Posted on 07/22/2013 7:22:15 PM PDT by Nachum
This past month I went on a trip to Ramallah with J Street. I signed up for the trip with very little in terms of expectations – I was merely looking forward to a tour of Ramallah. Of course, I hoped the trip would be an educational experience. I expected to hear insight from Palestinians, activists and UN officials that I would disagree with. However, the most alarming encounters I was confronted with were from the American Jewish college students with whom I traveled.
The 20 of us met at the International Convention Center across the street from the Jerusalem central bus station. Most of the students were first-timers to Israel – either having just ended a Birthright trip, vacationing with family, or arriving only a few weeks ago.
We hopped on our charter bus and went to meet with a member of the PLO negotiating team on the well known Emek Refaim street in the German Colony. Not surprisingly, the man was filled with anger. He started off by saying how difficult it is to be a Palestinian in the German Colony seeing Israeli flags waving from houses that were once homes of Palestinians.
He then continued on for the next 40 minutes playing the blame game: “Why can’t there be peace? Because of Bibi. There are two things in this world that will never change – and that is Netanyahu and Allah.”
As he went on and on, I became lost in his web of contradictions and realized that this man has been in the peacemaking game too long. I found it odd that the students I was traveling with did not seem bothered by the bitterness of the PLO negotiator, nor did they mention how they wished we could have heard from an Israeli negotiator as well,
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
Thanks Nachum.
Those American Jewish students who react out of emotion, not reason, who think that Israeli security is ‘scary’ and who have little regard for public safety will return to the U.S. and vote Democrat, as their parents and grandparents did. Unlike their parents, however, they will not support a strong Israel. In a generation, Israel will be on her own.
This is a terrific article. Thank you for posting it. I am a regular traveler to Israel, have been to thriving Ramallah, and have stood equally uncomfortably as the author at the gravesite of Arafat. I am so sick and tired of hearing the sadsack stories about the pitiful “Palestinians.” Just a few days ago I sat alongside an American idiot going on about how the Israelis deny them water. Thankfully I was in a situation where I could speak the truth to her, after which she got up and moved away from me without a word. Aaargh!
I visited Israel a few years ago and was impressed with the number of satellite dishes on top of Arab homes :)
The problem is the birthright trips are to short an to sheltered . These kids get a quick view of Israel but it’s not long enough to really find out what life is like there .
What ever happened to the student exchange trips? The High school I went to had something set up where kids could go for a semester and stay on a kibbutz where they had to work and go to school to learn the language (they had to pay for it too but it wasn’t that much) That meant they actually got exposed to what was really happening there
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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