Taglit-Birthright, or simply “Birthright” was started in 1999. It has brought more than 600,000 people from 67 countries to Israel, with the age of participants ranging from 18 to 32.
According to Wikipedia, it is a program that has been copied by Armenia, Hungary and Greece in order to reacquaint the diaspora of those nations with their original homeland.
There has been much recent controversy because of the infiltration of radicals who demand equality for the Palestinian narrative on all trips.
Birthright is defined as a pro-Jewish, Pro-Israel program. Of-course people are entitled to their own opinion or point of view, but to insist that those views be included in some grand coalition of opinion is an assault on the freedom of action and choice of those with whom they disagree.
It is crazy that anyone would ever consider agreeing to any of the demands of the anti-Zionist or antisemitic Muslim or “Progressive” left. What Birthright is not, is the propaganda arm of the eliminationist and therefore antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, nor is it the polite arm of the Muslim Brotherhood or, for that matter, the assimilationist anti-Zionist arm of the nominally Jewish, radical Left.
And the reason for not allowing anti-Zionism its place at the pro-Zionist table is again, very simple. Balance to the Muslim and fascist Left, is all about dominating debate and denying any opponent the right to their chosen narrative. It is never about balance. It is a relentless assault on history and on the freedom that in a religiously pluralistic society, must, be honoured without exception. You cannot demand a place at the table when all you are interested in doing is over-turning that table when you get there.
Jewish rights have always been under assault but from the beginning, the core of the Israel - Palestine conflict was the denial of Jewish rights to self-determination in Palestine; there were conditional rights for native Jews and even fewer rights for Jewish refugees and Jewish immigrants, no matter from where they came!
Since the 1960’s the radical Left has grown, incrementally, more antisemitic in its orientation and propaganda towards the conflict. What was once termed a conflict between competing anti-Colonialist, anti-Imperialist ideologies (universalist Zionism and ethnically exclusivist pan-Arabism) is now viewed through a lens that is wholly defined though a Muslim antisemitic narrative.
Jews who have been returning as individuals and in successive waves of immigration to Zion for over one-thousand years (despite being subjected to oppression by Arab Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land and surrounding region) are declared to be ‘interlopers’ and ‘oppressors.’ Jews who have experienced being refugees and immigrants throughout history are defined as being “white” and therefore not entitled to either refugee status or immigrant status. Uniquely, Jews of all colours and racial identities are stripped of their genetic make-up and placed into one convenient but erroneous grouping; condemned for being something they are not because it allows the bigot and the racist to place them into one stinking pool of inhumanity. It eases a call for the dissolution of their humanity prior to their physical destruction. We were here once before, in Nazi Germany. At one time we could have said that the difference between German Nazi antisemitism and, a contemporary conspiracy between the radical Left and Islam, was to be viewed in terms of crude racial stereotyping and ‘the lie persistently told as truth.’ Today, not so much.
A safe space is a physical or metaphorical place for people, usually of marginalized identities, to feel free of judgment or harm. https://www.dictionary.com/e/pop-culture/safe-space/. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find places where we are safe.
Safe spaces are offered to every minority and even, to those in the majority – such as Muslims – and yet, as “Whites” we are denied that same right to sanctuary. So, for instance, a university club called Hillel was founded by Jews who because of their faith, were shut out from other university clubs. They founded Hillel so they would feel welcomed and, as important, safe. Hillel is now told that Jews must forego that protection and surrender their freedom to choose with whom members of Hillel want to be associated (forget constitutional freedoms – apparently if you are Jewish, they don’t apply). They are told they must permit racists who hate them; people who despise their faith and their political freedoms to join them and, to invite people who stand diametrically opposed to their beliefs to lecture to them. This is intellectual colonialism of the most sadistic kind.
Under such circumstances as I have already described, there is no excuse for offering those who oppose our very existence, a place at our table.
Birthright is the opportunity for Jews who are disconnected from their history and their faith, to reconnect. If they have questions about the conflict with the Arab world or with Islam, they should be given the opportunity to discuss the Islamic slave trade; the Muslim oppression of minorities throughout history and the ethnic cleansing of the Jews of Palestine by Arabs who we now call ‘Palestinians’ because that too, is an identity they stole from us.
In a secular, 21st Century world of cognitive or moral relativism there are few universal truths and even they, are to be determined by the ‘New Order’. ‘Truths’ are subject to social (cultural) and historical considerations. In a multicultural world the argument for a universal truth defines you as possessing an identity that must be in tune with contemporary politics. It is the argument that fascism uses to explain its moral equivalence. In an asymmetric war – that is a war fought between a state and terrorists, it is acceptable that Palestinian Arabs (or their allies) fire a missile or attack a school bus because those on the wrong side of a conflict have no rights, least of all, the right to self-defence. The other side to this immorality is that Pro-Palestinian supporters are outraged when Palestinians die attacking Jews.
It is more than just semantics. the inescapable fact is that we are dealing with a foreign propaganda war and if meanings can be so fluid; if something that is positive (such as Zionism) can take on a wholly negative connotation then we must address the issue head on. The language our tormentors use to portray us as colonialists, as illegitimate interlopers, or, as a barricaded outpost imposed on a native population must be addressed. In a propaganda war you play to your target audiences’ comfort zone. If that means that we approach our enemies as they approach us, then it is time to do so. That means putting the neo-Nazi-Left and their Muslim co-conspirators on the defensive.
In the study of aberrant behaviour, we are told that behaviour always deteriorates (sometimes significantly) just before it levels off and begins to improve. Better late than too late.
We must not only reject those that want to take over Birthright but make those that try to politicise it for their own anti-Birthright purposes pay, such that they understand, they are not welcome under any circumstances. Birthright is a safe place for Jewish identity, or it should be. The fascists who want to make it ‘Palestine’s Bitch’ can find their own funding and enter Judea and Samaria via Jordan, leaving via the same route.
There are people who will always see Israel – Palestine through Muslim eyes. Arabists excused the “sorry” phenomenon of pan Arab nationalism because, it enabled them to define it as a response to the Palestinian issue. But Arabists always viewed Arab human rights as being superior to everyone else’s. They conveniently ignored the presence of numerous persecuted minorities in the Near-East because it was then easy to justify a hegemonic Arab imperialist agenda. Conflict existed long before 1948. Arab nationalism was genocidal, racist, imperialist and colonialist from its inception. It was anti-minority, anti every minority. If you think that things have changed, look at Iraq, Lebanon, Syria; look at Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia. The ubiquity of brutality in the Muslim Near East and beyond was of no consequence or importance to the ‘Arabists’ or for the Islamist acolyte. Their bigger picture mentality was and remains myopic, reductive and racist. Ultimately, it was this policy that destabilised the entirety of the Near-East and continues to this day to destabilise the global community.
And again, ultimately, it is the Left’s infatuation with a weird, faux-Muslim victimhood that is not only fuelling resurgent global anti-Semitism but also the dangerous new intolerance within European society and the greater Western World.
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