Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Taglit-Birthright Israel, a free 10-day trip to Israel for young adults with Jewish heritage.
Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Taglit-Birthright Israel, a free 10-day trip to Israel for young adults with Jewish heritage.
Birthright Israel has sent 650,000 young Jews to Israel over the past two decades, and few have complained about their free trip to the Jewish state. But last summer, something strange started happening. Members of IfNotNow, the Jewish organization that raises awareness about Palestinian suffering and American complicity in it, would go on the trips…
Over the past few years, Birthright, the ten-day Jewish roots trip to Israel, has taken something of a beating. Activist groups like If Not Now and J Street U have made a habit of attacking the trip, which has become something of a sacred cow in the Jewish community; these attacks include campaigns criticizing Birthright’s…
I must admit that I took it personally when I saw the pictures of members of the anti-occupation group If Not Now last Friday blocking Third Avenue in Manhattan, and then blocking the entrance to the offices of Birthright Israel. They claimed that Birthright, a program that I helped start, is lying to young Jews…
NEW YORK (JTA) — Fifteen activists from IfNotNow, a Jewish group of millennials that protests Israel’s control of the West Bank, were arrested Friday while demonstrating outside Birthright Israel’s offices in New York City. The activists were college students, according to IfNotNow, which has been protesting Birthright in a variety of ways since last year, including…
(JTA) — J Street, the liberal Israel policy group, will compete with Birthright by launching its own free trip to Israel for college students. The trip will aim to introduce students firsthand to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the lives of Israelis and Palestinians. Organized by J Street U, the group’s college arm, it will take…
At the end of last year, Haaretz reported that Birthright had seen a drop in numbers, of up to 50%. This was shocking news, and seemed to confirm the growing disaffection among young Jews with Israel, emblematized by activists staging walkouts of their Birthright trips. But it turns out that this narrative is far from…
In recent months, several young Jews have walked off of or have been asked to leave their Birthright trips as part of an initiative by the anti-occupation group IfNotNow called Birthright: Not Just A Free Trip. I was a participant on the same bus as the three recent participants who allege they were kicked off…
Like most American Jews, I live with the tension between Israel the dream and Israel the reality. I remember the hope of Prime Minister Rabin approaching peace with his lifelong enemies paired with the dismay at his assassination, I believe that every person living under Israeli sovereignty should receive equal treatment, though I know that…
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