Over the course of the week Patricia and I spent touring Israel and Jordan, we came across a number of young Jewish Americans who were visiting Israel as part of the Birthright program. I can vaguely remember hearing about this from friends in New York, but didn't really know any details. It is unique, controversial, and astounding all at the same time.
Set up in 2000 by philanthropist guys Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt in cooperation with the Israeli government and a bunch of charities, the program funds 10 day trips to Israel for any young American (and many other countries) that can prove Jewish heritage. The honorable stated goal is...
"to send thousands of young Jewish adults from all over the world to Israel as a gift in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and 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."I'm sure the vast majority of people going through the experience do actually come out enriched and more knowledgeable than they were before. However, I'm cautious in supporting such grand sweeping movements that don't seem to have much transparency. We met a young woman who was a journalism student at a West Coast university and hoping to get an article about the program published. She thought that with such little press about the program so far, she would really be able to make a mark.
What I found really incredible about the Birthright program (beyond it's bold name) is the shear SCALE of it. Say there are six million Jews in America and 160,000 participants from all over the world have entered the program so far. Assuming 70% of those are American (that's 112,000), and that 25% of the 6 million are under 25m.....that means that in the 8 years the program has been running at least 7.5% of the young American Jews have been on this program. Maybe that doesn't sound like a whole lot, but when you consider how rapidly Birthright is growing, that percentage will increase very quickly.
If you believe that two weeks can change a person's life, the progress and development of the Birthright program is certainly one to watch. I can't think of a single other ideological, centrally coordinated institution that has the possibility of gaining more influence in America. Considering how many leaders in American business, finance and politics are Jewish, the potential impact of this ONE program is inconceivable.
But what I really worry about is a one-sided view of things. I am honestly not trying to down-play anything - certain Palestinians (especially Hamas) have done horrific things to Israelis, but we rarely hear about some of the horrible things that the Israelis have done to innocent Palestinians as well. What I would like to see is a more open debate.
The classic example for me is the play My Name is Rachel Corrie that I mentioned in my last post. This play was scheduled to come to a New York theater, showing an alternate view of the Israel/Palestine conflict from an American voice, but apparently strong pressure from people of influence was applied and the play was cancelled by the respected New York Theater Workshop. I thought the investigation done in this article by (left-leaning) magazine The Nation tells the story well. The play was subsequently picked up by the Minetta Lane Theatre and, from what I can tell, didn't get nearly as much attention as in the UK.
Of course, having an ideology and teaching it to a new generation is not a bad thing. It's a wonderful thing in fact. I know that my life is better off because of the Christian lessons I learned when I was in Sunday School. The main concerns of a program like the Birthright is that by painting the world with a finite set of colors, some of the best solutions to the Israel/Palestine conflict will likely be written off before they can even be explored. To do that, you need to see both the Israeli and Palestinian people as humans with caring, compassion, and desire. The last one is usually the most useful. If you believe that most Palestinians desire peace, what would be the way to deliver that to them?
I read this excellent cover article in GOOD magazine in 2007 that interviews Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, the chairman of NYU’s Department of Politics. What I realized is that the Israeli people would first have to view the Palestinians as rational people, rather than barbarians, for something like this to work. There are, of course, some who act irrationally, but, for the sake of my children being able to see all that I saw when I travelled through Israel, I hope that most aren't. And I hope that the Birthright program can help us move in that direction, rather than into more conflict.
Here's a quote from the article where Bueno de Mesquita describes an idea for starting to build peace:
"'In my view, it is a mistake to look for strategies that build mutual trust because it ain’t going to happen. Neither side has any reason to trust the other, for good reason,' he says. 'Land for peace is an inherently flawed concept because it has a fundamental commitment problem. If I give you land on your promise of peace in the future, after you have the land, as the Israelis well know, it is very costly to take it back if you renege. You have an incentive to say, ‘You made a good step, it’s a gesture in the right direction, but I thought you were giving me more than this. I can’t give you peace just for this, it’s not enough.’ Conversely, if we have peace for land-you disarm, put down your weapons, and get rid of the threats to me and I will then give you the land-the reverse is true: I have no commitment to follow through. Once you’ve laid down your weapons, you have no threat.'
Bueno de Mesquita’s answer to this dilemma, which he discussed with the former Israeli prime minister and recently elected Labor leader Ehud Barak, is a formula that guarantees mutual incentives to cooperate. 'In a peaceful world, what do the Palestinians anticipate will be their main source of economic viability? Tourism. This is what their own documents say. And, of course, the Israelis make a lot of money from tourism, and that revenue is very easy to track. As a starting point requiring no trust, no mutual cooperation, I would suggest that all tourist revenue be [divided by] a fixed formula based on the current population of the region, which is roughly 40 percent Palestinian, 60 percent Israeli. The money would go automatically to each side. Now, when there is violence, tourists don’t come. So the tourist revenue is automatically responsive to the level of violence on either side for both sides. You have an accounting firm that both sides agree to, you let the U.N. do it, whatever. It’s completely self-enforcing, it requires no cooperation except the initial agreement by the Israelis that they are going to turn this part of the revenue over, on a fixed formula based on population, to some international agency, and that’s that.'"
If anyone has an opinion on Birthright or the topic as a whole, please send it over as I'm very curious to hear more. Of course, as a blogger with legions of fans (um...hi Mom), a conversation in the comments would be great, but feel free to email me directly as well if you prefer.
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