provides the gift of first time, peer group, educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26. Taglit-Birthright Israel's founders created this program to send thousands of young Jewish adults from all over the world to Israel as a gift in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants' personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people.
And now, in 2008, comes Birthright Palestine. It intends
to gather first-generation, western-born Palestinians (over the age of 18-years old) in their ancestral homeland, so that they can reunite and witness firsthand how their brethren are living under illegal Israeli military occupation.
Comment: The difference in tone between these mission statements represents a much deeper difference. One builds, the other destroys. (January 10, 2008)
Mar. 30, 2008 update: For a century and more, Zionists built their movement by purchasing land from Arabs. Now something like the reverse process is underway, as the "Saudis discover Jaffa." Ofer Petersburg tells about Jaffa, the historic Arab town just south of Tel Aviv:
Is Jaffa about to become the Saudi Caesarea? Yedioth Ahronoth recently learned that Arab moguls, most likely of Saudi origin, as well as various other Palestinian entrepreneurs, have recently been purchasing great quantities of prime real-estate in the Ajami neighborhood right on Jaffa's coastline. The property involved is in a rare, prime location not 100 meters (328 feet) from the beach front. The houses in question are neglected, some even scheduled for demolition, but their prime location affords them massive potential in the real estate market.
In spite of growing demands for these homes, their owners, most of them impoverished, working-class individuals, refuse to sell their homes to Jewish entrepreneurs. Now, however, they appear willing to sell these very same homes to wealthy tycoons from Arab nations who are willing to pay millions of dollars, in cash, for this prime real-estate. … "Before too long we will see villas and cottages lining the Ajami beach front," said a local resident and community activist. "The only question is how the Israeli authorities will respond to this new trend, and whether they will allow Arab millionaires with foreign passports to build their estates in Jaffa."
Jaffa's Ajami neighborhood, soon to be transformed.
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