements faced by Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and as mere residents of East Jerusalem are made clear on the trip.

Our day in the Naqab (or Negev) was particularly striking.  We spent an afternoon sitting in a tent with an elder of the Bedouin community of Wadi el-Na'am, approximately thirty miles east of Gaza.  This village, the largest unrecognized Bedouin  village in Israel, is sandwiched between Israel’s main hazardous waste disposal facility, numerous chemical factories, and a power plant.  As we listened to the stories these Palestinian Bedouin Israeli citizens face, we could hear Israeli fighter jets flying overhead.  These were the planes that were firing missiles and chemical weapons on Gaza, the same planes that also dropped messages entreating residents to flee ongoing attacks. These messages came as ghoulish advisories to an incarcerated population who could hardly escape the massive, simultaneous Israeli assault from the land, sea and air. As we listened to the jets we also learned from our hosts about how their once nomadic community of Bedouin shepherds have been corralled into a limited area flanked by evaporation pools that pollute the air and leach cancer-causing chemicals into the soil and water.  Our hosts explained that cancer and miscarriage rates are high in these communities due to the toxins in the environment.  While there were no bombs falling on this particular airspace and no advisories falling from the skies, it was clear that here, again, the attacks on Palestinian people are multidirectional and, in this case, waged against the very cells and wombs of the people of this community.

The students in the group had varying and wide-ranging experiences on the trip, but it is worth noting that early on the group began discussing the possibility of a partnership between Boston College and Bethlehem University, both of which are Catholic universities.  We are pleased with these students’ efforts in this regard, for as segregation is increasingly imposed by Israel on Jewish and Palestinian residents throughout ’48 and Palestine, it is important to counteract this trend and forge relationships with Palestinian people and academic and cultural institutions.  In addition, in light of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) http://www.pacbi.org/, it is as important to build relationships with Palestinian institutions as it is to break ties with Israeli academic and cultural institutions until they are in compliance with international law. 

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In the past weeks, there has been an international groundswell for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)against Israel.  A historic stand has been taken in South Africa, where dockworkers have refused to offload Israeli ships, and British and U.S. college campuses are being occupied and by students demanding full disclosure of university investments.  These students are calling for  divestment from corporations that benefit from occupation, and demanding that their schools develop relationships with Palestinian academic institutions and send humanitarian aid to Gazans.  In Massachusetts, Hampshire College became the first U.S. institution of higher education to officially divest from companies that do business with Israel.  This development is significant both for the precedent it sets and also because Hampshire was also the first college in the United States to divest from South Africa.  We are proud to say that two alums of Birthright Unplugged’s first BDS Institute worked on this effort for the past year.  This is an important moment and we urge you to focus your work in this area.  For more information about BDS or to join the Global Day of Action for BDS in Solidarity with the Palestinian people, check out http://www.bdsmovement.net/ or contact the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) at info@bdsmovement.net.

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On the horizon:  both our Unplugged & Re-Plugged programs are taking shape and we have much in store for this summer.

We are planning a new version of our Re-Plugged program this summer in which we partner with the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights.  Badil takes a “rights-based approach to the Palestinian refugee issue through research, advocacy, and support of community participation in the search for durable solutions” and also does educational and empowerment programming  with hundreds of children in Palestinian refugee camps.  Birthright Re-Plugged has developed a pilot program to complement Badil’s youth work.  We will, as usual, facilitate the travel of Palestinian children living in refugee camps to Jerusalem, the sea, and their original villages, as well as spend time with Palestinian citizens of Israel.  However, in addition we will also be working with the children to research and photograph their villages past and present.  We aim to develop a process by which the children will then produce proposals that explore and imagine the practical possibilities for the implementation of their rights.  These proposals will form the basis for a new exhibition that explores the cherished, legal, and feasible right of return.

We are also pleased to report that since the last time we wrote, the Re-Plugged exhibits have been hung in Sweden and across the United States, from Massachusetts to Wisconsin to California.  They are still available – if you are interested in hosting one please check them out on the web: http://www.birthrightunplugged.org/replugged/exhibits/

This summer, Unplugged will continue to travel with mostly North American activists in an effort to galvanize their justice movement work.  We will expand our BDS Institute, this time opening a significant portion of the programming to the general public.  The travel portion of the trip will be August 1, 2009 – Aug 7, 2009, and the institute will be August 8, 2009 – August 11, 2009.  Please help us  spread the word about this institute to individuals and lists you think may be interested:   http://www.birthrightunplugged.org/unplugged/dates

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There are also a few staffing changes at Birthright Unplugged. 

This winter we bid farewell to our co-founder and co-director Hannah Mermelstein.  We are tremendously grateful to Hannah for her tireless work on Birthright Unplugged and on behalf Palestinian rights.  Hannah built Birthright Unplugged with great care and attention to detail and her contributions are inseparable from the organization itself.  We wish Hannah all the best in all her work to come!

Dunya Alwan will remain as a Director.  Heike Schotten will become our Communications and Outreach Coordinator.  Heike is a 2006 Birthright Unplugged alum.  She has consistently volunteered with BRUP since traveling with us, and we are thrilled that she will now be taking on a more consistent role. 

The rest of our staff will work with us on a project-by-project basis.  They include Hazem, from Badil who will serve as an Unplugged trip leader and Re-Plugged advisor, and Ryvka returns as our BDS Institute coordinator and trainer.

We will continue to do the work for which you have come to appreciate us.  And, as always, we need and cherish  your support.  Please spread the word about our work.  To donate to Birthright Unplugged, visit us at:  www.birthrightunplugged.org/donate

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September 2008

Dear friends,

As many of you know, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinian people during the creation of the State of Israel. Birthright Unplugged has just finished a season of programming that reflects this anniversary, in conjunction with the growing Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) movement to address the ongoing Nakba that Palestinian people experience to this day.

In June, we undertook our largest and most ambitious Re-Plugged project yet: To commemorate the 60 years since the Nakba, we worked with 60 youth from three refugee camp communities and 36 different original villages on a three-day camp inside 1948 Palestine (present-day Israel). People from Dheisheh, Balata, and Jenin camps are rarely able to meet each other, so the experience was meaningful both because it brought together these separated communities and because it provided a program that will be impossible for the youth to participate in once they turn 16 and are issued ID cards that the Israeli army uses to control their movement.

This summer, we faced more difficulties than ever before transporting the children through checkpoints that surround their communities. The northern bus, carrying children from Jenin and Balata camps, spent upwards of two hours stopped at two different checkpoints as an Israeli American friend and Re-Plugged volunteer used her linguistic and cultural knowledge to negotiate on their behalf. As this bus finally passed through the last checkpoint, soldiers warned our colleague, in Hebrew, that they had made a special exception and that this would not be the protocol in the future. The children from Dheisheh waited anxiously in their centers until getting the word that the northern bus had successfully passed and the southern bus could begin its considerably shorter journey to Beit Jamal, the monastery that hosted our program.

Beit Jamal is located in the middle of dozens of destroyed and depopulated Palestinian villages, home to most of the inhabitants of Dheisheh and other southern West Bank refugee camps. The view from the monastery of ancient olive groves and open land allowed the children to imagine what their families' communities used to look like and what they might again look like when the right of return is implemented. The view of the nearby Israeli city of Bet Shemesh reminded them that this return will not be easy.

In addition to visits to the sea and to the original villages of some of the youth, which we include in every Re-Plugged trip, we also facilitated numerous small and large group activities throughout our days together. The most moving for many was a series of activities designed to support the children to think both abstractly and concretely about what return will mean. Picture small groups of boys and girls across a fertile landscape of destroyed villages, seeking shade under trees and ruins, being led in guided meditations, writing and drawing exercises, and conversations about how their lives would change should residents of their camp communities be repatriated to their ancestral lands. We listened to their proposals for the application of the right of return and their musings on the potential loss of their present camp neighborhoods and the prospect of Jewish Israeli neighbors. It was both promising and complex.

A dedicated volunteer staff worked with us to make every moment possible, and included Palestinian friends and colleagues from the refugee camp centers and elsewhere, Palestinian and Arab friends with foreign passports, Unplugged alumni from past trips, and others. With their help, we were able to lead small group workshops, as well as prepare with the youth for a public performance the final evening. Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals joined us for the event, including a group from the nearby joint Jewish and Palestinian community of Neve Shalom / Wahat as Salaam. The youth, split up by center, put on a program of poetry, dancing, acting, circus, and more, using cultural activism to affirm their rights.

During the performance, and throughout the days leading up to it, all three Re-Plugged exhibits were displayed, showing the photography and writing of nearly 100 Palestinian youth living in refugee camps in the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Glaringly missing was any representation from Gaza, as we have not yet been able to work there due to Israeli travel restrictions. The Israeli closure of Gaza is ever strengthening, and people continue to suffer from lack of food, fuel, and medicine. In July we had hoped to visit Gaza and meet with the people we know only through conference calls with Unplugged and e-mail correspondence about Re-Plugged. We had gathered computers and medical supplies to donate, and applied to Israeli authorities two months before we were scheduled to enter. Our applications, which we were told to submit one week before going, were still "in process" by the time we left Palestine. We plan to apply again this winter and will continue to do so until we are permitted to enter and conduct a Re-Plugged workshop there.

As we think about the future of Re-Plugged, we are inspired by the work of the Palestinian organization Badil and the Israeli organization Zochrot, who are thinking and speaking not only about the right of return for Palestinian refugees, but about the implementation of this right. How can we establish a true culture of return among our youth, Badil is asking. What will our communities look like when the refugees return, asked Zochrot at their June conference, and how can we ensure that the implementation is just?

One of our Unplugged groups was able to attend a session of this Zochrot conference as we began our first Unplugged trip ever to promote a particular type of follow-up work and activism. The regular six-day travel portion of Unplugged led into a four-day institute on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and investment in Palestine. At this institute, activists from across the US and Canada came together to hear from Palestinians involved in the BDS movement, to discuss their own ongoing campaigns in North America, and to imagine new campaigns on local, state, and national levels; in schools, universities, community groups, and more.

The institute was designed to respond to the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for BDS, which itself was modeled on the anti-apartheid struggle of South Africa. By creating an institute in which North American activists collaborate with each other and with Palestinian BDS leaders, we hope to encourage a sense of accountability and direction for a growing and promising movement. The institute was a huge success, and participants left with concrete tools and skills, including one year strategic plans for campaigns in their particular communities.

We will continue to be in touch with our Unplugged alumni as always, both from the institute and from our other trips, and will support their activism throughout the year. Coming off of a full and meaningful summer, we are taking a break from our traditional Unplugged trips for the winter, as we work with other delegations and continue to try to get into Gaza for a Re-Plugged workshop. We will still write to you about our work and our plans, and encourage you to become involved in local campaigns in your communities. We also encourage you to bring one of our Re-Plugged exhibits, created by Palestinian children in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, to your community. E-mail birthrightunplugged@gmail.com if interested. You can see the exhibits at www.birthrightunplugged.org/replugged/exhibits .

As always, thank you for reading and for your ongoing support. The Birthright Unplugged network of friends, supporters, and volunteers is always growing, and we could not do our work without you.

Best wishes, Dunya and Hannah

Palestinian civil society call for boycott (these are the final paragraphs; for the full text and more BDS resources, see www.bdsmovement.net).

"...We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.

These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194."

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Does Birthright deliver?

By Alison Avigayil Ramer | Haaretz.com | May 28, 2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/987977.html

A MASA mega-event attended by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in May 2008 (Dan Keinan)

Millions of dollars, thousands of participants... but it's not clear that programs like Taglit-Birthright and MASA make the impact the founders intended.

If you're Jewish, North American and in your 20s then you're in demand. The chances are, you've probably either participated in an Israel program organized by one Zionist organization or another - or at the very least, you've been approached to take part.

Taglit-Birthright Israel is the original, the most dominant and the best-funded of the numerous organizations set up since 2000 that offer young Jews the opportunity to go on short and long-term trips to Israel.

Birthright by itself has brought over 160,000 young Jews to Israel on free 10-day trips and this summer the organization plans to bring 60,000 more. The organization focuses on bringing young Jews to Israel for the first time, many of whom may only have a loose affiliation with Judaism, with the aiming of bolstering their religious and cultural identity.

According to Birthright, the organization's goal is to "diminish the divide between Israel and the Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants' personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people."

Rachel Daniel, a previous Birthright participant, recalls the positive impact it had on her. "My Birthright trip really gave me the opportunity to deepen my Jewish identity and establish a relationship with Israel. After 10 days I really felt that Israel was my home and that as a Jew I had a place here."

Other participants argue that the organization pushes their political and religious views on the participants too much, with the result that it is hard to feel well informed. "Everyone who comes on Birthright knows that they have an agenda - marry Jewish, make aliyah, make Jewish babies. They pay for the trip, so they can tell us whatever they want about Israel, but it would be nice to learn different viewpoints."

A complete contrasting experience is offered by a subversively similar-sounding group, Birthright Unplugged. Founded as a reaction to and corrective for, the mainstream Zionist narrative of birthright trips, the organization offers six-day tours of the West Bank. Their trips challenge the idea that Jewish people have a birthright to the lands beyond the 1967 borders, expose young Jews to the Palestinian experience since 1948 and give them first-hand experience in Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps. The organization also tries to bring Palestinian voices to the international community, particularly to Jews from the United States.

The program openly cultivates activist initiatives on behalf of Palestinians by its alumni, including pro-sanctions and pro-boycott work. As The Birthright Unplugged website explains,

"After the program we support our participants' involvement in human rights based and justice oriented efforts, including contributing to the Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions movement against Israel until it complies with international law. This initiative is a direct response to the call from Palestinian civil society and is designed in the footsteps of the ultimately successful movement against South African apartheid."

According to Hannah Mermelstein, one of the co-founders of Birthright Unplugged, "Sharing Palestinian voices in the West is a way to critique Zionism, which in large part attempts to silence Palestinian voices."

Mermelstein co-founded Birthright Unplugged together with Dunya Alwan, an Iraqi-American of both Muslim and Jewish descent, after years of doing human rights work in the West Bank. Palestinian people kept telling her that they wanted their stories to be heard in the United States and shared with people outside of Palestine, so she and her co-founder created the organization to provide tourists with safe access to the West Bank.

The majority of the group's participants are Jewish, roughly a third of them have participated in Birthright trips and over half have previously come to Israel on Zionist youth trips.

Apart from Taglit-Birthright and Birthright Unplugged, there are also many options for young Jews who want to stay in Israel for longer-term trips.

MASA, a project that was founded by the Jewish Agency and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office in 2004, provides young Jews between 18 and 30 with the opportunity to spend a semester or a year in Israel.

Since 2004, MASA has brought over 27,000 young Jews to work, study, volunteer and intern in Israel. This year it has brought over 8,000 participants between 18 and 30, from over 50 countries to Israel. The organization aspires to involve over 20,000 participants a year.

All participants enroll in independently-run programs that are approved by MASA. According to the organization, "Participation in their long term programs is the most effective way to shape the next generation of Jewish leadership in Jewish communities, and young Jews' sense of shared destiny with the State of Israel."

Last week, to celebrate the end of a year of programming, more than 5,000 participants from different MASA-approved programs attended the MASA mega event. The event was complete with high-profile politicians, including Prime Minister Olmert and Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski, live music, a laser light show and fireworks.

"At an event like this, I really feel that I am a part of a larger movement. When I go back to the United States and am in the minority I can remember the thousands of people here and know that I'm not alone," said Noah Speldman, a MASA and Birthright participant.

Funders of these programs may note with some anxiety the reactions of other participants to programs specifically designed to shore up identification with Israel and Israelis, and to develop a mainstream pro-Israel outlook.

For instance, MASA participants who did not attend the mega event argue that they don't feel a deeper attachment to Israel because of MASA and that, ironically, participating in their programs isolates them from Israeli society.

"Even though I am taking courses at an Israeli university, I rarely come into contact with Israeli students and almost all of my friends here are foreigners," said Joshua Goodman, a Masters Student at Tel Aviv University and MASA participant. "If I weren't in my program, I think that I would be less isolated from Israeli society and would be more connected to Israelis."

Other participants find the mainstream Zionist orientation of the program's politics - their founding purpose - to be a deterrent.

An alumna of numerous MASA programs argues that she "found the whole organization to be a little too Zionist for me. MASA doesn't really give you a complete view of Israeli society and certainly does not expose you to any of the post-Zionist perspectives. Unfortunately, I think that this kind of Zionist project can actually make you feel more disconnected from people in Israel."

Young North American Jews are seemingly making use of these programs to deepen their understanding of Jewish life and the Middle East, but very much on their own terms. They express an unorthodox diversity of opinion about Israel that major Jewish organizations that established these programs may not quite have expected.

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Al Quds Newspaper

alquds.com | March 11, 2008
http://pdf2.alquds.com/2008/3/11/page12.pdf

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Birthright Unplugged's Communiqué

Spring 2008

Dear Birthright Unplugged friends,

We have just finished another Birthright Unplugged season and are writing to fill you in on our work and something of the current situation in Palestine.

This winter we ran one classic Unplugged trip, three Re-Plugged workshops, and one trip for a group of Brandeis University students funded by Jimmy Carter's peace prize monies. We worked not only in Palestine, but with Re-Plugged in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. We made this choice because there are Palestinian refugee camps in these countries and we feel it is important to represent the diaspora and communities in exile in our work, especially this year - the 60th anniversary of the Nakba.

Our Unplugged group was, as usual, mostly Jewish and North American; the Brandeis/Carter Center group consisted of campus leaders from at least four different countries and a variety of disciplines, and included two Israeli citizens: one Palestinian and one Jewish.

Both our Unplugged and Brandeis/Carter Center trips were built around travel, meetings and homestays. In addition to conversations with grassroots organizers and families, we tried to schedule meetings with those in governance, including Fatah, independent political parties, and Hamas. We were successful with all but one: we could not meet with any political leaders from Hamas because most are in Israeli prisons at this writing.

While the issue of political prisoners always finds its way into informal conversations with families, organizations, and taxi drivers, this winter it was even more prevalent in our programming. We visited the first legal clinic in a Palestinian law school, at Al Quds University in Abu Dis, and the newly opened prisoners' museum at that university, which contains an archive of prisoners' writings, artifacts and art by prisoners, facts and figures about interrogation facilities and techniques, and memorials for prisoners who have been killed during torture or died from lack of medical care in prison.

Prisoner issues are not relegated to museums, and are not things of the past. As we arrived to meet an American-born Israeli human rights lawyer and her husband, a former prisoner whom she met while working on his torture case, our taxi drivers jumped out of the car and embraced the man. After the hugging and kissing finished we asked how they knew each other. It turns out they had all been imprisoned together and had not seen each other in years. When we expressed to our host, the man's wife, what a small world, she said, no, on the contrary, it happens all the time, and explained that this is due to the prevalence of Palestinian incarceration.

One could rightly say that the largest prison in Palestine is the Gaza Strip. The only geographical location within Palestine that been unable to take our Unplugged groups or run Re-Plugged from has been Gaza. Israel continues to close Gaza's borders to both Palestinians and foreigners, and as we write is in the midst of massive attacks that have killed more than 100 people in the past week alone. The Israeli closure and invasions have gotten increasingly intense, and in the past few months the world has watched severe food shortages, ambulances running out of fuel, and hospitals having to choose which patients to save because they don't have enough electricity to run generators for all of them. In a situation in which the United Nations and aid organizations have been scrambling and failing to meet the basic needs of Gazans, the Knesset (Israeli parliament) has ruled that the humanitarian crisis is not serious enough to warrant a reversal of Israel's electricity cuts and blockages of aid trucks.

While our groups were unable to go to Gaza, we have included Gazans in our program through articles and video conferences. One video conference this season was snowed out, but students in Gaza City and the Brandeis/Carter Center students in Ramallah gathered around cell phones to talk and to listen. The call went on for over an hour as the phone in Gaza was passed to student after student. The Gazan students spoke about their desire for peace and security, shared pleas for solidarity, an end to the collective punishment they are subjected to, and to live lives we take for granted with the ability to go to university, attend exchange programs, and simply be safe.

About 80% of Gaza residents are refugees from 1948. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe), during which most Palestinian people were forced from their land and villages and are still living as refugees to this day. Our Re-Plugged programs work with the third and fourth generation of refugees living in camps, usually in the West Bank. While we are unable to go to Gaza, this winter we were able to work with children in camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. We could not bring them to their villages the way we do with children from West Bank camps, but we conducted workshops with them during which they used photography and writing to record their families' histories and their own thoughts to share with their communities and with people abroad. We worked with partner organizations in each camp, including the Jordanian Women's Union (Jordan), the Palestinian Women's Humanitarian Organization (Lebanon), and Aidoun (Syria).

We traveled first to Jordan, where we worked in Wehdat camp with girls from villages in the Yaffa and Ramla areas. The camp feels like an extension of Amman, with more than 50,000 registered and many thousands of unregistered refugees. While most Palestinian refugees in Jordan have Jordanian citizenship, the sense of Palestinian identity is strong. As separated as Palestinian people are from each other, assertions of unity are ever present, and we witnessed a march of thousands demonstrating in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

From Amman we flew to Beirut, where we worked in Burj al Barajneh camp with girls and boys from four different villages in the Akka and Safad areas of northern Palestine. The children shared with us the stories of their grandparents' flight in 1948, and shared even more passionately their own stories of their lives in the camp. They spoke about the historic lack of services provided by the Lebanese government and by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), instituted to take responsibility for their welfare. They showed us the tangled mess of electric wires and water hoses that hang from every house and over every street and regularly electrocute camp residents. We saw the camp flood during a rainstorm and children roll their pants up to their knees and leap doorway to doorway to get to and from school. Our apartment, on the edge of the camp overlooking re-construction of one of the bridges that Israel bombed in 2006, had no heat, electricity for just a few hours during the entire week we were there, and the water from the tap was semi-filtered sea water still tasting of salt. The center's electricity would come and go, and inevitably in the late afternoon we would find ourselves meeting with the children by candlelight, trying to upload their photographs onto the computer before the battery ran out.

Despite obstacles and constant reminders of the persistently temporary status of Palestinian refugees, the children created beautiful and poignant work that they displayed for their community at the end of our program. Siblings, parents, and even some grandparents came to celebrate with the children. One grandmother, whose grandson photographed her making soup that "warmed our stomachs," pointed proudly at her grandson's work as she read about her village in the children's words. Our partner organization is already planning other venues for the children's work.

Our last stop was Syria, the birthplace of the alphabet and of ice cream. We worked about fifteen miles south of Damascus in Khan Eshieh camp, with girls and boys from six different villages in the Tiberias and Nazareth regions of the Galilee. We could see the Golan Heights from the camp, with the lights of an Israeli post beaming from the top of the nearby mountain as a constant reminder of the continued occupation of both Palestinian and Syrian land.

We met with the children in a house just outside the camp. On the first day of our program, we could hear the children's joyful screams as they came riding down the road and piled out of the back of a pickup truck and into the house. We talked with them a bit, heard their families' stories, explained the program, gave out cameras, and asked if there were any questions. One girl raised her hand. "I have a question," she said. "Why does your government give so much money and support to Israel when they've taken our land?" This set the tone for several days of questions, comments, poetry, and letters directed towards George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair, and others.

The children's expressiveness, we were told, is nurtured by the quality of their UNRWA schools, in sharp contrast to the neglect we have seen in the camp schools in Palestine and Lebanon. Palestinian people in Syria have all the rights of Syrians except the right to vote and run in elections, as they are not citizens. Palestinians get equal opportunities for university scholarships and employment, unlike in Lebanon where they are explicitly excluded from more than 70 professions and countless other opportunities. Many camp residents have moved to the outskirts of the camp, like the family who hosted our meetings across the street in a lovely house with carefully tended gardens. Still, on the door of this house was a sticker that said in Arabic and English, "The right to return home is inalienable." While Syria has provided Palestinian people with refuge, dignity and good future prospects, we are reminded that the state of being a refugee is a limbo that can be addressed in only one way: the implementation of a basic human right - the right to return.

We are particularly proud that in Syria, the workshop model was so successful that in addition to the show touring, our partner organization is planning regular activities in Khan Eshieh Camp for young teenagers and will hold similar oral history, photography and writing workshops this summer for children from refugee camps across Syria.

Birthright Unplugged now has three exhibits which are beginning to tour. Our latest show, "Palestine Through Our Eyes: 60 Years Since The Nakba" is being booked in the US and internationally. It will hang in all 16 Syrian camps, a cafe in Lebanon, a film festival in Sweden, numerous universities, and the American Friends Service Committee in Chicago. The shows will be used as tools for education and to raise funds for children's programming in the refugee camps where we have worked, and are a beautiful document and testament of children's photography and storytelling from refugee camps in Palestine and in the diaspora.

While our work has focused on the rights and losses of Palestinian people, the impact of wars and occupation on Iraqis was palpable, particularly in Jordan and Syria. Since 2003 these border countries have been dealing with the largest growing refugee crisis in the world. The United Nations estimates that nearly 2.2 million Iraqis have fled the country in the past 5 years, with nearly 100,000 fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month. These refugees have been subject to the policies, capacities, and whims of these border countries, leaving the US and its partners in crime largely off the hook for this latest made-in-the-USA humanitarian crisis. We heard stories of desperate searches for medical care too often denied, relatives divided from and often lost to each other, and people in persistent states of flux and danger, and we saw the huge UNHCR tents in Syria that we know process only the smallest numbers of those in need. These people deserve safety, refuge and dignity - all basic human rights. As we watch governmental and United Nations efforts failing the vast majority of Iraqi people we see grassroots support as essential and humbly suggest it in the forms of work, student, and refugee visa sponsorship, as well as material support.

. . .

We spent our last week in Palestine preparing for our spring and summer programs. Toward this end, we took a research trip. We had the exceptional use of a rental car for one day and wanted to make the most of it. A friend and colleague of ours, a leader in a cultural center in a West Bank refugee camp, was recently issued a temporary permit allowing her to travel inside Israel. This young woman, who has traveled to seven countries in the past year, had never been to her original village about 20 miles from the camp where she lives. We had the privilege to accompany her to her village where still stand vast green open lands with fields and mountains and now, more newly, a Bedouin community, a kibbutz, and the large colony of Beit Shemesh. We spent just a few precious hours with her as she walked amongst the destroyed houses of her village planting flowers and cactus, and experienced her first and possibly only visit to the place her ancestors lived for centuries. We then returned her to the refugee camp.

. . .

As usual, Birthright Unplugged has a lot on the horizon. We are developing a Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (against Israel) + Investment (in Palestine) institute for organizers and activists that will work in concert with one of our summer Unplugged trips. Speaking of investment, one piece of good news: Dr. Bronner's soaps, an American Company, has announced that it will use fair trade and organic sources for all major ingredients, and recently became the biggest buyer of Palestinian olive oil through the Palestine Fair Trade Association in Jenin.

We are also planning Re-Plugged programming focused on educating about and commemorating the 60th Nakba anniversary. As a teaser, this summer's Re-Plugged program will involve many of our West Bank Re-Plugged alums, Nakba survivors, and Palestinian luminaries, will be built around implementing refugee rights, media, education, and will involve plenty of good food and fun.

We also want to thank you, our readers, for your support. Many of you work with us, donate to us, translate with us, house and feed us, scheme with us and more. We cannot do what we do without a large extended community and we are sincerely grateful to so many of you for being such a significant part of this work. Alf shuker / a thousand thanks!

Sincerely,

Dunya and Hannah

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Birthright Unplugged's Communiqué

Fall 2007

Dear Birthright Unplugged friends,

In the past month we have shared with you some of our media successes of the summer, and we are writing now to tell you about our work on the ground in Palestine this busy season.

The summer began for us in Jenin refugee camp. Our pre-trip visits made it clear that this would be one of our most daunting Re-Plugged trips. The entire Jenin district is under a virtual lockdown by the Israeli military, with between 5-8 checkpoints between the refugee camp and Jerusalem. Often as we traveled we encountered soldiers with machine guns drawn and trained on the grid-lock of cars that are corralled throughout the day.

This summer, we worked with 20 girls and boys from the Freedom Theatre and took them to Jerusalem, the sea, and the villages their grandparents were expelled from in 1948. We usually work with children from 2 or 3 different villages; this time they were from 11 villages. While this was logistically ambitious for us, we chose to work this way because the children were part of a creative community and wanted to work together after the trip on a number of projects related to it. With help from many volunteers, including Palestinians from ’48 (Israel), Sweden, and the United States, we split into groups and managed to take each child to her/his own village.

There continue to be Israeli-imposed barriers to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship connecting with Palestinians with West Bank IDs, as Israel forbids its citizens from entering the most populated areas where Palestinians live under occupation. In an effort to connect Palestinians across these divides, we work with a cooperating Palestinian organization. This time, Baladna of Haifa hosted us in their homes and youth center and joined us for the village visits. We were fortunate to have with us Palestinian guides spanning three generations and all with a wealth of knowledge about the places we visited.

For all of the children this was a unique journey and filled with meaningful experiences, some of which they describe in the exhibition we prepared with them after the trip. Here are a few stories that stand out for us:

• As we left Haifa in 3 buses for the villages, Bilal, whose grandparents are from Zir’in, got on the bus headed to Um Il Fahm instead. When we asked him why he switched groups he refused to tell us, and we assumed it was for social reasons. When the group arrived in Um Il Fahm, a thriving Palestinian city, his reason became clear. A woman ran toward the bus crying and holding children by the hand. It was his sister, whom he hadn’t seen in 5 years because she is married and living in Um Il Fahm. Bilal’s sister is also subject to Israeli travel restrictions which make it illegal for her travel between the city where she lives and Jenin refugee camp, a short distance away, where her family lives.
• Naqa’s family is from Ayn Hawd, a village that was occupied in 1948 but not destroyed. The expelled villagers fled to neighboring countries, to Jenin, and to a forested hilltop just a couple kilometers away. Naqa’s’ distant relatives camped on the hilltop and for decades have struggled to establish a new village, also called Ayn Hawd, To this day, the new Ayn Hawd is only partially recognized by the Israeli government. The original village is now inhabited by Israeli artists and called a Hebraized version of Ayn Hawd. Naqa’ had directions from her grandparents about how to find their house. As she approached the mosque, now a restaurant/bar, she took an abrupt turn that led her down a narrow passageway through overgrown fruit trees. Our group followed until we arrived in what is now the back yard. We were heard by the Dutch man and Israeli woman now living inside and when they learned why we had come, they invited the group in. Naqa’ stood aside and began to cry, her hands full of pomegranates, pine cones and rocks she’d found on the property. The Dutch man, in an attempt to soothe her, said, “It’s okay, you can come back another time, it’s no problem.” A boy from the group replied, “Actually, it is a problem. When she turns 16 next year, the Israeli army will not let her come.
• Ahmed and Mohammed are brothers from what was in 1948 the small village of Burayka. After the 336 residents were expelled by Zionist militias, their 63 homes were destroyed by Israeli orders and the village was turned into an Israeli military base. Later, the base was closed and the former village became a trash dump. Our guide led us near the area where the houses had been and the boys called their grandfather in Jenin refugee camp. Ahmed, holding the phone to his ear, looked out at the hills that surround the destroyed village and described what he saw. Their grandfather, who was about their age when he and his family fled, guided the boys through barbed wire, brambles and trash to a series of mounds adjacent to a tree. The mounds, piles of stones covered in rusting blowing garbage, is where their grandfathers house once stood. In 1948, as the boys’ grandfather fled with his family, he carved his name in the tree by his house. Almost 60 years later, this tree bearing his name is the only evidence of their presence on the land.

The children involved in this year’s Re-Plugged trip worked on an exhibit which was on view in the camp and is now hanging at the Arab American University in Jenin, and an additional copy is available for exhibition outside of Palestine.

As the 60th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba approaches - May 15, 2008 - we are thinking about the most effective ways to include the widest variety of refugee experiences in our Re-Plugged work. On the horizon may be some work with children in Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, and we hope that our trips and exhibits get more exposure throughout the US in 2008.

Re-Plugged continues to be deeply moving for the children and their communities, and we are honored to facilitate it. We are also supporting others to do similar work. In the summer of 2006, we wrote a manual about how to lead trips like Re-Plugged, and have been sharing it. We recently read a report that Tel Rumeida, a neighborhood in Khalil (Hebron) that we worked from last year, took over 100 Palestinian children to Jerusalem and the sea this summer.

After Re-Plugged ended, we began to prepare for Unplugged, which brought two groups of mostly Jewish North American people on 6 day trips to Palestinian cities, villages, refugee camps, and destroyed/occupied villages. Although we have done this trip ten times now, we continue to learn each time, as the discourse changes slightly with each trip. This summer in particular we noticed that more of our Palestinian friends and colleagues, and our Israeli friends and colleagues living in the West Bank, said that they feel that the prospects for a viable two state solution may be over and that one state with equal rights for all may be the only solution to advocate for. Though we heard overwhelming apprehension about the near future, and despite a trajectory that has seen very few positive changes on the ground in their communities for decades, all these people continue to work nonviolently for justice.

We also add new elements into our Unplugged itinerary each time. This summer we were able to arrange video conferences with staff from the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP). Both the circumstances and the content of the conversations created a mood which moved our Unplugged participants. Gaza is just over two hours’ drive from Ramallah, where we sat in a studio as the fuzzy bleached images of our guests was piped into a monitor suspended from the ceiling. Throughout the call, a lightning bolt flashed on the screen signaling the spotty electricity that all residents of Gaza endure. Our guests spoke of the difficulties of doing therapy with children as they sustain ongoing trauma from persistent Israeli military attacks. They spoke of the isolation Gazans feel, and encouraged us all to work to open the borders of Gaza to Egypt and to Israel so that a million and a half people do not continue to live in a prison.

This talk and other experiences have propelled our Unplugged participants to deeper thought and action already. Two of our participants who were planning to study at Israeli universities changed their plans during the trip in accordance with the indigenous Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli goods, services, and institutions. One is now studying at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah and the other is looking into a master’s program at the American University of Cairo. Several of our participants have remained in Palestine to study Arabic and work with solidarity organizations, and others have returned to their communities to begin working on the ideas they developed while on the trip.

Our past participants have been active as well. Since we last wrote, many of our participants have been involved in organizing alternative Passover seders and actions, one has worked to develop a day-long tour program with the Palestine Solidarity Project in Beit Ummar village, two have been living in Ramallah and working on water issues and health issues with Palestinian organizations, one has been organizing the upcoming fall tour for Wheels of Justice, a few have been working to develop an anti-Zionist Jewish network, and several were involved in Nakba Day events and other ongoing actions and public art campaigns bringing awareness to Palestine.

We hope that both our Re-Plugged and Unplugged programs contribute to bringing about a more just and humane situation than now exists in Palestine. It is an uphill battle, and we thank you for your support of our work.

Sincerely,

Dunya and Hannah

For details on our programs visit www.birthrightunplugged.org
To donate to Birthright Unplugged visit www.birthrightunplugged.org/donate

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CNN International reports on Birthright Unplugged

August, 2007

To see this video you need to download the (free) "Flash player".

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Counter Tourism

By Benjamin Joffe-Walt | Boston Globe | July 22, 2007

BOLD STEPS Hannah Mermelstein, left, and Dunya Alwan in Alwan's Jamaica Plain home. The women reject Israel's Law of Return, which grants citizenship to virtually any person of Jewish ancestry, and with their West Bank tour are determined to show other Jews the hardships that Palestinians face. (Globe Staff Photo/Suzanne Kreiter)

It's pouring as Hannah Mermelstein and Dunya Alwan lead their tour group along the Israeli separation barrier in Bethlehem. The group gazes at the reinforced concrete wall, which rises more than 20 feet and is covered in graffiti: "I am not a terrorist." "We caged." "Bridges not walls." And, on a colossal closed gate: "We will open." The tourists stand in silence, running their hands along the wet concrete, snapping photographs, crying.

This is what Birthright Unplugged is all about. Founded two years ago, the tiny Boston- based tour of the West Bank was designed to give Jews and others an intimate look at Palestinian life on both sides of the wall. It was created by Mermelstein and Alwan as a sharp contrast to Birthright Israel (officially known as Taglit-birthright israel), a free Zionist tour of Israel that has become the standard first exposure to the country for thousands of young Jews around the world. The women reject the premise that Jews have a birthright to the land and condemn Israel's Law of Return, which grants citizenship to virtually any person of Jewish ancestry. With Birthright Unplugged, they lead tourists through Palestinian cities and villages, introduce them to Palestinians from farmers to politicians, and arrange home stays with families in refugee camps.

At one military checkpoint, hundreds of Palestinians wait in line as the tour arrives. The Palestinians' anger is palpable as, one at a time, each is screened with metal detectors and by soldiers. When it's the Unplugged group's turn, Alwan says, "We're about to be racially profiled and get the long straw." Indeed, Israeli soldiers wave the entire tour through without even a glance at passports. An older Palestinian man, not part of the tour, produces an Israeli permit but is denied passage with a dismissive wave. "Why?" he asks in English. "Just because," the soldier replies in Hebrew. The man is told later his pass was for the next day.

Mermelstein and Alwan say nothing about the incident. "Hannah and Dunya lead in a quiet way," says Marjorie Dove Kent of Jamaica Plain, who participated in the tour. At one point, Kent recalls, she and others witnessed settlers throwing rocks and shouting racial slurs at Palestinians. "I turned and looked at Hannah and Dunya," she says. "There was no lecture, no diatribe. They just looked back at me and let me think for myself."

Birthright Israel, funded partly by the government, has flown more than 140,000 young Jews to visit Israel since 2000. Birthright Unplugged - funded by donations from participants, Boston house parties, and small grants - has brought in about 60 people. But in this lopsided battle to win the hearts and minds of young Jews, the two women are drawing media attention in Israel and the United States and counting their victories one tourist at a time. "We're really the little engine that could," says Alwan, who, along with Mermelstein, spends at least four months each year in the West Bank running the tour.

Over six days, participants - most are young Jewish adults, but anyone is welcome - use public Palestinian transportation and stay in youth hostels, refugee camps, and villages. The women try to avoid violence but say it is Israelis, not Palestinians, who threaten them, and there are occasional scares. On one trip, the group was assaulted with stones by Israeli children in Hebron when trying to visit a Palestinian family. (The tourists quickly took cover, and no one was seriously hurt.)

Alwan, 43, who lives in Jamaica Plain, attributes her passion to her parents' interest in the civil rights movement and her preteen years in Egypt, where she saw firsthand the plight of Palestinian refugees. The daughter of a Muslim-Jewish marriage, she also spent part of her childhood in Indiana, Washington, D.C., and Boston. Mermelstein, 27, a resident of Dorchester, grew up in a liberal Jewish family outside of Philadelphia, taking numerous trips to Israel. At the start of the 2000 Palestinian uprising known as the second Intifadah, she began seriously questioning Zionism. "I realized that some of my beliefs were contradictory," she says. She met Alwan in 2003 while both were volunteering for a West Bank-based human rights organization.

Birthright Israel initially threatened to sue Birthright Unplugged over its name but has decided against it. "We are not interested in promoting Birthright Unplugged," says Gidi Mark, Birthright Israel's international marketing director. "They ride on our success, and to take someone's name is immoral." Others disagree with the premise of the Unplugged tour. "I'm pained by Jews saying we have no birthright to the land of Israel," says Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. "It's sad and pathetic." He adds: "The problem is they're promoting absolute falsehoods about Israel being responsible for the Palestinian Arabs in refugee camps."

The women are undaunted by detractors. "I'm sitting here in Jamaica Plain and, with Jewish ancestry, I'm eligible to move to Israel, buy a home, have full citizenship rights and live in a place from which somebody else was displaced," Alwan says. "It makes no sense to me. . . . We teach 4-year-olds better when they start taking other people's toys."

The women also run a tour called Re-Plugged, a two-day trip for Palestinian children who want to visit their grandparents' ancestral villages, the Mediterranean Sea, and Jerusalem before age 16, when Israel restricts their mobility. "There is a powerful image that will never leave me," says former Unplugged participant Ilana Lerman, who helped chaperon kids on a Re-Plugged tour. "When Hannah and Dunya took the children to see the sea, one girl called her sister and told her to listen. She ran to the tide and placed the phone just over it."

"This is what I'd like to see more of in the world," says Alwan when reminded of the girl. "People of conscience saying, 'This is what should be happening. This is the right thing, and I'm gonna do it.'"

Benjamin Joffe-Walt is a freelance writer who lives in Tel Aviv. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

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A Grittier Trip to the Holy Land

By Sarina Rosenberg | Newsweek | May 21, 2007

A Birthright Unplugged participant passes through a gate in a wall that surrounds a Palestinian family's home in the West Bank village of Mas'ha. Photo: Dan Charnas, Birthright Unplugged alum, Summer 2006.

The Israel that 18,000 young Jewish Americans will see this summer on the free, 10-day trip offered by Taglit-birthright Israel is a land of ancient religious sites, sandy beaches and buff young soldiers. "It's a Jewish identity trip," says Wayne L. Firestone, president of Hillel, which runs one of the largest Birthright tours. But according to Dunya Alwan and Hannah Mermelstein, two Boston-based activists, the Birthright-sanctioned trips don't give a true picture of Israel because they minimize the experience of the Palestinian people. (Mermelstein is Jewish; Alwan, the child of a Muslim-Jewish marriage, calls herself a "secular Muslim-Jew.") In 2005, the pair launched Birthright Unplugged, an "alternative" tour of the West Bank in which the Palestinian narrative takes center stage. This Israel is a land of refugee camps, military checkpoints and security fences. "We want to put people that would otherwise not have the access in direct contact with the Palestinian people," Mermelstein says.

The Unplugged tours are relatively tiny, with just 60 travelers in two years, compared with Birthright's 125,000 in seven years, but applications are increasing. The six-day trip costs $350 and stops at Hebron, Ramallah and Dheisheh, a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem. (Birthright avoids areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority.) Accommodations reflect Palestinian living conditions, Mermelstein says—the group rides in local buses and opts for home stays over hotels. Nova McGiffert, 24, an Austin, Texas, social worker who traveled on both Birthright and Birthright Unplugged last winter, says the latter drove home what she called the devastating results of an Israeli occupation. "During Unplugged, all of my nightmares came true about the realities of the situation," she says.

Unplugged travelers have angered the larger Birthright operation by using the latter to get to Israel free of charge, then extending their stay to experience Unplugged. "Showing the Palestinian side is not the mandate we receive from our donors," Taglit-birthright Israel spokesman Gidi Mark says. "It's abusing their generosity."

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Refugees’ photographs stolen from Allston library

By Tony Lee | Metro Boston | April 26, 2007

BOSTON. In what the victims are considering a politically motivated theft, 18 photographs shot by Palestinian refugee children were taken last week from the Horan-Allston branch of the Boston Public Library.

The midday heist removed half of an exhibit created by children from a West Bank refugee camp who were taken by a Boston-based organization to areas of modern-day Israel from where their grandparents were expelled last century.

Boston Police are still investigating the incident, as others lament the loss as another way to keep these children from having their say.

“ Palestinian voices are often suppressed,” said Dunya Alwan, co-founder of Birthright Unplugged, which escorted the 27 children to their ancestral lands in January. “Part of the reason we [take the children on such trips] is because of acts like this.”

Alwan said she was notified of the theft by an e-mail from the library, which would not comment pending an investigation. Initially, she said she was sad, knowing how far the photos traveled only to be taken away. “

They were hung up on Friday, [the exhibit] opened on Saturday and they were lost Thursday,” Alwan said. “Its journey was long and its stay at the library so short.”

Boston Police spokesman Officer David Estrada said the theft took place between 4-5 p.m. from a room separate from the main library. According to Alwan, if police cannot track down the originals, a set of duplicates will be sent from the West Bank. The remaining photos are set to remain on display until May 25 while the library works to make the area more secure.

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Birthright Unplugged Press Release

April 25, 2007

PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CHILDREN'S ART STOLEN FROM BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
Organizers Suspect Political Motives

April 25 Boston On April 19, 2007, eighteen photographs were stolen from an exhibit documenting Palestinian children's journey to Jerusalem, the sea, and their ancestral lands. The exhibit, which opened on April 14, was hanging in the Honan-Allston branch of the public library, and was scheduled to remain there until May 25.

The exhibit was created by children from Balata refugee camp in Nablus, West Bank. In January 2007, the Boston-based organization Birthright Unplugged took the children on a trip to areas that their grandparents were expelled from and that their families have been prohibited from returning to since Israel was established in 1948. The children documented their experiences and created an exhibit.

"An important part of our work is the ability to bring Palestinian voices to people in the United States," says Birthright Unplugged co-founder Hannah Mermelstein. "This is a sad reminder that members of our community will resort even to theft to silence these voices."

While the thieves of the artwork are unknown, Birthright Unplugged organizers suspect that the motives were political. Library staff from the Honan-Allston branch said that this is the first time a theft of this kind has happened there, although they often display art exhibits.

"We are grateful to the Boston Public Library for allowing us to share these children's images and words," says Birthright Unplugged co-founder Dunya Alwan. "We are working with library staff to replace and re-hang the photos as soon as possible."

Birthright Unplugged has taken more than 80 children on these "Re-Plugged" trips since January 2006, and more than 60 North American people, mostly Jewish, on 6-day "Unplugged" trips through the West Bank since July 2005.

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Birthright Unplugged's Communiqué

Spring, 2007

Dear Birthright Unplugged friends,

We’re back in Boston after another successful season of Unplugged and Re-Plugged trips, and are writing to tell you about our work this past winter and what we experienced in Palestine. We are receiving more Unplugged applications than ever before and are able to select people who will become involved in related social justice work after the trip. Finding participants for our Re-Plugged trips has never been a problem, as millions of Palestinian people would love to see their ancestral lands.

Our season began as a Palestinian-American colleague who we had planned to work with on a documentary was detained at the airport for two days, denied entry to the country, and boarded on a plane against her will. This case is only one of thousands since Israel has begun prohibiting Palestinian people with foreign passports from entering Palestine.

Movement restrictions affect not only entry into Palestine, but travel throughout the region as well. During our last trip in summer 2006, there were more than 700 physical barriers to movement in the West Bank (checkpoints, roadblocks, trenches, sniper towers, etc.). There are now around 500 of these barriers, but we find that people’s movement and access is restricted in other less tangible ways and that people are actually traveling less, not more, than we have ever seen before.

This winter twenty participants, ages 12-67, joined our Unplugged trips. One participant came on the trip to learn more for the Bar Mitzvah project he is working on. Many of our participants stayed in Palestine afterwards to continue the work with connections they established on our trip. All of our participants are interested in working for justice in the region, and many have already become involved in organizing efforts in the US and Canada since returning home.

Throughout the six days that our Unplugged groups traveled together, we heard stories of the effects of the continued US embargo against the Palestinian government and people. We heard about longtime Birthright Unplugged friends receiving demolition orders for their homes. We saw countless Palestinian people denied passage from city to city and village to village within the West Bank. And, as always, we heard and saw examples of daily life under occupation and the constant struggle to survive and resist injustice.

Every season we take our Unplugged groups to visit the city of Khalil/Hebron, a city that experiences more settler violence than any other. One neighborhood we always visit is Tel Rumeida, an area with a handful of ideological Jewish Israeli settlers living amongst the few Palestinian families that remain in their homes. To protect these settlers, dozens of soldiers patrol the streets at all hours, and the Palestinian residents must pass through three checkpoints and a metal detector just to reach their homes. During our first trip this year, as we tried to visit the family we have visited with so many other groups, we passed through the first checkpoint rather quickly, but at the second checkpoint were stopped. We waited in the rain while the Israeli soldiers took their time consulting their commander on the phone. We could see the family’s home 50 meters in front of us on the right side of the street, and the settlement trailer an equal distance on the left side. Finally a soldier informed us that the family could not receive visitors today, that we must have special permits to be in the area.

When we returned with our second group a month later, we were also prohibited from completing our trek up the hill to the home, but the owner of the house came to meet with us on the street corner, informing us as he pointed at a woman up the street that the true army commander of the area was Sarah, a settler who he says makes decisions about who can and can’t enter the neighborhood.

This and many other experiences inspired our Unplugged participants to become active immediately after the trips ended. Many people became involved directly with organizations on the ground right after our trips ended. One person went to teach English and learn Arabic with children in a Palestinian circus, one person began training to lead tours with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, one person helped research land records for a Palestinian family displaced from Jerusalem in 1948, and several people volunteered with the International Women’s Peace Service and other organizations supporting Palestinian nonviolent resistance. In addition, two of our alumni staffed our Re-Plugged trip, accompanying the Palestinian children we travel with.

This winter our Re-Plugged trip began in Balata refugee camp, the largest camp in the West Bank. Located in Nablus, Balata is also one of the most dense camps, with around 24,000 people living inside one square kilometer. Approximately 14,000 of these people are children under the age of 18, and we partnered with the Yafa Cultural Center to take 26 of these girls and boys to visit Jerusalem, the sea, and the villages that their grandparents were expelled from in 1948.

Nablus is surrounded by checkpoints that have become increasingly difficult to cross since 2000. Oftentimes the checkpoints are closed altogether, with nobody able to leave the city. The best case scenario is that people of certain ages and with certain permits are able to cross after waiting in hot sun or cold rain, depending on the time of year.

The day we crossed with the children of Balata, we found the checkpoint “open.” We arrived at the checkpoint after a five minute drive in eight taxis from the camp. We reminded the children that if asked they should say we were going to Ramallah, because movement from Nablus to Jerusalem is even more heavily controlled than movement from Nablus to Ramallah. With our foreign passports and the children’s young ages, we were able to pass through the checkpoint relatively quickly, moving past a couple hundred people who continued to wait. One of the boys who looks older than he is was stopped and questioned, but joked his way to the other side, where we boarded the yellow-plated bus bound for Jerusalem.

In Palestine/Israel, Israelis and people with Jerusalem ID drive yellow-plated vehicles, enabling them freedom of movement that West Bank Palestinians do not have with their green-plated cars. We suspected that with our yellow-plated bus with Hebrew writing on the side, we would not be stopped at any other checkpoints. In case we were, though, we carried the children’s birth certificates with us, proving that they were under 16 years old and thus technically not prohibited from traveling because they did not yet carry Israeli-issued ID cards.

Over the next two days, as we traveled with the children, we shared another wonderful and bittersweet journey. We arrived in Jerusalem on a Friday, when thousands of other Muslim Palestinian people were entering the old city. Many of the children joined the crowds in prayer at Al Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. After the prayer, a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a walk through the old city, and lunch, we headed to the sea in Yaffa. On the way, the children laughed, sang, and listened to the bus driver as he told us historical information about where we were and what we were seeing.

Upon arrival at the sea, the children were so excited that they ignored the cold and windy January rain as they ran into the sea. We had been sharing our phones with the children all day so they could talk with their families, and at one point a girl approached Dunya and asked to call her sister. Dunya dialed and handed the girl the phone, who did not even greet her sister before saying, “hold on,” and running to the sea to hold the phone directly above the ocean waves.

At the end of this long day, we gathered at a Palestinian youth center and school in Yaffa where we thought we would be spending the night. Only 24 hours before we had contacted people at the center, and by the time we arrived we were informed that every child would have a home to stay in. We were thrilled, and most of the children happily introduced themselves to their hosts who, though Palestinian, live in a very different situation than the children from Balata. Even the children who were somewhat apprehensive returned in the morning with smiles as they showed us pictures they had taken with their host families.

That morning we took a brief tour of the old city of Yaffa, since most of the families in Balata are from this area. We then set off with a Palestinian guide to find the villages that the children were from. Our first stop was Yazur, a Palestinian village of 4,030 people before it was occupied and its population expelled in April of 1948. The village is now an Israeli town called Azur. The village mosque, built in the 1600s, is the only building still remaining, and is now a synagogue. The old village cemetery is now buried under a new Israeli highway. Unlike some of the other villages that we have visited on prior Re-Plugged trips, the village of Yazur now reflects a pattern of urban sprawl that has almost completely replaced the Palestinian heritage of the area.

What we found in the second village, Arab As-Sawalimeh, was quite similar. In this village, it is a school room and not the mosque that remains to this day, and the building is now used not as a synagogue but as a yeshiva, a school for religious Jewish study. As we walked through the streets and playgrounds of the new Israeli community that has been built on the ruins of the old village, the children photographed stones from what may have been their grandparents’ homes, and gathered oranges from trees that their grandparents may have planted.

We headed back towards Nablus with the children, their oranges, and cameras filled with photos. Over the next two weeks we worked with the children to narrow their 1,200 photos down to the 30 that we would use in their exhibit. The day of the exhibit, like the days of our trip, was also double-edged. The night before a man from Balata had been killed by Israeli forces, and while the children were celebrating their exhibit, the camp was burying one of its young men. The children photographed the burial and other aspects of their life in the camp, and we printed a second copy of the exhibit to bring back to the US.

The exhibit is now hanging at the Honan-Allston branch of the Boston Public Library, and is available to travel more after May. In addition, the children’s channel of Al Jazeera joined us on our Re-Plugged trip and made a 3 minute piece that will air throughout the Middle East on Nakba Day (May 15 – the day that marks Israel’s declaration of statehood and Palestinian people’s displacement and dispossession).

We have attracted the attention of several journalists in recent months, some of whom have joined us for part or all of our Unplugged and Re-Plugged trips. Journalists from Ha’aretz, the Boston Globe, and National Public Radio (NPR) have all worked on stories about us that have yet to air. We will let you know if and when they do.

We are currently accepting applications for our summer Unplugged trips and hope to work with children from The Freedom Theatre of Jenin refugee camp on our Re-Plugged trip.

Thank you, as always, for your support and interest in our work. With love,

Dunya & Hannah

For details on our programs visit birthrightunplugged.org
To donate to Birthright Unplugged visit birthrightunplugged.org/donate

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Entry Denied: Palestinian-Americans Among Thousands Blocked by Israel from Occupied Territories

Amy Goodman | Democracy Now | January 18, 2007

(To listen: www.democracynow.org/2007/1/18/entry_denied_palestinian_americans_among_thousands)

The Israeli government has effectively frozen visitation and re-entry of foreign nationals of Palestinian origin to the West Bank and Gaza. We go to Ramallah to speak with two coordinators of the “Campaign for the Right of Entry and Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” We’re also joined by a leading Israeli human rights attorney and a Palestinian-American filmmaker recently detained by Israeli officials and deported.

We begin in Ramallah where the Israeli government has effectively frozen visitation and re-entry of foreign nationals of Palestinian origin to the Occupied Territories. Activists and human rights advocates are claiming that since last year’s election of Hamas, thousands have been denied entry into the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli government initially denied that there had been a policy change. But on Tuesday, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories released a letter stating that the policy of denying foreign nationals entry had been reversed. The letter was dated December 28th and had been sent to the Palestinian Authority.

Yet–the organization “Campaign for the Right of Entry and Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory” maintains that they know of at least 14 foreign citizens who only last week were denied entrance to the Territories. They say that in addition to being discriminatory, this policy is tearing families apart, blocking students from finishing their education, and keeping people from their jobs and businesses. The Israeli human rights group B’tzelem wrote in a recent report that the crackdown is part of a broader policy to limit the growth of the Palestinian population by “preventing the entry of spouses and children of residents, and by stimulating emigration from the area.”

We go now to the Occupied Territories where Sam Bahour and Anita Abdullah are with us from Ramallah.

• Sam Bahour. Palestinian-American businessman and one of the coordinators of the Campaign for Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

• Anita Abdullah. Anita is on the coordinating committee for the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. She is a researcher at Birzeit University, Institute of Community and Public Health.

• Leah Tsemel. Israeli Human Rights Lawyer.

• Suzy Salamy.Palestinian-American filmmaker recently denied entry by Israeli authorities.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to go to the Occupied Territories now. Sam Bahour and Anita Abdullah are with us now from Ramallah in the West Bank. Sam is a Palestinian American businessman, one of the coordinators of the Campaign for Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Anita Abdullah is one of the other coordinators for the campaign. She’s a researcher at Birzeit University, married to a Palestinian. Leah Tsemel is on the phone with us from Jerusalem. She’s an Israeli human rights lawyer. We welcome you all to Democracy Now!

Sam Bahour, why don’t we begin with you? Can you talk about the issue—you’re in Ramallah right now, though you are a Palestinian American businessman who also lives here. What’s the problem?

SAM BAHOUR: Well, we have, many of us, the bulk being Palestinian Americans, but foreign nationals of different countries, have come back or come to Palestine following the Oslo Peace Accords to contribute to building a different kind of Palestinian reality, one free of Israeli occupation and one that can merge into the nation-states of the world. And we’ve been here during the good and bad.

We have only been allowed by the Israelis to remain in Palestine with our families and our businesses and our livelihood via tourist visas. That’s the only mechanism that Israel allowed foreign nationals, people who, like myself and like my colleague Anita, who don’t have Palestinian residency, Israeli-issued ID cards to come. My wife does have an Israeli-issued ID card, and many other spouses of foreign nationals do, as well. Israel has allowed us to apply for family unification, but they refuse to process those applications, so we’ve been here for ten, fifteen, some of us twenty and thirty years, coming in and out of the country every three months, as the only way Israel would allow us to.

Following the January legislative elections for the Palestinian Authority and the emergence of a Palestinian government led by Hamas, Israel took an unannounced measure of denying entry to all of those that left the country to renew their tourist visas. Upon re-entry, they were told they can no longer come back, under the premise, most of the time, of security. And basically, this has resulted into hundreds, if not thousands, of families being separated, as well as businesses being separated from their owners.

We are now in a phase where, after nine months of a very global campaign that mobilized people to speak out against this policy of emptying Palestine from Palestinians and foreign nationals, that for the first time ever Israel last month actually documented a policy reversal. That’s what it was being proclaimed to be. In reality, what we have is a document that puts in writing Israelis’ human rights abuses and violation of international humanitarian law. Even post this new announcement of a reversal of this denial-entry program, we’re seeing people who have been refused entry every single day. We had yet another one yesterday from the Ben Gurion Airport. So things have not changed; just the opposite.

The violations of international humanitarian law have now been documented by the Israeli occupation, and they very clearly say that not only, as you said in your introduction, that the visitation to the Occupied Territories is now restricted, but more importantly maybe are the 150,000 to 200,000 Palestinians that are demanding residency rights to remain with their families, and that’s completely omitted from the letter and basically being ignored by the Israelis completely, even though international law stipulates that families should not be separated under occupation. The occupying power, Israel, has obligations under international law, and they must follow those obligations. Otherwise, we have the law of the jungle, and that’s what Israel has created today: a reality of the law of the jungle.

And we’re asking our home countries, be it the US or otherwise, to take a stance not to allow Israel to continue to discriminate against their citizens when they’re entering Israel, because today we are being discriminated against. If you are an American citizen, such as I am, trying to enter at the Israeli border, if they know that we are from Palestinian ethnicity or that we’re heading towards going to the West Bank, we are either denied entry or entry is restricted. If you’re a Jewish American, or otherwise, coming to Israel or even coming to live in the illegal settlements spread out throughout the West Bank, you don’t go through these same restrictions.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask Anita Abdullah, you’re a researcher at Birzeit University. Your university has had a special impact as a result of this policy. Could you talk about that?

ANITA ABDULLAH: Excuse me? It has had a special impact on?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Your university. My understanding is that there are many faculty that have not been able to return to the Territories to be able to teach? Could you talk about the impact on the university of this policy?

ANITA ABDULLAH: Yes. That’s right. In fact, about 50% of students and faculty that were supposed to be here next year have either withdrawn or have not shown up, and several of them have been denied entry. About four or five faculty members and several students who came for a special program to study Arabic and about Palestinian society, they were turned back. And the program had to be drastically reduced.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the research you have done around the people who are not allowed to enter the Occupied Territories, Anita Abdullah?

ANITA ABDULLAH: Well, this is not part of my professional research. This is a part of the campaign that we are trying to document as many cases as possible who are being denied entry, who are not allowed to extend their visas, and thereby not allowed to live with their families or being in their jobs, and so forth. We have been able to document about 250 cases, although we estimate that there must be thousands, but most people do not want to have their case documented, because they are afraid that they will be stained and that this will make it more difficult for them to be allowed in once they go out.

Another thing is that most families in the West Bank, for example, where I live, is that they have several family members who have foreign passports and who have not been able to renew these permits, because of obstacles put in the way by the Israeli authorities, and the rest of the family is afraid to be punished collectively for those members of the family who might not have anymore a legal status here, a legal status in terms of the Israeli definition, although the Palestinian Authority wants them here.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to go to break. When we come back, we will continue our conversation and will, as well, be joined by the well-known Israeli human rights lawyer, Leah Tsemel. We are talking with Anita Abdullah on the coordinating committee of the Campaign for Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as Sam Bahour, who is a Palestinian American businessman, a part of that campaign, as well.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: As the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made her way to the Occupied Territories, was in Ramallah on Sunday, there are a number of Palestinians who cannot go in and out as freely. We are talking with Anita Abdullah, as well as Sam Bahour. They are joining us from a Ramallah studio in the West Bank. And we’re joined by Leah Tsemel, who is an Israeli human rights lawyer, speaking to us from Jerusalem. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, I’d like to ask Leah Tsemel, to what degree is the Israeli public aware of these restrictions? And what has been the government’s justification, although initially they weren’t even acknowledging that the restrictions existed?

LEAH TSEMEL: I believe that everyone in Israel is able to have all the information, because the information is overt; it’s in the daily press, on television. It’s well-published. But it seems that the Israeli public is quite indifferent or even supportive to this attitude towards the Palestinians. Obviously, I believe that this [inaudible] of denying Palestinians—Palestinians are required foreign citizenship from staying in the Occupied Territories or, for that matter, in Israel, and having roots there is an outcome of apartheid.

There is a need increasingly in Israel to segregate the Palestinians, to isolate them. And every educated, well-known people with impact or connections are not welcome. And I think this is the basis of this policy. They don’t want all these powerful foreigners, some of them with money, some of them with education; they don’t want them around. They want to have poor, needy Palestinians, who would sell their power of work cheaply, and that’s it. This is the main purpose, to isolate the Palestinians and to impoverish them. Therefore, it’s not a surprise that even the higher education policy is very clear. They don’t want to have those foreigners to teach in the different universities. They want to dry up the education, to dry up the economy, and to turn the Palestinians into even poorer and more needy people.

AMY GOODMAN: Sam Bahour, I wanted to ask you, what is the role of the American embassy when it comes to people like you? You’re a Palestinian American businessman.

SAM BAHOUR: Well, the role has been different in different times of this campaign. At the beginning of the campaign, back in March of 2006, we were being told that this is an Israeli immigration policy, and basically the US could not interfere with that. We challenged that position, because Israel does not have sovereignty over the Occupied Territories. There is a body of law called international humanitarian law that does have sovereignty while we’re under occupation, and it’s Israel’s obligation to apply international law here. And it’s the obligation of third states, be it the US or otherwise, to ensure that the protected people are protected under international law. And this is where the States needs to play a much more active role.

About six months into our campaign, we were able to lobby enough that we were able to find that Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, in a statement in Washington, D.C., after one of her visits here, actually stated in a public statement that she would do, quote, “everything in her powers,” unquote, to make sure that American citizens are not discriminated against because of their ethnicity. She has been here since, and we have daily had people returned at Israel’s borders. Remember, there’s no other way to get to the Occupied Territories, except through coming into Israel, and they have a right, under law, to provide transit for anyone wanting to reach the Occupied Territories.

As far as the US is concerned, it’s even more complicated, because there’s a 1952 friendship treaty between the United States and Israel that obliges both parties to allow citizens of each other’s country free transit rights, not residency rights, because each has their own immigration policy, but transit rights. And it uniquely serves our purpose, because we’re not asking for residency or visitation rights to Israel. We are looking to reach the Occupied Territories to be able to serve our communities in building a different reality on the ground. And it’s kind of awkward that the US, being the leader of this quartet that’s working on the Middle East peace process, is turning a blind eye when the community of foreign nationals are being turned back, while at the same time calling for more pluralism in Palestine.

The foreign national community here, whether it’s Palestinian backgrounds or foreign nationals from other countries, are all part of the plural part of our society. And, as Attorney Tsemel said, most of them have resources, whether it be academic, medical or economic, that can serve to build a different kind of Palestine. And the international community needs to acknowledge that Palestine cannot change into what they want it to be by remote control. We need our human resources to be tapped to be able to serve building a different kind of Palestine.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Sam Bahour, in terms of the Israeli policy toward foreigners who are not Palestinian nationals or other Americans, for instance, are they giving them more ability to travel into the Territories than the Palestinian nationals who are holding foreign citizenship?

SAM BAHOUR: Absolutely not. Those of us from Palestinian ethnicity are facing this on a regular basis. Equally are facing it, those that are not from Palestinian background. We’ve had several people approach the campaign, teachers from an American school here in Ramallah that have been turned back. We’ve had business people, some very large business concerns, US business concerns, on the ground here in Ramallah serving the economy at large; they were turned back.

The policy has been rather generic in its application, and I think it goes to show, even one step further, that we can take President Carter’s word of “apartheid” and the Israeli researcher Ilan Pappe’s word of “ethnic cleansing” and put those two things together, and the result of that equation would be a continued unilateral Israeli policy to empty Palestine from Palestinians or any other resources that are interested in building Palestine.

So we are just as committed to ending the occupation as everyone else, but we feel that our contribution to ending the occupation may be building bridges and building an economy or building an education system, and it seems that Israel doesn’t want even a constructive approach to building Palestine. The only result of this will be emptying Palestine of about a half a million Palestinians, as well as creating, as Attorney Tsemel said, an economy that’s basically a Somalia-style economy. And I fear that if the international community does not rise to the occasion and make sure international law is applied by Israel, as the law defines, then we will be in for another round of violence that’s much more worse than we’ve seen before.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask Leah Tsemel about first the Israeli government denying there was a policy around freezing visitation and re-entry, and then issuing this policy change, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories releasing a letter stating the policy of denying foreign nationals entry had been reversed. Do you hold out hope with this letter’s release?

LEAH TSEMEL: I heard about the letter. I haven’t seen the consequences on the ground yet. I think there is a general tendency—this has always been the tendency to encourage people who have studied abroad or have married foreigners to immigrate, to empty the Territories as much as possible. And until I will realize that everyone can enter and stay on the visa tourist and then leave and come back again, I would not believe that there is a major change.

I wanted also to mention one very important point. We get information that there are close, or more even than half-million Israelis who live in the United States and have dual nationalities. Those and most of the Israelis have a second passport and third passport and third nationality, just to kind of—to be on the safe side. I think that there should be a demand for mutuality, the same as that Jew Israelis have toward our American citizens, we, the Americans, have to your Israeli citizens, because Israelis can come and go with the re-entry permit or, as I said, other nationality into the United States, and at the same time, there is no mutuality, and Americans are not allowed in here.

AMY GOODMAN: Leah Tsemel is a Jewish Israeli human rights lawyer. She’s speaking to us from Jerusalem. And we’re now joined by Suzy Salamy, who is a Palestinian American filmmaker. She just attempted to get into the Occupied Territories to do a film, to chronicle what’s happening there. She was held in a cell. She was detained, then she was deported. She’s home in Columbus, Ohio, now. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Suzy.

SUZY SALAMY: Hi, Amy. How are you?

AMY GOODMAN: Good. Can you describe what happened to you and when it happened?

SUZY SALAMY: I attempted to get into Israel. I flew into Ben Gurion Airport on the 4th of January, was immediately pulled aside. Once they see your passport and they see your last name—my last name is Salamy; it’s Palestinian—even though it’s an American passport, they pull you aside, and you’re held for many hours. I was held for eight hours, and during that time, I was interrogated by four different people. And they decided at the end of it that I was going to not be allowed to enter. They put me in a detention center. They strip-searched me. They put me in a detention center and then the next morning brought me directly to an airplane, Air Canada airplane.

AMY GOODMAN: Suzy, did you say they strip-searched you?

SUZY SALAMY: Oh, yes. They do that all the time to people they deem as security threats. They went through my items, you know, to see if they had any sort of bomb residue on it. And then they took me into a room and, you know, made me take off my bra, drop my pants, etc., even though I had already been there for eight hours. If anything was going to happen, it would have already happened, if I had anything on me. But, you know, the point is to humiliate and make you feel powerless.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you were born here in the United States?

SUZY SALAMY: Yeah. My grandfather is from Ramallah—was from Ramallah. I have relatives who still live there now. Most of them have left, because of the occupation, but my main drive was to go there and shoot a documentary on this program called Birthright Unplugged, which brings American Jews into the West Bank to show them what it’s like for Palestinians and brings Palestinian refugees into Israeli to show them what Palestinians inside Israel live like. The irony is that I couldn’t get in to show them, but, of course, the American Jews could go in without a problem.

AMY GOODMAN: Sam Bahour, what is your situation right now? My understanding is you were recently denied a permit of re-entry. What is your status and that of your family at this point?

SAM BAHOUR: Well, I’ve been here on three-month intervals for the last 13 years, very difficult in terms of planning for family or business. Last October, when I attempted to renew my tourist visa, it was stamped “Last permit.” Many people have received this stamp during this last phase, and that means that you have to leave the country and take the risk of reentering and possibly being denied entry. This is when the campaign decided that we would take the issue of “last permit” at a very global media kind of approach, and we think that we were very successful in raising all the needed eyebrows from a governmental point of view, as well as from a human rights point of view, and I was able to re-enter.

Right now, I have to take a decision again in February to leave and take the risk of coming back, or like thousands others have done, to ignore leaving and overstay the visa until this is solved politically, but that would mean I would not even be able to leave my neighborhood, because Israeli military jeeps are in every city, including Ramallah, and at any one of those checkpoints or any jeep that would stop me would mean I could be deported on the spot. So this is from a personal level.

From a business level, it’s even worse. You know, this is the holy land. We missed, basically, the Christmas season, because pilgrims were hesitant to come back during Christmas out of fear of being denied entry, because by that time they had heard that throughout 2006 people were being returned.

We were hoping that this movement from the Israeli side by issuing this letter would have solved this issue properly, because we wanted to be able to be able to see pilgrims come back for Easter. That seems like it’s not going to happen. Our next target is summer, because many Palestinian Americans and Palestinians with relatives abroad want to come back during summer vacation, and we’re getting a lot of calls, basically telling us, “Should we come back or not?” And that’s a very hard thing to tell someone, is not to come back to see your family.

AMY GOODMAN: Your family is in Ramallah now?

SAM BAHOUR: Yes, I have—my wife is here and my two daughters, a six- and twelve-year-old. They all have Palestinian IDs. I’m the only one who doesn’t. So if I am denied entry, I fear that it will only be a matter of time before I would ask my family to join me. And I think this is what the Israeli policy is all about: forcing ethnic cleansing in a very sterilized way, one family at a time at the border. And before we know it, we’ll have a half a million people that were forced out of Palestine, just like what happened in 1948, just like what happened in 1967, but in 2007, it’s being done in a very sterile way.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Suzy Salamy, you’re back in the United States. How long were you held for, and what are your plans now? Do you hold out hope with this letter that the Israeli government has released, stating the policy of denying foreign nationals entry has been released? Will you try to go back in to do your film?

SUZY SALAMY: Oh, yes. I will absolutely try to go back in. I mean, that letter, I think, was released before I was detained, so obviously it didn’t work for me. But I plan to fight it as much as I can, whatever I can do from here—unfortunately, it’s going to be difficult—but I do plan to return and try to return this summer to continue to shoot this documentary and visit family that I have there.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you all for being with us. I’m sorry the Israeli embassy didn’t join us. Sam Bahour, Palestinian American businessman, speaking to us from Ramallah, as well as Anita Abdullah, who together with Sam is involved with the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. She is also a researcher at Birzeit University. Leah Tsemel, Israeli Jewish human rights lawyer, speaking to us from Jerusalem. And Suzy Salamy, an independent filmmaker who was just deported from Israel, as she tried to get into the West Bank.

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Creating Cultures of Solidarity: American Jews Redefine Birthright
An Interview with Dunya Alwan and Hannah Mermelstein from Birthright Unplugged and Birthright Re-Plugged

Jodi Melamed | Nerve House | December 2006

(text in larger type below)

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Creating Cultures of Solidarity: American Jews Redefine Birthright
An Interview with Dunya Alwan and Hannah Mermelstein from Birthright Unplugged and Birthright Re-Plugged

Jodi Melamed | Nerve House | December 2006

Israel encourages Jewish settlement through a "Law of Return" that automatically confers Israeli citizenship on Jews, Jewish descendants and spouses regardless of place of birth, while denying the "Right of Return" mandated by UN Resolution 194 to millions of Palestinian refugees born on lands that are now claimed by Israel. Programs like Birthright Israel encourage further Palestinian displacement and Jewish settlement for Jewish North Americans through all-expenses paid trips to Israel.

Jodi Melamed: What are Birthright Unplugged and Birthright Re-Plugged and how do these work?

Dunya Alwan and Hannah Mermelstein: Unplugged is a 6-day trip to Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps. While the trip is designed for North American Jewish people, we welcome people of all backgrounds. Through these trips, we facilitate people's access to Palestinian communities they otherwise might not know how to access, and support them in becoming activists and advocates for Palestinian rights in their home communities.

Unplugged is both a response to the need we see for Jewish people to learn about Palestinian life under occupation, and the need Palestinian friends and colleagues have expressed to get their stories of suffering and resistance out into the world.

Re-Plugged is a 2-day trip for Palestinian children who live in refugee camps. We work with children who are under 16 years old and therefore do not yet have the ID cards that Israel uses to control their movement. We take them to Jerusalem, to the sea, to meet with Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship, and finally to visit the villages that their grandparents fled in 1948. The children document their experiences and create exhibits, films, and artwork in an effort to contribute to their community's collective memory.

JM: If the Birthright Israel tours are designed to be "rituals of return" that implant a Jewish identity committed to defending the Israeli occupation of Palestine, what kind of "ritual" is Birthright Unplugged? What kind of Jewish identity and action might it foster?

DA / HM: For people whose sense of ritual comes largely through a Jewish identity that is tied to Israel and to Zionism, beginning to question that can be a disorienting process. Our Unplugged trips give people a sense of community as they begin to create new rituals and reform old ones to better reflect their values.

Recently, five of our alumni were involved in nationally coordinated actions expressing solidarity with Palestinian and Lebanese people during the high holidays. In Boston, mostly Jewish people confronted the Jewish Federation wearing the traditional white of the holidays and blowing the shofar (ram's horn) as a wake-up call for justice. In San Francisco and Seattle, people conducted a tashlich ceremony, throwing bread into water to symbolize casting away the wrongdoings of the year, including occupation and murder.

JM: What kind of "ritual of return" does Birthright Re-Plugged provide for Palestinian children?

DA / HM: If you ask most Palestinian refugees where they are from, you are more likely to hear "Zakariah" or "Jerash" (occupied and destroyed villages now inside Israel) than "Dheisheh refugee camp" or "Bethlehem." People's sense of memory, loss, and hope for return are alive in their daily experiences, and they identify with the villages their grandparents left by force 58 years ago, even if they themselves have never been there. The connection is a very real one, and one that we are able to solidify by an actual visit to the land.
Upon return—for the first time—to their villages, Palestinian children on our trip have rolled around in the grass; picked flowers for each other; collected plants, stones, and dirt that their grand-parents may have planted or used; and photographed every inch of the land.

The visit to their villages, to the sea, and to Jerusalem are a pilgrimage of sorts, and a ritual of reconstruction as the Palestine they have only seen in pieces and heard through separate stories becomes whole again, at least in their minds and hearts.

JM: Why do you retain the idea of "Birthright" for both programs?

DA / HM: We retain the word "Birthright" for both programs, one in an attempt to debunk the idea and another to re-affirm it.
The idea behind our Unplugged program is to challenge the concept of an exclusive Jewish "birthright" to another people's land. It is to speak out against the Israeli law that says that we, as Jewish people, can move to and claim full rights on the land that the Palestinians, who are from that land, are forbidden from even visiting.

Our Re-Plugged program is an attempt to affirm for these children their birthright to the land they would have been born on had their grandparents not been forcefully removed due to the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state.

JM: What are the examples of daily life under occupation that Jewish participants have experienced on the tour?

DA / HM: Without exception, our Unplugged participants are deeply moved by their experiences on our trips. Some of the most difficult events people have witnessed have involved severe movement restrictions (checkpoints, roadblocks) and settler attacks. On one occasion, a meeting in Hebron was interrupted by the news that a settler attack was taking place around the corner. Our group went with the organization we were meeting with to assess the situation, and found a large group of teenage girls yelling and spitting at Palestinian shopkeepers. The shopkeepers were cleaning up the damage that stones and fists had done just a few minutes earlier.
People have also been incredibly moved by the lives of Palestinian refugees, both living in refugee camps and internally displaced within Israel's current borders. They have seen the narrow streets of the camps, and heard of people's desire to visit cities that our participants have casually passed through and are maybe only 10 minutes from their homes but impossible to reach. They have seen villages inside Israel that were destroyed in 1948, and have seen the pine forests that the Jewish Nationacnbcl Fund has planted on top of the rubble of the old buildings.

JM: What was the path you took that led to Birthright Unplugged and Birthright Re-Plugged?

DA / HM: We were both doing human rights work and supporting Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance. The longer we worked in the West Bank, the more people began to tell us that the most important thing we can do to help is to return to our communities and share the stories of what we saw and to share Palestinian voices with American, Jewish, and other people. Birthright Unplugged began as a result of this.

The Re-Plugged program came the following season and now we cannot imagine our work without it. The two programs complement each other on a symbolic level while providing two distinct experiences for our participants in reality.

JM: What relationship do you see between your social justice work in Israel/Palestine and your work in the United States?

HM: I have worked within the U.S. and Palestine to use some of the privilege I have to challenge and ultimately dismantle this privilege. As a white person, it is my responsibility to challenge racism. As a U.S. citizen in the world, it is my responsibility to challenge U.S. foreign policy. As a Jewish person, it is my responsibility to challenge Zionism.

DA: I see all social justice work as interconnected. The kinds of questions I want us to be asking are how are power and access at play, what mechanisms will make our community(ies) safer and increasingly humane across ethnicities and cultures and other differences, and how do our actions contribute or not to an improving world vision.

DA / HM: People with power do not tend to recognize that they have power, or that others do not, and the myth that each person can and should take care of him/herself prevails in many cultures of power. This leads otherwise good people to stand aside as others are being oppressed, not seeing their own role in the oppression or the possibility of their role in creating justice. With our work, we hope to support the creation of cultures of solidarity that will truly make us all safer and will help to make the lives of all tolerable and hopefully even transformative.