Criticisms endure as US-Israel student exchange resumes

A limited number of Jewish US college students are resuming a programme of free trips to Israel, amid tighter security and ever-tougher questions about the wisdom of formative introductions that offer them only one perspective on a complicated global flashpoint.

After assessing security conditions in the aftermath of the October attack by Palestinian militants, the programme known as Birthright Israel said it would host about 350 participants this month for its expenses-paid 10-day tours. Typically about two-thirds of the visitors are college students and about 80 per cent come from the US.

Such numbers are substantially below the annual levels of 30,000 US participants who typically participate in Birthright during the winter and summer academic break periods. Heavy declines in participation date back to the Covid pandemic, long before the current round of violence between Israeli and Palestinian armed forces.

Political controversy over Birthright also goes back years – well ahead of the current partisan sniping in the US over academia’s responses to the latest Palestinian uprising – given that the trips rely heavily on funding from US and Israeli conservative activists and exclude Palestinian perspectives.

“If you don’t take American Jews to listen to Palestinians, on both sides of the green line, you’re not showing them an honest portrait of Israel,” said one leading critic of Birthright, Peter Beinart, an associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York.

A historical centre of such criticism has been Harvard University, where the president, Claudine Gay, was forced out by conservative politicians and donors who criticised her response to alleged antisemitism in anti-Israel protests on campus.

Harvard is one among a number of US universities where students are offered an optional extension to Birthright trips – neither supported nor forbidden by Birthright organisers – where the students visit Palestinian areas under Israel’s military control.

The university’s critics of Birthright include Nadine Bahour, a research coordinator for the Palestine Programme for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, who as an undergraduate at the university warned that Birthright trips were “truly detrimental to citizens of the region” because they gave young people a dangerously limited perspective on the situation.

Birthright officials said their process for choosing tour locations in Israel “prioritises [the] safety and security of participants”.

Birthright was founded in 1999 and calls itself the world’s largest educational tourism organisation. The 10-day trips, costing participants only a $50 (£40) registration fee, typically serve college students during their winter and summer breaks. While college students are the majority, Birthright is open to all Jewish adults aged 18 to 40.

The programme counts more than 850,000 alumni from 68 countries – including several thousand now being recruited to come back to Israel to help the country cope with the effects of the war, especially the loss of foreign field workers needed to pick and pack harvest crops.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com