In an otherwise barren tourist period, the Dan Panorama Hotel in Israeli West Jerusalem was bustling with American and Russian high-school and college students. A group of wealthy benefactors had created the Birthright Israel program to ensure that teenagers of Jewish descent could visit the 50-year-old state. Thus far, approximately 22,000 young adults have participated. Across the lobby, a smaller but not dissimilar group had assembled. Older, this group of fourteen Rhodes and Marshall scholars studying in Britain had traveled to Israel through the American Jewish Committee (AJC) as part of its Project Interchange Program.
The intention, according to the program’s main brochure, was to “educat[e] American policy-makers and opinion leaders through firsthand experience about Israel and the Middle East peace process.” As such, the participant would acquire “greater insight into Israel and its unique circumstances,” and would “get beyond the portrait of Israeli Jews, Muslims and Christians that is seen in the United States.” The group arrived upon the completion of the second week of relative peace within Israel proper, although approximately 20 Palestinians were killed over this same period in the territories. Within a day of arrival, Israel had captured a freighter carrying 50 tons of arms bound for Palestinian militants, to be followed by a raid on an Israeli checkpoint in Gaza and the eventual destruction by Israel of inhabited Palestinian homes on the Egyptian border.
Anticipating the tone of the program, I was prompted to organize an independent visit to the West Bank and Gaza to witness what could be described as “the other side of the story.” And it was there where the omissions and silences of Project Interchange became most pronounced, and where Palestinian narratives and the often-deadly realities of occupation replaced ambiguous discussions.
Founded in 1982, Project Interchange was formally brought under the auspices of the AJC in the early 1990s, and generally brings approximately 15-20 groups to Israel each year, for a total participation thus far of 3,000. Groups scheduled for participation in 2001-02 include members of Congress (400 thus far), Congressional defense and foreign-policy aides, the Latino media, news talk-show hosts, Washington-based strategic analysts, university newspaper editors, state government officials, university student-body presidents, Christian clergy, the World Affairs Council and national women leaders. As stated in the program’s web page, the Rhodes and Marshall scholars, as with all other groups, had been selected in order to “build and maintain understanding and support for Israel within these national constituencies.”
A program was developed that directly reflected the AJC’s view of Israel, while also satisfying their basic conception of “open” discourse. Thus, on the evening of its arrival the group was met with pronouncements as to the neutrality and objectivity of the trip, the fact that the trip was not “propaganda” and that Israelis welcomed confrontation. Similarly, many speakers would begin by describing their presentations as based on “objective” information. To the program’s credit, the staff accommodated the post-program travel of three participants to the occupied territories and permitted two representatives from the PA negotiations unit to informally address the group, upon my invitation. The program was also touted as a “balanced” presentation, with three of the nineteen speakers of Israeli Palestinian background – one of whom provided the “Palestinian Perspective” on the peace process – and representatives from the Sharon government, the Judea-Samaria-Gaza settlements council, the Meretz party and various Israeli universities. The conference portion of the program was further supplemented by visits to Israeli historical sites (Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, the Golan Heights, Rabin Square) and to places venerated by Jews (Wailing Wall, Masada) and Christians (Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Mount of the Beatitudes). The point, of course, was not only to appeal to American Christians, but also to mentally bridge the millennia between the former and current manifestations of Jewish statehood. Locations of past suicide bombings, from the Jerusalem Sbarro pizza parlor to Tel Aviv’s Dolphinarium, were also identified.
While the program may be casually seen to fulfill the criteria for “open” discourse, the actual result was far different. Instead, through the repetition of one consistent track of opinion, the few alternative viewpoints, presented either once or seldom, would be made to seem extreme. Perhaps the most interesting part of the tour dynamics was the use of an Israeli tour guide (third-generation Israeli war veteran) to both independently add his own views and reinforce or contradict a particular speaker’s presentation. Thus, the powerful central narrative was constantly repeated.
Although the intent was principally to provide information on Israel and only secondarily, the peace process, many of the speakers felt compelled to not only focus almost exclusively on this issue but to deliberately address broader aspects of the Arab world and Islam. What emerged was a static and rigid presentation of the “Other.” The one commentator on Islam, a Palestinian-Israeli academic at the Shalom Hartmann Institute, reinforced these constructions, advocating for Islamic reform by broadly presenting contemporary Islam as medieval, regionally undifferentiated, anti-democratic, anti-woman, fundamentalist and jihadist. This was often accomplished through allusions, but not direct statements, as to the qualities and characteristics of the Palestinians in relation to the Israelis: undeveloped (or primitive) versus developed, Eastern versus Western. At times, the Palestinian were rendered indistinguishable from the surrounding Arab countries. Similarly, this American audience was often told that the rules and values of Western society did not apply in the “East.” Presentations outside of this rigid construct of identities of us and them were thus largely absent from the program’s narrative.
As I would also learn, the question was less one of direct falsehood than of selective presentation and bounded discourse. This process is perhaps best described by the anthropologist Talcott Parsons’s analysis of ideology:
The criteria of distortion is that statements are made about society which by social-scientific methods can be shown to be positively in error, whereas selectivity is involved where the statements are, at the proper level, “true,” but do not constitute a balanced account of the available truth.1
Selectivity was further facilitated by the group’s lack of previous exposure to both Israel and the Middle East, and lack of knowledge or research on the issues and area, which limited the group’s ability to challenge certain facts and arguments.
Aside from two brief discussions by Israeli Palestinians as part of larger presentations, the situation within the territories was not the focus of any presentation. Thus, discussions of Israeli law conveniently did not apply to the territories, due to the end of civil jurisdiction (and the beginning of military courts). And the closures, military checkpoints, settlements, house demolitions and all other military actions were presented as regrettable but necessary for security. Nafez Nazzal countered this briefly by stating that the Palestinians “are being humiliated in the name of security,” but this was overwhelmed by either silence or the consensus that “they’ve done this basically to themselves” and that “Arafat was manipulating the suffering of the Palestinian people.”
Most grievously, this extended to the political geography of the area. For example, although the group was generally not permitted to cross the Green Line during the actual program, the group did so while traveling to Masada and the Dead Sea over a central bypass road. While the group’s attention was directed towards the various Bedouin encampments along this road, Israeli settlements and Arab villages were passed by without notice, although in the case of the latter, one village was surrounded by an Israeli checkpoint with a heavy machine-gun pointed inward.
Similarly, there was little discussion of the divided legal status of Jerusalem or the conditions there for Palestinians with Israeli residency, although we would also cross into East Jerusalem on the way to Hebrew University. A day later, on an individually arranged non-group settlement tour with Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a different reality was revealed. Applying the often used and maligned “apartheid” comparison, he argued that both the Jerusalem municipality and the civil administration in the territories use bureaucracy and law to “render the occupation invisible,” and thus use “banality in the service of politics” and oppression.
As the introductory anchor speaker, Yossi Klein Halevi, a writer for The New Republic, provided “three paradoxes that underline Israeli society.” The first was the most telling, presenting the idea of “concentric circles of siege,” with Israel playing Goliath to the Palestinian David, but in reverse playing David to the Middle East’s Goliath. Although he professed, reflecting current Israeli opinion, that Israel could not continue the occupation, he also argued that “the tragedy of Oslo was that it was an illusion and we were taken for a ride,” with the PA presented as “a Hamas state headed by a Nobel Peace Prize winner.” In his view, the equation of Zionism with racism and descriptions of apartheid is a “playing out of the classical anti-Semitism of the Jew as a source of evil.” While one member of Meretz countered this by arguing that Israel “did not keep 70 percent of the Oslo agreement” due to settlement expansion, Halevi’s view of Oslo was reflective of the general tone: the Palestinians rejected “the most far-reaching offers they will ever see from an Israeli government,” and “Arafat couldn’t make the historical compromise that was required.” The precise nature of this offer – the West Bank’s separation into three areas, the maintenance of access roads, the Jordan River Valley’s all but permanent lease to Israel – was not discussed until the unofficial visit of the PA’s negotiating team. In the evening, after hearing a more liberal approach to the Palestinians by a speaker primarily focusing on the Reform-Orthodox divide, we would meet with a scholar who, while recognizing that the “new frontier of Israeli society was morality,” stated that the Zionist enterprise not only allowed Jews to become directors on the stage of world history and provided the “power to impose [a] reading of history on others,” but was worthwhile, if but to “bring one more Jewish child to life.” The most radical speakers, a settler and a government trade representative, would alternately argue for the PA’s complete dismantling through military action or the expulsion of West Bank Palestinians to Jordan and Gazans to Egypt, with the settler indicating that the Palestinian issue was a “tumor,” which must be “cut” or “else it will happen again and again.”
The program’s direct intention was not revealed until the final wrap-up session. Asked to prepare a statement on either “zones of potential agreement” or “alternatives to agreement,” a substantial number of the participants expressed direct (and at times impassioned) reservations regarding Israel’s settlements policy and treatment of its Palestinian-Arab minority, while others questioned the validity of the various “objective” truths presented by some of the panelists. The participants in many ways had escaped the bounds of discussion by addressing not areas of conciliation but areas of contention and injustice. In response, the head of the AJC’s Jerusalem office, a former IDF intelligence chief, emphasized, “We may not have worked enough.” In his estimation, Judaism was neither simply a religion nor a race, but one of the four historical sources of mankind, a historical peoplehood. The return of this people to their entitled homeland and the “resurrection of a Jewish identity” was the essence. As he said, “This is the question, this is the answer, the rest is commentary”; and “If you missed this point, it may not be too late for you to pick up these elements.” He predicted that this would likely “settle deeper” in the participants as they reflected on their experiences. Finally, he asserted that it was this precise identity “that the Palestinian position tries to deny us.”
A day later, three of us would begin our independent travels within the occupied territories, an experience that would only further call into question the program provided by the AJC. Walking in Ramallah, near the Beit Eil military base and checkpoint, we witnessed the precise nature of the closure policy and a population existing alongside occupation. Ambulances were being stopped for over twenty minutes, Palestinians were being forced to walk over a kilometer in order to switch taxis and return home after a day of work or study. Nor was this the only such checkpoint through which they would have to pass. As we returned to Ramallah, a woman stopped us, pointing to the closure and said: “Do we not have rights; are we not human beings? If we had rights, why would we put bombs to the Israelis?”
In Hebron, we had substantively different encounters with young Israeli soldiers at checkpoints, perhaps broadly reflective of the diversity of opinions and behavior. Commonly described as the “city that makes no sense,” approximately 500 settlers in two different settlements in the H-1 section of the city are protected by 500 soldiers and some 1000 policemen, in the midst of a Palestinian population of 35,000. At the top of the settlement, in reference to the 1929 massacre in which approximately 60 Jews were killed and the remaining population was expelled, is placed a sign that reads: “This market was built on Jewish property, stolen by Arabs, after the massacre.” Directly in front of the main settlement, the first, clearly bored, soldier proclaimed the absurdity of the situation by complaining about “all this mess for 500 Jewish settlers” and indicated that he would need “one year getting stoned to forget this.” At the opposite wall of the settlement, within the now-destroyed and abandoned former vegetable market closed in 1994 following the Dr. Baruch Goldstein massacre of Palestinians at prayer, after being questioned by two soldiers, I questioned one on his camouflage-variant helmet cover. His response: “This is used when looking for victims.”
Spending hours at the Khan Younis checkpoint in Gaza, I would watch as approximately a hundred Palestinians waited to be let through the checkpoint in order to return to their homes. The checkpoint marked the beginning of the Israeli Gush Katif settlement, where 7,000 Israelis have more than 25 percent of the land, separating these Palestinians from the central town and forcing them to live in an enclave surrounded by both the settlement and the IDF. Riddled with bullets, the dozens of houses that had once surrounded the checkpoint had been bulldozed, now forming an informal no-man’s land between the town center and the settlement’s high walls, the wreckage used by children as a playground and by the newly homeless as a tent site. As I proceeded along this zone of destruction, the children pulled me back, warning of the possibility of gunfire from the opposite pillbox. At the checkpoint, approximately 10 Palestinians were let through every hour and a half, with a voice from the checkpoint chanting “pullback, pull-back,” first in a harsh voice, and then in a sing-song mocking tone.
The distance between the project’s presentation and this reality was thus blatantly revealed, and described by one of the other Marshall scholars as “obscene.” The rather rigid and formalized discussions of identity provided by the speakers had contrasted directly with our own individual and more personal interactions with both Israelis and Palestinians. Daily life, whether as described above in the territories, or as seen in the cafes on Tel Aviv’s Shenkin Street or between businessmen and their partners in the territories, did not invade the walls of these conference rooms. Of course, this rigid presentation of the “Other” is often regarded as a product of renewed conflict, and it likely is. But the question remains as to its use when provided to sponsored groups. As such, this type of program, which maintains and fortifies polemical descriptions and formal identities without accounting for the diversity of daily life, perhaps contributes more to the problem than to any sustainable solution.
And what of the participants? Both the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships, and surely all the applicants in both their interviews and personal statements, emphasize public service, whether nationally or internationally. What then did participation in this type of trip (to a state in the midst of conflict and with a history of human-rights abuses) require of the participant, especially one with such aspirations and commitments? Certainly, this group expressed reservations as to the nature of the program and specific Israeli policies, but this larger question remains unanswered. A web search for the reactions of other past participants reveals a mixture of opinions, some parroting the program’s lines, others retaining a degree of independence within the bounds provided, and a select few rejecting the representations of the Palestinians. For example:
- “Israel is fighting for its very existence.” “The Palestinians use women and children as stone throwers in the front lines and put armed men behind them. Then when the women and children get hurt, the media make a big deal about it.” Arafat “has no incentive for peace,” “when push came to shove, Arafat’s mask fell off.” – Nikki Patton, Kentucky
- With reference to America’s recognition of Tel Aviv and not Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, “you start to realize it doesn’t make sense.” – Christine Pelosi, California
- “It is this small country that has rescued Ethiopian Jews on the wings of an eagle, given hope to millions in the former Soviet Union . . . now imagine achieving all that as you are surrounded by 120 million people that refuse to acknowledge your existence and actively support those who wish to destroy it.” On the peace process, “we, as Americans, will be greatly mistaken if we try to bridge this gap [between Israeli offers and Palestinian demands] by pressuring Israeli leaders.” – Jimmy Morales, Miami
- “As for me, I arrived in Israel in 1996 with a pro-Israeli mindset. After the trip, however, I had a clearer picture of the Palestinians’ plight. I now write as sympathetically about the Palestinians as I do about Israelis.” – Bill Maxwell, St. Petersburg Times, Florida
The program had used a process of selectivity and bounded discourse, coupled with a constant reiteration of objectivity, as a method of producing an emotional connection. An actual “balanced” presentation, providing real context, would have required a far different program. The intended outcome was the installation and internalization of Israel’s central founding narrative within the participants, as would be revealed at the conclusion of the program. Yet it is this founding narrative, so constantly reinforced by the Israeli state and cultural figures, that is under attack, not only from the myth breaking of the post-Zionist historians and the waning Left, but also from the demographic realities within Israel and the waves of new immigrants, induced not by a political project but by economic necessity.
1 T. Parsons, “An Approach to the Sociology of Knowledge,” Transactions of the Fourth World Congress of Sociology, (Milan and Stressa: 1959), pp. 25-49 as cited in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 195.
Middle East Policy is fully accessible through the Wiley Online Library
Click below to subscribe to the online or print edition of Middle East Policy and gain access to all journal content.