 |
| Volume IX, September 2002, Number 3 |
| |
| EXCERPT: Sins of Omission: The AJC's Project Interchange and the Creation of American Opinion |
| |
| Michael Bhatia |
| |
Mr. Bhatia is a Marshall scholar and Ph.D. candidate at St. Antony's College, Oxford University. He is the author of The Contemporary Environment of Peace Operations: A Global Survey of War and Intervention (Kumarian Press, forthcoming 2003).
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.
|
| |
|
