Earlier this month, registration for Birthright Israel’s winter programs opened, inviting thousands of Jewish young people to accept a gift that seems too good to be true: a completely free trip to Israel. Many of these young people will be excited to experience firsthand the country that they have been taught to consider their own…
When you get down to it, Jewish Voice for Peace, the pro-Palestinian gadfly, probably doesn’t get enough credit from the mainstream Jewish community. The activist group does more than just about any other presence on the American scene to get young Jews passionately engaged with Israel. It’s not necessarily the sort of Israel engagement that…
(JTA) — The pro-Palestinian group Jewish Voice for Peace is calling on young Jewish adults to eschew the free trip to the Jewish state offered by Birthright Israel. The organization calls on the young Jews to reject Birthright Israel using the slogan #ReturnTheBirthright. A manifesto on the organization’s website reads: “(T)oday, we must acknowledge that…
It was offensive enough when, in the aftermath of the deadly events in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend, the white supremacist leader Richard Spencer called himself a “white Zionist,” comparing his form of Nazism to the belief in a homeland for the Jews. It was even more distressing to read on these pages a supportive rendering…
(JTA) — More than 200 rabbis from the liberal movements of American Judaism signed a letter in opposition to Israel’s travel ban on leaders of the BDS movement against Israel. The letter released on Wednesday by the Rabbis Against Israel’s Travel Ban initiative, is in response to the incident last month in which Rabbi Alissa…
Long before I was barred from boarding a flight to Israel due to my political beliefs, I felt conflicted about my decision to show up at the Dulles International Airport this past Sunday. I was bound for Israel and Palestine as part of an interfaith delegation co-sponsored by my organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, along…
Pro-Palestinian activists in California claim that they faced harassment and intimidation from Israeli soldiers who were invited to their school last month amidst a weeklong anti-Zionist protest. In May, University of California Irvine’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel invited members from the Israeli organization Reservists on Duty to campus. Their visit coincided with an “anti-Zionism…
Prof. Vida Samiian knew just whom she wanted to blame when the search to fill the Edward Said Professorship in Middle East Studies was suspended at California State University, Fresno. As she stated in an angry letter of resignation from the faculty, Samiian believed that the process had been derailed by “vicious and discriminatory attacks…
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