Birthright Walkout Leaders Create GoFundMe For Canceled Flights, Lost Deposits

Image by Via GoFundMe

By Alyssa Fisher July 18, 2018

Eight Birthright participants who walked off their tours Sunday created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to cover their canceled flights and forfeited deposits.

The participants were on two separate trips, according to the GoFundMe page. Birthright didn’t approve of them deviating from their itinerary to meet with a Palestinian family that lived in East Jerusalem for more than 25 years and was being threatened with eviction, but they left anyway, after being told by their tour guide that they could be liable for the cost of their trip and their return flight.

For the first six days of the journey, the participants say they tried asking questions about the Occupation and “demanding a more detailed and accurate picture of the truth,” they say. In the statement, they wrote that a tour guide told them, “Birthright is curating a very specific truth that they want us to hear, a version of the truth that the Israeli government wants to tell and if we did not like it then we should leave the program and go find another narrative.”

Since leaving the trip, they’ve visited various families and communities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, learning about their experiences.

The group is looking to raise $10,000. Within the first 12 hours of the campaign, they had raised a little less than $1,500. The participants have been in touch with IfNotNow, an American-Jewish progressive activist group, which connected them with activists in the area and one of the families. The organization has been sharing the GoFundMe page.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO