Who's Birthright is it anyways?
By Sherri Moradian
Your adventure. Your Birthright. Our Gift.
That is the motto of Taglit-Birthright Israel, a Jewish Organization that takes young Jewish adults between the ages of 18-26 to Israel as a gift in order to diminish the growing division between the
homeland and Jewish communities around the world.
With the growing success and popularity of Birthright, the Palestinian Center for National Strategic Studies has cleverly established “Birthright Palestine.” Similar to the Jewish Birthright program, Birthright Palestine is aimed at strengthening the connection of Palestinians overseas to their "homeland."
The first session is scheduled for this summer, and the itinerary has some notable differences when compared alongside the agenda of Taglit-Birthright. Firstly, the duration of the Jewish Birthright
is ten days and it is at no cost thanks to the Israeli government and wealthy Jewish philanthropists around the world. Contrastingly the Birthright Palestine is tentatively a month long and costs
nearly three thousand per participant.
The most noteworthy difference is that Birthright Palestine doesn't support a
two-state solution. Any Birthright alumni will tell you that if their trip engrained one lesson it would be to marry a fellow Jew and have lots of children.
Political issues, land disputes, pressure to be more religious, or sentiments of anti-Palestine were never once addressed on the trip.
Another difference is that they advertise some of their destinations as the "1948 territories, which some people refer to as 'Israel.'"
This salient anti-Semitism proves to be an obvious danger. By forming a connection between Muslim youth and Israel, anti-Semitism will foreseeably heighten and future conflict is essentiality inevitable.
The intentions of such a trip leads one to wonder, is “Birthright Palestine” motivated by the love of Palestine or instead is it fueled by enmity towards Israel.
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