‘Slate’ blames Birthright for indoctrinating American Jew who was killed
fighting for Israel
Philip Weiss
[image: Birthright logo]
Max Steinberg is a 24-year-old American who was just killed in Gaza,
fighting for the Israeli Defense Forces. He visited Israel for the first
time in 2012 on a Birthright trip, the program that sends American Jews to
Israel, and he drank the Koolaid. His parents had never been to Israel.
At Slate, Allison Benedikt asserts that he was indoctrinated by Birthright
to believe he should fight for Israel. And she blames Birthright for his
death:
There are many people to blame for Steinberg’s death. There is the
Hamas fighter behind the weapon that actually killed him. There are the
leaders, on both sides, who put him in Gaza, and the leaders behind all of
the wars between Israel and the Palestinians. I can trace it back to 1948,
or 1917, or whatever date suits you and still never find all the parties
who are responsible. But I have no doubt in my mind that along with all of
them, Birthright shares some measure of the blame…
Benedikt quotes Kiera Feldman’s great expose of Birthright and mentions the
sexual tourism element of the trips. Her piece refers to Zionism once — the
“Zionist claim to the land”– and it never uses the word indoctrination. But
it’s about indoctrination. When will 60 Minutes do this story about dubious
and dangerous allegiance?
Indoctrination:
[Steinberg's] mother told the Washington Post that, initially, he
didn’t want to go on the Birthright trip, but once he did, it changed him.
It was on his group’s visit to Israel’s national cemetery at Mount Herzl
that Steinberg saw the grave of an American “lone soldier” who died
fighting for Israel and “decided that Israel was where he wanted to be.” He
joined the IDF, his father said, because he saw it as an obligation were he
to stay in Israel…
And some healthy cynicism about indoctrination:
What makes an American kid with shaky Hebrew and no ties to the state
of Israel suddenly decide he is ready to make this sacrifice? Maybe Max was
especially lost, or especially susceptible, or maybe he was just looking to
do some good and became convinced by his Birthright experience that putting
on an IDF uniform and grabbing a gun was the way to do it. That serving and
protecting the Jewish people was the moral thing to do, and that the best
way to accomplish it was to go fight for the Jewish state. It turns out
that it’s not that hard to persuade young people to see the world a certain
way and that Birthright is very good at doing it. You spend hundreds of
millions of dollars to convince young Jews that they are deeply connected
to a country that desperately needs their support? This is what you get.
- See more at:
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/birthright-indoctrinating-fighting#sthash.3rPYqArC.dpuf
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