The best way to understand a country is to spend time there. That’s axiomatic.
So the best way to understand Israel, in all its complexity, is to visit Israel — to walk its streets, eat in its markets, speak to its people.
That’s why so many pro-Israel groups organize trips there for non-Jewish clergy, political leaders and, of course, students. The thinking is that once they experience the country firsthand, they will be more sympathetic to its challenges.
South African student Klaas Mokgomole recently went on such a trip after he had begun questioning his own political attitudes toward the Jewish state. As detailed in our story in this issue, Mokgomole was part of a group that two years ago protested the performance of an Israeli-born pianist at his Johannesburg university.
After the protest, Mokgomole decided to find out what was really going on in Israel, a journey that eventually took him there on a sponsored trip. He returned home a critic of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Last week, Mokgomole and fellow black South African student Jamie Mithi were at U.C. Davis speaking out against efforts to smear Israel as an apartheid state. Their message? Don’t tell us about apartheid — we experienced the real thing, and what Israel is doing is not that.
“I’m deprived because of things that happened during apartheid,” Mokgomole told a group of students. “We believe that organizations like BDS are abusing the word ‘apartheid,’ abusing our story.”
That’s all well and good. But this articulate young man said something else: He noted that his sponsored trip to Israel had exposed him to both sides of the conflict, and not just the pro-Israel side. In the West Bank and Jerusalem, he spoke to Palestinians on the street and in more formal settings, and found that they wanted peace and a two-state solution — something the BDS movement does not support.
Mokgomole was fortunate to have gone on such a well-planned visit to Israel. How can people come up with fully formed opinions if they are exposed to only one side of a story?
Pro-Israel organizations that sponsor trips to Israel should respect their participants, and not feed them simplistic stories. That goes double for Birthright Israel, which to date has taken more than half a million young Jews on free 10-day trips to the Jewish state with the aim of bolstering their Jewish identity.
Young adults deserve honesty. Showing them all facets of Israel is the only way to give them real tools to forge their own connections.