How to Combat the Left’s ‘Alternative’ Israel Brainwashing

 By Ardie Geldman, COMMENTARY    

Excluding drive-time traffic, a car ride from the southern end of Jerusalem to the West Bank community of Efrat takes about 15 minutes. One travels along Israel’s Route 60 on the segment known as the “Tunnels Road” because its construction necessitated the first two tunnels in Israel to be cut through mountainside. The road was opened in 1996 to let commuters bypass the Arab towns of Bethlehem and Beit Jala, but mostly to avoid the Deheisha refugee camp. Cars driving on this road displaying yellow Israeli license plates had often been the targets of rocks and occasionally Molotov cocktails and gunfire.

Efrat’s first homeowners moved into the suburban hilltop community in April 1983. Starting with 50 families, some 250 souls, Efrat has since developed into a full-fledged, independent municipality whose current populace is about 12,000. Its master plan, approved by an Israeli Labor government during the mid-1970s, foresees a total population of 30,000. Efrat boasts a number of highly rated schools, a large and active community center, a well-used multilingual public library, sports fields and playgrounds, shopping centers, a soon-to-be completed shopping mall with underground parking, a plethora of medical clinics, and numerous synagogues (to date all Orthodox)—in short, pretty much every type of institution or facility that makes a town a town.

The view from Efrat is pastoral, even biblical. Local Arab shepherds daily guide their flocks of sheep and goats across the abutting highways and past adjoining vineyards. Some of these vines were planted only in the early 1980s by residents of nearby El Khadar on empty unclaimed fields in a failed effort to thwart the first stages of Efrat’s construction. In late spring and summer, the green vineyards carpet the valleys that form the floor below the surrounding southern Judean hills. Along some of these hilltops lie the homes of Efrat, with their distinctive burnt-orange tiled roofs.

Another thing about Efrat. Its proximity to Jerusalem and several Palestinian Authority towns has facilitated its becoming a popular destination for politically themed visits, part of a larger industry known as alternative tourism. This refers to visits by foreigners, often self-described “social-justice warriors,” touring conflict areas in different parts of the world. They come to observe circumstances on the ground, to meet the actors, and to learn about the local history. Some arrive with more activist agendas.

I began meeting with foreign tourists in Efrat in 1990 during my term as an elected member of the Efrat town council. Initially the groups with whom I met were exclusively Jewish, mostly Americans who were curious to visit a new Israeli “settlement,” and Efrat, as noted, was easily accessible to tourists staying in Jerusalem hotels. The ruefulness expressed in more recent years by many American Jews outside of the Orthodox community regarding the presence of Jews living in Judea and Samaria hardly existed in those days. To the contrary, I remember the pride expressed by Jewish visitors to Efrat who were impressed by what they saw.

Following the September 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the newly formed Palestinian Authority, the first step in a process intended, among other things, to reduce violence in the region, Israel experienced a wave of terrorist attacks, mainly suicide bombings in different parts of the country, resulting in a precipitous decline in the number of American Jewish tourists.

During this period, I received a phone call from a tour guide based in the nearby Arab town Beit Sahour. He had heard that I met with overseas visitors and wanted to know if I would meet with a group of Australian tourists. With no little naiveté on my part, and having become comfortable with discussing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict with mostly uncritical Jewish groups, I agreed. To my chagrin, when the group arrived in Efrat, following an initial exchange of pleasantries, I found myself the target of a volley of contentious questions from these non-Jewish visitors. Why would I build my house on other people’s land? Why was the travel of all Palestinians being restricted? Why do Israeli soldiers shoot live bullets at Palestinian children?

The continuation of violence resulted in Jewish tourist groups refusing to travel beyond the 1949 armistice line out of fear, even though most of the terrorism was taking place within Israel proper. During the years of the second intifada (2000—2004), American Jewish tourism virtually disappeared. Many Christian groups, however, continued coming. Over time, word of my willingness to meet with pro-Palestinian foreign groups spread, Efrat became the default “illegal settlement” to visit, and I became somewhat of a go-to settler for dozens of Christian and secular human-rights cum social-justice groups mostly from North America and Western Europe.

Over the years, using the name “iTalkIsrael,” I have spoken to thousands of tourists in Efrat. This activity is part of the broader burgeoning field of Israel advocacy, Israel probably being the only sovereign nation-state in the world in need of such championship to defend its existence. Unlike most others working in this field, I strive not to preach to the converted. The overwhelming majority of people with whom I meet do not try to hide their pro-Palestinian sympathies. Why, I am often asked, do these people come to Efrat? Undoubtedly they come for a variety of reasons. The most common, I believe, is curiosity.

American visitors generally have some Christian affiliation, though this varies from high church to Quakers, Mennonites, and some nonaffiliated congregations. Western Europeans coming from France, Germany, Belgium, England, and Ireland are less likely to self-identify as Christians, though many acknowledge being raised in Christian homes.

The groups I meet range in age from as young as high school to senior adults, including some of mixed generations. College-age groups are common. I am a Baby Boomer who was politically aware and active on the campus of Northwestern University at the height of America’s entanglement in Vietnam. During that era, for all but a minority of the student body, it was a given that “Nixon’s War” was unjust and wrong.

And so it is today with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The foreign students with whom I meet in Efrat universally view the Palestinians as the oppressed and Israel as their oppressor. This is consistent with the results of a Pew Research Center survey from May 2017 cited by the New York Times that indicates the Palestinian cause is rapidly gaining support among American university students while support for Israel is eroding.

One outstanding example is a recent visit by a group of undergraduates from Boston College. Their coming to Efrat, as is often the case, was but a short stopover within their extended itinerary. The students’ keener interests lay elsewhere as their time in the region was mostly devoted to meeting with Palestinians, especially activists, and with Israeli Jews on the far political left. They came to Efrat to witness “an illegal Israeli settlement occupying stolen Palestinian land” and for the opportunity to meet an “illegal settler.”

Their short time in Efrat, if approached differently, could have been an educational opportunity to better understand the other position framing the Israeli–Palestinian conundrum, the position with which these students were less familiar. My potential contribution lay in a perspective that came from living in Efrat for nearly 33 years. Time and propinquity have by default granted me insight into some of the complexities and nuances of this conflict that are unattainable in any other way. In addition to observing and writing about this topic, I meet with hundreds of visitors each year.

These students’ seminar on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict began in Boston with classroom studies followed by a mandatory 10-day overseas field visit. Their stop in Efrat lay somewhere in the middle of their schedule. After finding seats in the synagogue, the students waited until the completion of my introduction and my request for their questions. They then responded. Their questions and the tone in which they were presented were accusatory and antagonistic to the point of hostility. It seemed as if this group had arrived with a prepared, even scripted, agenda. The issues they raised were drawn from the familiar litany of Palestinian calumnies against Israel and settlers. Among them:

“Does providing security for your settlement require the IDF to arrest and torture seven-year-old Palestinian children?”

“What would you say to a Palestinian whose home is being demolished in order to make way for a new Israeli settlement?”

“We spent time with Palestinian families who say they often have no water because of Israel. Why does Israel steal water from Palestinians?”

The feeling in the room was akin to a combined cross-examination and indictment where both Israel and I were on trial. This was not the Q&A of any conventional academic setting. These students’ purpose in coming to Efrat was neither to listen nor to learn. They had descended into the belly of the beast on a mission to deliver a message. Wherein lay the source of their animus?

Their hostility may be presumed to have been the product of a combination of sources: the bias of their classroom lectures, the partisan readings they had been assigned, and the politically skewed experiences of their tour up to that point. Their course, Sociology 3367, “Human Rights and Social Justice in Israel & Palestine,” is taught by Boston College Associate Professor Eve Spangler. Spangler is an outspoken and inveterate pro-Palestinian-rights activist. Outside of class she serves as a faculty adviser and a speaker for the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and she promotes the BDS movement. Spangler is also a founding board member of American Jews for a Just Peace and lectures for Jewish Voices for Peace, two radical political groups at the far-left margins of the American Jewish community.

Sociology 3367, according to the course syllabus, “is designed to prepare students to better understand the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.” Students are advised that the course is presented through a “human rights framework.” It is intended “to test [the students’] capacity for using their education to serve the world.…The course is an opportunity to explore the possibility of making history.”

In describing the course’s higher purpose, the syllabus casually integrates incendiary words and phrases such as “apartheid,” “genocide,” and “ethnic cleansing/sociocide,” subtly attributing all these evils to the state of Israel. The syllabus further states that the students will be “bearing witness—to the sufferings and resilience of occupied communities and the courage and wisdom of dissidents,” a barely veiled reference to Palestinians living under Israeli authority. Such emotionally charged and partisan language belongs to the lexicon of the far left and its repertoire of accusations against the Jewish state. Introducing these terms into the course syllabus is a clear signal to students as to the political views of the professor.

In an ostensible show of academic balance, the course’s readings are authored by both Palestinians and Israelis. While it is to be expected that Palestinian authors write from a Palestinian perspective, anyone familiar with the literature on this topic will immediately recognize that the Israeli authors chosen by Spangler are all leftist academicians such as Morris, Pappe, Segev, Rogan and Shlaim, Kimmerling and Migdal, who also promulgate the Palestinian narrative. Some, such as Pappe and Shlaim, have even denounced Israel and have taken academic positions elsewhere. This is intellectual obfuscation at its best. How does one not wince at the statement found in the syllabus: “Academic integrity is a standard of utmost importance in this class”?

Spangler also heads the fact-finding “Israel/Palestine” trip. The professed purpose of this tour is to enhance the students’ classroom readings and discussions with an opportunity to study the conflict through on-site observation and meetings with both Israeli and Palestinian players. To facilitate the educational content and logistics, Spangler turned to the Siraj Center, a Palestinian travel agency located in Beit Sahour, adjacent to Bethlehem; no Israeli agency is credited in the planning. The Siraj Center is a successful vendor of “alternative tours” whose stated objective is to make tourists “more aware of the situation in Palestine.” Although this visit is described by the course syllabus as “an immersion trip to Israel/Palestine,” nowhere on the trip’s itinerary does one find “Israel.”

The 10-day itinerary clearly reveals the tour’s ideological purpose. It is mainly dedicated to meetings with Palestinian speakers or with Israelis on the far political left who champion Palestinian nationalism even as they challenge the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism. The three exceptions are a visit to Yad VaShem (Israel’s National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem), the stopover in Efrat, and another short visit to the southern Israel border town of Sderot. These are the sole opportunities afforded the students to hear Israeli voices, be they Jewish or Arab, that do not emanate from the extreme left. But even visits to Yad Vashem have been exploited by some to serve the Palestinian narrative. Some anti-Zionist Israeli tour guides, Jews and Arabs, use the museum’s horrific scenes to liken the present circumstances of the Palestinians to the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis.

Almost everywhere they traveled, the students were guaranteed to receive an earful of anti-Zionist rhetoric. The roster of speakers and sites included:

Sahar Vardi, a spokesperson for the Friends Service Committee’s Israel program in eastern Jerusalem, who served three prison sentences for her refusal to be conscripted into the Israel Defense Forces;

OCHA, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a United Nations relief

organization that functions as a major public relations organ promoting Palestinian interests;

Mahmoud Abu Eid, a prominent Palestinian journalist and critic of Israel; a tour of the city of Hebron from the Palestinian perspective;

Tent of Nations, a small plot of land developed as an environmental farm located in the center of the Israeli-settled Gush Etzion region

south of Jerusalem by the Nassar family who use their claim of property ownership and the history of their court case against the Government of Israel as a public relations and income generating source;

overnight home hospitality with Palestinian families in Bethlehem;

lunch at a Palestinian refugee camp;

crossing an IDF checkpoint alongside Palestinians;

a visit to Birzeit University, a center of Palestinian political radicalism;

a tour of the Arafat Museum and Mausoleum in Ramallah;

a video conference with Gaza residents;

a meeting with Mariam Barghouti, a Ramallah-based journalist and advocate of the BDS Movement, and others who represent a similar perspective.

Other than myself, there was no Israeli voice from the right of the political center, or even from the center left.

By the time the students arrived in Efrat there was no gainsaying their partisanship. Conflicting facts were dismissed, some even ridiculed. Anecdotes they were offered that described day-to-day coexistence between local Jews and Arabs were ignored because they didn’t fit the recognized paradigm. Consequently, additional information that would have broadened their understanding of the conflict was either rejected or remained undisclosed, since this acrimonious session ended earlier than it might have otherwise.

The Boston College visit seemed designed to overwhelm the students with powerful affective experiences and poignant imagery that lent credence only to the Palestinian narrative. It appeared to be a stratagem whose purpose was to win over the students’ emotions. In this respect, it was similar to other “alternative” tours whose covert objective is to capture people’s passions. Such tours target the heart, not the mind.

These experiences have engendered the development of a different kind of “alternative” tour program in Efrat, a “counter tourism” itinerary, as one person has quipped. It is based on a two- to four-day homestay in the community, Thursday through Sunday, for Christian college students. The participating Christian institutions, it should be noted, are not affiliated with any of the evangelical churches known for their Zionist sympathies. The semester-long overseas Middle East Studies programs they offer are based in surrounding Muslim countries, Jordan, Egypt, or Turkey. They allocate more time to the Islamic world, Christianity, and to the region’s Palestinians than to Israel. But their program directors are committed to offering their students a somewhat broader perspective of the conflict.

These programs commit to an extended stay in Efrat, in contrast to the more typical 90 minutes, which affords the students a tour of the town and the surrounding Gush Etzion region. During their stay, they listen to lectures from some of the local residents, among them distinguished professors, senior military and security personnel, and noted rabbis. They learn about the state of Israel, Judaism, Jewish history ,and Jewish culture, this time from a Jewish and Zionist perspective. But, according to over 500 post-visit completed questionnaires received to date, the greatest impact on the students is made by the families who serve as their Shabbat weekend hosts. These are a number of English-speaking families who generously welcome these students into their homes.

Once the sun begins to set on Friday evening, these Christian students are immersed, for the first and most likely only time, in a full and traditional Shabbat. They attend synagogue services on Friday night and Saturday morning, returning each time to a sumptuous meal accompanied by traditional Shabbat melodies. The no-holds-barred Shabbat-table discussions delve, I’m told, mainly into Jewish religious practices and beliefs about which the Christian students are endlessly curious. But the talk usually gets around to politics and how these Efrat residents view the conflict. The discussions often last long into the night or at least until the lights in the house are automatically extinguished by the Shabbat clock. Throughout their stay, the students encounter a cross section of the residents. They listen to the many views and learn that some, to their surprise, strongly contradict one another.

The “alternative” weekend in Efrat challenges some of the opinions about Israel to which these students had previously been exposed. Following this weekend, one student wrote: “No one can be dehumanized—IDF, settlers, right-wing Zionists—they’re all people like me trying to do what’s right.” Another wrote: “Settlers are people too.”

What accounts for the dissimilarity in the responses of students whose itinerary brings them to Efrat for only a lecture, the Boston College group being only an extreme example, and those who remain for a Shabbat weekend? Both are familiar with Israel being publicly censured in mainstream and social media. Both have been exposed to readings in which Israel is accused of practicing apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Both arrive in Efrat influenced by previous meetings with Arab and Israeli speakers on the far political left.

Student groups making only a short call at what is, in their eyes, a “settlement” such as Efrat are virtually fated to leave with the same opinions they had when they arrived. Their visits are too circumscribed to facilitate the type of social interaction with residents that with sufficient time can engender trust and credibility. Without developing trust and credibility in the people they meet, the students remain resistant to allowing any contradictory information to alter their world view.

By contrast, students whose visit lasts a few days, irrespective of their experiences until then, develop a sense of Efrat as a community of people—people with names and faces, with family roles, with personal aspirations and personal problems, with favorite sports teams and musical groups, and with dental appointments just like them. These people have opinions, many opinions. And they express a desire for peace. Upon their departure, most of these students acknowledge a newly acquired appreciation for the complexity of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Without losing sympathy for the Palestinians, they are willing for the first time to take Israeli arguments under consideration, and they recognize some of themselves in these “settlers.”

Both types of visits point to the importance of emotions in shaping people’s political views, a fundamental principle for those engaged in Israel advocacy. The pathos engendered in visitors taken to witness the squalor of a Palestinian refugee camp or the overshadowing presence of “The Wall” is calculated to elicit strong sympathy for the condition of the Palestinians, especially when these experiences are presented from the Palestinian perspective of victimhood. It is easy to understand how, following these experiences, a frontal lecture by an anonymous settler who insists on the ancient historical and modern legal rights of the Jewish people to Judea and Samaria or, even less relevant, being shown a PowerPoint presentation that boasts of Israel’s high-tech achievements, might fall on deaf ears and even rankle a group of compassionate foreign visitors. Pro-Palestinian ideologues and the Palestinian Authority long ago learned that the mind follows the heart and not the other way around. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, take note.