Birthright Unplugged/Replugged

Israel denies Palestinians the internationally recognized right of return for refugees. In addition, the Israeli government created and applies a “law of return” that extends citizenship benefits to any person of Jewish heritage. This is a de facto invitation to anyone of Jewish ancestry to visit and/or move to Israel, while simultaneously excluding millions of Palestinians from access to their ancestral lands. In response, the Birthright Unplugged and Birthright Replugged projects use travel as a subversive act to expose Israel’s unjust restrictions of movement and violations of international law.

Birthright Unplugged was designed to expose this Israeli violation of international law while providing edifying experiences for international participants to travel to Historic Palestine, exposing them to the myriad of oppressive circumstances that Palestinians endure daily. This experience engaged participants more deeply in changing policy toward Palestinians and furthering collective liberation.

(Naming the geography of “Historic Palestine” often requires some clarification. Historic Palestine is defined here as including today’s West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and the rest of the areas confiscated by Israel in 1948 when the Israeli state was founded. In Arabic the areas confiscated in 1948 are commonly called “ ‘48;” in this piece these areas will be called “Israel/‘48.”)

The Birthright Unplugged program offers travel programming to Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps in the West Bank and the opportunity to spend time with internally displaced Palestinian people living inside Israel, as well as some Jewish Israelis who were working on non-military, non-aid-oriented approaches to the crisis like refusing army service, attending non-violent Palestinian-led marches and other actions. The program was designed primarily for those living in the West, though people of all backgrounds were welcomed. We prioritized people who come to their work with an anti-racist framework and are well positioned within their community to contribute to social justice work upon their return.

When Birthright Unplugged was served with a cease-and-desist court order by Birthright Israel, instead of running for cover, organizers saw it as an opportunity to engage the media and promote the project.

Throughout the journey, participants developed an understanding of daily life under occupation and apartheid and learned about the history of the region from people under-represented in Western discourse and profoundly affected by oppressive Israeli policies.

Birthright Unplugged’s sister program, Birthright Replugged, worked with Palestinian children living in refugee camps in the West Bank to enact their “right of return” — the international law that gives all refugees and their descendents the right to return to their ancestral lands. Israel has consistently denied this right to Palestinians since 1948 and also prohibits most Palestinian refugees from even visiting their lands. The simple act of bringing children to places they live near and are entitled to live or spend time in but cannot access at all, such as Jerusalem, the sea, and the villages their grandparents were expelled from is central to the mission of Birthright Replugged. These journeys are increasingly difficult as Israeli apartheid policies further restrict movement for Palestinians.

For three days, the children would stay with families who are Palestinian citizens of Israel; they would visit holy places, Jerusalem, the sea, and their ancestral lands. They would document their experiences with cameras and create exhibits in order to contribute to the collective memory in the refugee camp, and to share their stories with people abroad.

This experience was, and continues to be at the time of this writing, nearly impossible for most Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, who receive identity cards at age 16 which Israel uses to control their movement. As internationals, the program coordinators have been able to move with relative freedom, and so, unlike the children's parents and grandparents, we were able to take them on this trip. While it is technically not illegal, traversing checkpoints with busses full of Palestinian youths is challenging, as Israeli soldiers have little good will towards our young travelers and tremendous latitude in how they patrol the checkpoints and who they let pass.

In January-February, 2008, Birthright Replugged also ran workshops for Palestinian children in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Palestinians in exile, unlike those living in refugee camps in the West Bank, have no ability to cross Israeli controlled borders to make the journey we take with our other young travelers. For this reason, workshops relied heavily on oral histories from the children’s families. Virtual travel was conducted via maps from sources such as the Palestine Land Society.

All the childrens’ photography, reflections, and writings about their experiences and their family histories were incorporated into exhibitions that were gifted to the camp communities and shaped into traveling exhibitions for use in the United States.

Shortly after the Birthright Unplugged/Replugged project launched, in 2005, it was served with a cease-and-desist court order for copyright infringement by Birthright Israel, a Zionist organization that offers free trips to “Israel/’48” for Jewish people ages 18-26 from around the world as a means of encouraging young Jews to support the state of Israel and its policies. This court order came at the moment we’d launched our website, had solicited applicants for travel, but hadn’t yet taken our first trip. The threat of a lawsuit from this renowned Zionist institution garnered immediate press attention and helped us launch the project with a critique of Israeli propaganda and patriation trips.

We subsequently led hundreds of participants through Birthright Unplugged and Replugged delegations and received a great deal of media attention in Arabic, English, German, and Hebrew. Overall, these trips raised awareness, impacted the lives and work of the participants, made a splash in the media, and helped put Israeli human rights violations on the global map. However, the human rights crisis in Palestine and travel restrictions for Palestinians continue.