The Times recently did a travel piece on adventure family vacations to Israel. They also had a slideshow.

The article is a pretty standard tourist review - what to do and where to stay for ten days of fun. When I read it, a wave of familiarity washed over me like the gentle waters off the Mediterranean coast in Tel Aviv. Why did this all sound so familiar? And then it hit me: I, too, have been on a ten-day (all-expenses-paid!) trip to Israel! It's called Birthright and in ten years it has shipped 200,000 young American Jews to Israel for free vacations. The particular trip I went on was on the "adventure/physical activity" side (as opposed to the "party" or "religious" side) and specifically for people from the Chicago area. It being Jewish and Chicago, naturally there were many fellow Russians to put me at ease (but not too at ease - I'm happy I took the "Chicago" trip instead of the "Russian Reunion" one which I later found out was heavily focused on drinking).

We did a lot of hiking, crossed the entire country North to South, saw Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and even spent time in a kibbutz. At the beginning of the trip, an ice breaker revealed that most of the people in our 40 person group were more or less apathetic about Judaism and Israel. By the end of the trip, a show of hands revealed that I was the only non-Zionist left.

What happened during those ten days to cause such a dramatic turnaround? In short: lots. There were hookups with Israeli soldiers, swimming in pools oddly located in the middle of the desert, strenuous hikes that required teamwork, a humbling visit to the Holocaust museum, a visit to the Western Wall, a tour of the tunnels under the Western Wall, volunteering with refugee children from Africa, swimming in the Dead Sea, drinking in Tel Aviv, climbing Masada, spending the night in a Bedouin theme park of sorts (camels!), and spending another night in a swank hotel in Jerusalem (I'm not entirely sure, but I think this was were the soldier hookups occurred). Everyone, like, really bonded, I guess. We got to learn a lot about Jewish and Israeli history. We did not discuss Palestine, Palestinians, or the occupation. From a hilltop in Galilee we looked across the border at Syria.

So what did the New York Times Reporter do on her family adventure trip to Israel? Well it seems that they climbed Masada,  they swam in the Dead Sea, they rode camels, they looked at historical ruins, they took a tour of the tunnels under the Western Wall, they went on hikes, they learned about Jewish and Israeli history, and they stood on a hilltop in Galilee looking across the border at Syria. Israel is "kid-friendly — lively and colorful, laid back and casual." Their trip had "a whiff of adventure."

Of course the trips weren't identical. They looked at some different ruins than we did. We went to Tzvat in Galilee, they went to historical IDF bunkers. We did a hike through a river, they went to Akko. But I couldn't shake the similarity of the trips. Of course every destination has a familiar tourist route (as my mother once said to me: "you went to New York and you didn't go to the Statue of Liberty??"). Treading in the steps of previous visitors and becoming a participant in that shared history of tourism is often part of the appeal: "I went to the Grand Canyon. I saw what millions before me have seen. I, too, was awed." Picture-taking also becomes part of that tradition as we'll see below.

But how could the trips have been so similar when Birthright is an explicit PR trip meant to cultivate warm feelings toward Israel - feelings that Birthright organizers hope will turn into a lifeling defense of all things Israel that comes more from the gut than from the brain. On Birthright we learned standard pro-Israel narratives: Israelis have been here for thousands of years. They have a blood bond to the land. You have a blood bond to the land. Before the Jews came, Israel was an uncultivated and barely populated desert. Jews have (through hard work and sheer will) turned Israel into the flowering modern nation we see today. Israel is threatened by its neighbors. Jews are persecuted around the world - you should be scared of this. Israel is the only place where Jews are safe. The Holocaust happened once and it can happen again. And throughout the whole trip: Israel is fun and exciting. It's a great place to visit and you should come again.

Palestinians must be excluded from this  narrative by necessity. There is just no room for the occupation and its messy history in this neat narrative. And that's totally understandable - Birthright is run by Zionists with the goal of making more Zionists. The trip is a highly choreographed and sophisticated piece of myth-making. For all its flaws, it is very well done and as far as I can tell, has a near 100% success rate in creating long-lasting Zionist sympathies.

But wouldn't the New York Times journalist whose explicit goal is "to learn as much as possible about Israel’s history in 10 days without spending too many precious vacation hours inside museums, temples or churches" have a different take? Even though the author does mention that Israelis are open and willing to share their views on the conflict, no sense of "complicated feelings" are conveyed in the piece. The trip to the Golan Heights (a disputed zone) "unleashed a torrent of questions about the war for independence and Israel’s 1948 declaration of statehood." And where do they turn for answers? To a former Haganah facility that has been converted to a museum. That's the same Haganah that was part of the organization that bombed the King David Hotel in 1946. There isn't even a mention of how controversial this history remains. The whole thing is just framed as a neat secret encounter: "Charlie — who devours detective novels and has twice toured the International Spy Museum in Washington — declared it his favorite site. The place conveys a real sense of danger[...]"

Just as they were missing from the Birthright trip, Palestinians are missing from this trip as well. There is no Palestinian museum (or even Palestinian person) consulted on the still-unsettled history of Israel's founding.  There is no trip to East Jerusalem (not to mention the West Bank) to see how all those other people live. Are the lives and histories of Palestinians not part of Israeli history? Is there any more defining feature of the history of Israel than its relationship to Palestine and Palestinians? Isn't there room for this history in between visits to caves and ruins? Apparently the answer is "no."

No one wants to read a tourism review that begins with "The continued physical separation of Israel and the West Bank via the ever-expanding separation wall cast a dark shadow over our recent trip to the Holy Land. It's hard to take your mind off the fact that every place you visit in this beautiful and varied country has been fought over. It's even harder to forget that there are millions of people living a few miles away who would love to step where you step and go where you go. Privilege and conflict is rarely out of your mind for long in this complicated place." But is it fair to erase this history (and continued reality) of conflict and separation? Would a tour of Ireland during The Troubles focus on Blarney Stones and great pubs? What about Sri Lanka, say, several weeks ago? Would it focus on beaches and jungles? So much of tourism is about pursuing an imaginary version of the visited site while setting aside politics and messy history. But how can you escape politics on a "historical" tour of Israel? Israel's history is so political that actual historians agree on very little of it (I think all they've managed to agree on is that Israel was created in 1948 and there was a war in 1967). Yet even the fact that there is no single "history" of Israel is not discussed. Instead all we get is Indiana Jones and spy thrillers. I bet you can't wait to go.

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In this section I'll compare pictures from the slideshow that accompanied the New York Times article with my own pictures from my Birthright trip. Just as the New York Times article constructed a narrative of Israel as a lively and exciting destination (sans Palestiniens), the photos that accompanied the article created iconic images of Israeli sites that were incredibly similar to images that we were encouraged to create on our trip. If it's not immediately obvious, the Times pictures are on the left and mine are on the right.

We've got mud-covered ladies at the Dead Sea:

 

 We've got camel riding:

 We've got Old Towns:

We've got dramatic natural wonders:

And finally, we've got the Western Wall with Temple Mount in the background: