US Jews Protest Israeli Tour Guides Erasing Palestine’s Existence
West Bank, MINA – An American Jew who visited Israel with the right-wing Israeli non-profit organization, Birthright, accused a tour guide of erasing the whereabouts of Palestinians after learning that his travel map included the occupied West Bank as part of Israel.
In a video clip shared online, the unnamed man criticized the itinerary for promoting and supporting Israel’s ongoing policies of colonialism and apartheid, while denouncing it as “unfair”.
“If I don’t ask anything, how does anyone know where the West Bank is because this map doesn’t say anything. It completely erases the fact that Palestine exists,” said the US Jewish man as quoted by the Middle East Monitor on Saturday.
“This is not fair. The real problem is that it is inappropriate for all of us to be shown this map as if it is the truth when only the Israeli government thinks that the West Bank is part of Israel. The international community and the Palestinians themselves would never say that,” he added .
Since its founding in 1999, Birthright has brought around 500,000 young Jews from around the world on free trips to Israel.
According to the organization, the trip, which is largely funded by the Israeli government, is to reduce the growing divisions between Israel and the worldwide Jewish community, strengthen a sense of solidarity among world Jews and strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity as well as connect with Jewish people.
However, activists defied the occupying state during the trip apart from handing out petitions, protesting on campuses and blocking the Birthright headquarters in New York.
In 2018, a petition signed by 1,500 Jewish students demanded Birthright to include Palestinian speakers in its itineraries to discuss the realities of the occupation.
“Palestinians there live under military occupation, they cannot vote,” the activist says in the video.
“They are water controlled by others and they can’t access it and their life is made like hell because they can’t even see their families in Jerusalem and go to another city because they never know when,” he added. (T/RE1/P2)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
