What you learn on a Birthright Tour of Israel

More

What is it like to go on a Birthright tour of Israel? These are free tours provided to first time Jewish visitors to Israel between the ages of 18 and 26. Tikkun reader Mike Godbe, who is on one of the tours right now, is sending us his impressions. We will be running them over the next few days, along with his photos. [Originally posted under Dave Belden’s name, now under Mike’s so all his posts can be accessed together, by clicking on his byline above. We are happy to welcome Mike as the latest blogger on our team].

Tuesday, March 9th 2010
After an eleven hour flight from Newark, we landed in Israel. We arrived at midnight east coast time / 7am Israel time, and we started the first of many full days.
With achy shoulders and sore necks, the forty of us poured out of the airport and onto decorative slabs of the huge yellow limestone that cover this county. “We are not trying to indoctrinate or convince you of anything,” was the very first thing we were told as a group. If we were secular–great, religious–great, feel like moving to Israel and joining the army–great, don’t feel moved to do anything Jewish ever again–that’s okay too. Among other things, we were told that we would be sent home if we got drunk but that consensual sex was fine; I believe our programmer’s smile-complemented words were, “no means no . . . but yes, we’re fine with yes.”
Bustling around as a huge group, a bunch of young people trying to feel each other out, I was floating in a cloud from jetlag / lack of sleep and that feeling of landing in a new place with thicker wetter air. I was brought back to earth when I got my first touch of guns in Israel, meeting our group’s private security guard. Having finished his tour in the IDF 8 months ago, Davir was still younger than me, 22. Young, thin, and always carrying a rifle.
Packed on the bus next to a new person, we started heading north towards the town of Caesaria–formed by the Jewish (converted) King Herod and named after one of the Caesars. Danny, our guide, is exciting, funny, and British (he’s been an Israeli citizen for over 20 years). As we pass by the separation barrier on the right side of the highway, Danny tells us that Israel always desires peace but peace is hard. He talks about how Israel is a small country–only 9 miles between the separation barrier and the sea where we are currently driving, and so the separation barrier simply helps to protect a small (read vulnerable) country. Further down the road Danny points out an organization on the left that seeks to create Israel-Arab dialogue, a good thing in a country where there is a high degree of separation between Jews and the twenty or so percent of Arab-Israelis. It seems that Danny is careful when talking about Arab Israelis and Palestinians, which is good. Careful doesn’t necessarily mean that there are not implications, however, and with the three or so reminders we get on the first day about how small Israel is, I sense the foundations of a narrative. We will see.
The history and ruins of old Caesaria are incredible, but jetlag is really starting to set in. By the time we reach the northern mystic city of Tzfat (the origin of the Kabala), we are exhausted and ready for sleep. After an cramped nap on the bus, we find dinner and a bed at our Kibbutz in the Golan Heights.
Wednesday, March 10th 2010
I woke up today and the weight of being in the Golan Heights hit me. I was on a kibbutz on what used to be Syria, before 1967. After breakfast we rode up to the top of Mt. Bental, one of the volcanoes differentiating the relatively flat landscape of Golan and thus giving the name the Golan heights.
As we stood around and inside a dormant IDF bunker on top of an extinct volcano, we were given a brief history of the ground under our feet from our guide Danny. The Golan heights are very important, we were told, because of the water that runs from the heights into the Sea of Galilee, which provides a quarter of Israel’s water–an extremely scarce resource in this region. We were told that after Nasser asked the UN to leave the Sinai and started massing troops there in 1967, the Syrians began building channels to divert the water that ran from the heights into the Galilee. Nasser’s decision to try and nationalize the Suez Canal (wresting it from the British and French who controlled it at the time) was explained to us not as Egypt trying to cast out the remnants of not one, but both European countries responsible for a colonial presence in Egypt, but instead as Nasser’s macho Arab mentality. “People in the middle east,” our guide told us, “have a different mentality than people in the rest of the world, pride is very important.” Nasser’s reclaiming the Suez Canal and proclaiming sovereignty over the Sinai was described simply as an Arab asserting his masculinity and being overly prideful. When Israel began its preemptive strikes (an idea that we are told comes from the Bible, I don’t know?) on Egypt and Jordan in June 1967, we were told that the IDF commander in the Golan was eager to see some action himself. I quietly looked around to see if there were any raised eyebrows or questioning of this narrative (including the Nassar / Arab mentality justification), but I was disappointed to find that no issue was raised (I think this has much to do with how likeable our guide is. He is charismatic and funny, and in my opinion he even tries to tell a relatively fair story when it comes to Arabs and Palestinians, but there are still many things implicit and explicit in what he says that are troublesome . . . for instance, the phrasing he used to describe the fleeing by Arabs from now Israeli cities such as Haifa and Jaffa in 1948 was that they “moved out” or “decided to leave” and then “found themselves in another country [Jordan]”).
It was made very clear however that the Golan Heights is very disputed territory, with Israel on one side and the international community on the other. Our guide said that one day this land might go back to Syria in some sort of land for peace deal, yet he then went on to imply through ‘statements of fact’ why it probably wouldn’t work with Syria and often doesn’t work. His example of land for peace not working in the past was Israel’s withdrawal of troops and settlements from the Gaza strip in 2005–“we gave back the land, and we got missiles thrown at us,” were his words. Of course there is no mention that Israel maintained control of the borders, airspace, and seaside of the Gaza strip after 2005; imposed blockades that often cut off the area from food, water, and fuel; and even, it was reported at times, prevented fishermen from fishing off their own coast. Instead we are told only that Israel did its part, and Hamas just kept firing rockets (note: my criticisms of Israeli policy should not be read as a justification for violence, but they are part of an explanation that is missing from the story our group is told).
This oversimplified narrative is the sort of thing that I am noticing happening more and more when we talk about these issues, and sadly I have seen no evidence in our group discussions or in my one on one interactions that suggest my peers are thinking critically about or challenging these simple narratives. I do not intend to put down the mostly wonderful people on my trip at all; it is an observation and that’s all. As we were leaving, one of my peers–a very nice and thoughtful guy–went up to our guide as we were leaving the Israeli bunker in the Golan Heights and said how the “political stuff” made so much more sense to him after our group history lesson, and how physically experiencing the Golan Heights made Israel’s actions “easy to understand when a threatening enemy is in walking distance.” Fair enough I suppose, but where’s the conversation about international law and the right choices for fostering a peaceful future?
After our morning history lesson, we spent the next six or so hours hiking along the beautiful Zavitan river, which flows through the Golan and empties into the Sea of Galilee. The Golan this time of year is lush and green and the hike was very beautiful. The point was made at some point that Israel had turned the area into a national park with all the associated restrictions and protections, and if the land was ever to go back to Syria the landscape would not stay protected since Syria (we were told) has no ecological governmental body for protecting places like this. The idea of an international park was mentioned as one possible solution, though complicated and unlikely.
As our path broke away from the river and brought us closer to our bus, we passed through some abandoned Syrian homes and saw a handful more in the not so far off distance. We were told that these structures were inhabited by Syrian military and their families, making it easier I suppose to dismiss natural feelings evoked by their current emptiness. For all we know, myself included, this is completely true, but the idea that our guide could know for sure that these buildings were not Syrian civilian homes as well as military homes seems highly unlikely to me. How could he know?
On the bus ride to our next destination we were given a little update on current events. During Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank to promote renewed peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, the Israeli department of the Interior announced that it is planning on building an additional 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem (predominantly Arab inhabited land belonging to Jordan between 1948 and 1967, and the hopeful capital of a future Palestinian state). Ban Ki-Moon reiterated that the settlements were illegal under international law, and many others were quick to point out that the move also violates the steps set forth by Oslo some 17 years ago.
After our hike we visited a prominent winery in the Golan with a delightfully comical old bearded tour guide, and then we relaxed in a luxurious natural spa / hot spring located south of the Golan right on the Israeli side of the border with Jordan.

0 thoughts on “What you learn on a Birthright Tour of Israel

  1. The justification of the preemptive attack against Egypt in 1967 makes me think about the justification of the German preemptive attack against Poland on September 1, 1939. I wonder how the guide would have responded to that analogy after my wife talked about her uncle who died in Auschwitz. I suspect it wasn’t a part of his script.

    • wow that’s stupid Jim. Below is a very basic frame of the events leading up to the 6 day war that is pretty balanced I’d like to think. No-one wanted this war but all were dragged into it. It is so far from the liebensraum ethos
      Six-day War :
      Pre six day war. The Sinai campaign gets rid of the Fedayeen raids from Gaza. Egypt was tied with a civil war in Yemen and there was disarray in the arab world. Egypt was fighting there. They were not interested with a war with Israel because they were tied up, because of arab division and because of the economic difficulties in the country.
      Syria was a different story. Syria became the most belligerent of our arab neighbours and used the conflict to deflect from domestic problems. For a while they were depending on which coup succeeded and who was in government. They ridiculed Egypt for hiding behind the UN forces in Sinai. When the Baath came to power it changed their relationship with Egypt but it didn’t affect their belligerency. They promoted Fatah raids as Fatah were in Syria.
      In 1965 the joint arab command has an estimate that they were going to need billions of dollars and four years to be ready for a war with Israel.
      Jordan was not interested in a war because they didn’t want Iraqi forces on its soil. The Lebanese didn’t want war because they didn’t want Syrian forces on their soil. There was a lot of concern that Syria was going to drag them into a war that they did not feel the world was ready for.
      In Feb 63′ the left wing of the Baath party came to power in Syria but it was weak because of its Allouite background. The regime was very shakey which meant they had to face a muslim country. Their problems meant they tried to strengthen the regime by creating a pact with Egypt and and by Keeping the arab Israel conflict alive and kicking.
      There was a demilitarised zone with many Syrian Israeli skirmishes.
      1.Raids from syrian territory
      2.direct conflict between two armies
      3.Syria was attacking Israel’s water projects.
      There is a clear build up of tensions. In November 66′ the Egyptians signed an agreement with the Syrians. The Egyptians signed it to help the Syrian regime to stabilise and to try to get some control over what was happening in Syria. They wanted to restrain Syria until the arabs were ready.
      Israel interpreted this as Egyptian backing for war.
      In 66′ in Israel –
      This is a period of recession economically and things are not good and it was felt and morale was extremely low. It was the first time that more people left than came in. There was a defeatist atmosphere. The political situation was still bitter. This was a period of a lack of confidence where the younger generation were beginning to think in terms of discos and not war.
      If you were looking from the outside making an intelligence estimate.
      1.Levi Eshkol was not seen as an impressive figure and then add that the Soviets were arming the arab armies and there was a feeling that any war would not be as easy as the Sinai campaign.
      2.Israel didn’t want a two front war unlike the single front in 56′
      It would seem as though Israel didn’t want a war. The United States would restrain Israel because they didn’t want any distractions during Vietnam.
      In the beginning of 67′ there was a lot of rhetoric coming from the Syrians. In April 67′ The kibbutzim tried to take some more land and a major battle ensues and Israel downed 6 mig21. There is a major battle over the kinneret.
      Rabin as chief of staff is making some serious statements as well as Eskol saying that if Syria goes on then there is going to be trouble. There is a spate of rumours of Israeli troop movements.
      Timeline of events immediately before the war
      7th April 1967 – Israeli -Syrian air battle over the kinneret
      12/13 May – Soviets tell Egypt that Israel massing forces to attack Syria
      14/15 May – Egyptian Chief of staff reports “no Israeli troops”
      14 May – Egyptian forces enter Sinai
      16 May – Partial Israeli mobilisation
      18 May – Egypt asks UNEF to leave Sinai (not Gaza or Sharm)
      19 May – Large scale mobilisation in Israel
      22 May – Nasser announces closing straits of Tiran
      23 May – Egypt closes straits, Israel postpones response
      24 May – Egyptian war minister Badran in Moscow.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *