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Birthright Is Booming This Year. Here's How the Israeli Propaganda Trip Works.
Every year, Jewish American college students are offered a 10-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Israel with the Birthright Foundation. The closely curated tours take them across the country, from swimming in the Dead Sea to visiting the graves of soldiers who died fighting in Gaza, all accompanied by their peers in the Israeli military.
This summer marks the 25th anniversary of the program — and despite Israel's ongoing bombing, starvation, and shooting of Palestinians in Gaza, it's touted to be the biggest cohort yet.
Thirty-thousand Americans, aged 18 to 26, are slated to travel to Israel for free this summer, with the cost of their $5,000 trip underwritten by the nonprofit organization.
Birthright claims it is 'pluralistic, inclusive, and does not endorse any ideological, party, or religious line.' But the organization receives 27 percent of its funding from the Israeli government and the rest largely from right-wing donors. The top backer is the billionaire Adelson family, who were among President Donald Trump's biggest donors.
The trips include lectures on geopolitics, history, and advocating for Israel. The Intercept obtained recordings from a Birthright trip in 2024 that makes its ideological mission clear.
'You hear people tell you that the Palestinians are the indigenous people, but the Jews are the real indigenous people of this region,' said Ido Aharoni, a veteran Israeli diplomat, in a speech to the Birthright cohort last year in Jerusalem. 'Israel has many problems, but Chicago also has many problems, and New York City has many problems, and Israel's resilience will be tested.'
And while the organization says it is apolitical, it has been found to have a big impact on its participants, in bringing them closer to Israel and discounting the Palestinian experience.
A study published in May by Brandeis University and funded by Birthright found that last year's cohort are 'much more connected to Israel, and much more likely to identify with the political right.' Birthright participants were also 'more likely to provide a counterargument to claims that Israel is committing genocide' after the trip.
This finding comes as younger Jewish Americans become more skeptical of Israel than their parents or grandparents. A study by the Pew Research Center last year found that younger adults tend to express much more negative attitudes toward Israel than older Americans do. Jewish adults under 35 were divided over Israel's military response to October 7.
Birthright is trying to stop that trend. While it still bills itself as a fun vacation — from swimming in the Dead Sea, going to nightclubs, and visiting markets in Tel Aviv — since October 7, 2023, it has been taking tours on sites associated with the devastation of Hamas's attack.
Last year's trip included visits to a winery, yoga, rafting, and riding ATVs, according to an itinerary obtained by The Intercept, but also talks on international relations with former military chiefs, diplomats, and Birthright leadership. In all, according to recordings obtained by The Intercept, the speakers stress the importance of participants' responsibility in standing in solidarity with Israel.
'There's a reason I'm standing here. It's because Birthright is my partner in this, right?' said Aharoni in his speech to last year's cohort. 'I want you to understand something: Israel needs to invest in its reputation billions, not millions.'
'It's one of the most successful foreclosures, of imagination, of anything I've ever seen as a sociologist.'
Sociologists argue that Birthright programs are incredibly effective. 'They had no sense of Palestinians, none whatsoever, 'said Judith Taylor, associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who previously conducted an independent study on Birthright participants' perceptions. 'It's one of the most successful foreclosures, of imagination, of anything I've ever seen as a sociologist.'
Neither Birthright nor Aharoni responded to a request for comment.
Birthright was only created relatively recently, just in time to capture the oldest of the millennial generation. In 1998, during his first term as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu gave the first guarantee of Israeli government funding. Birthright was then founded in 1999 by two American billionaires, Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman. Its foundation came 'out of a crisis in the Jewish world,' when Jews in the diaspora were drifting away from their heritage, traditions, and community, according to the organization.
Since then, it has become the largest educational tourism organization in the world and taken over 900,000 people to Israel. For American Jews, it is a rite of passage: 70 percent of those on the trips have been from the U.S. Starting in 2016, college students could even earn academic credits by going on Birthright trips.
Birthright has faced heavy criticism over the years, including sit-ins against its presentations at U.S. colleges and tour walk-offs, particularly by Jewish activists who have said the trips are akin to propaganda and contribute to the erasure of Palestinians and their experiences living under occupation.
A big part of the trip is the exposure to Israeli soldiers who accompany the tours. In 2017, Netanyahu told thousands of students on Birthright that by coming to Israel 'you join the Israeli soldiers in helping secure Israel's future.'
Sam Stein worked as a Birthright tour leader in 2016 and 2017 but has since become an activist working with Palestinian communities in the West Bank. He recalls how trip participants bonded with the soldiers. 'It's genius because it's really something that's just on autopilot,' Stein said. 'They talk to the participants about how much they love being in the army. And then we have a whole big crying thing when they leave.'
Over the course of the trip, areas forcibly annexed by Israel are 'completely, completely normalized,' he said. 'You go to East Jerusalem, you go to the Old City, you go to the Golan Heights.'
'The common theme was that you come to identify with the Israeli soldiers.'
Ella Ben Hagai, associate professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, had similar findings when she conducted an independent study on Birthright participants in 2018. 'The common theme was that you come to identify with the Israeli soldiers,' Hagai said. 'You realize, oh, the Israeli soldiers are my age, and they're just like me. They want to party, they want to dance, I get to make out with them sometimes.'
Birthright's operations halted after October 7, 2023, but restarted again not long after, in January 2024. By then, the death toll in Gaza had surpassed 25,000. According to Birthright's New York nonprofit documents, it had a revenue of $85 million in 2023 and a record number of donors who piled in, in response to the attacks.
As Birthright prepares for its biggest year yet, 800 Birthright alumni are slated to visit Israel in celebration of the organization's 25th anniversary this month. The organization has even launched a new app to connect its community.
It will act as 'an educational and communal 'Iron Dome,'' according to Birthright's CEO Gidi Mark. 'A long-term strategic infrastructure that empowers our alumni and strengthens Jewish identity and resilience worldwide.'
The Intercept obtained recordings of last year's tour from an American community organizer who went on a Birthright trip last June and requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. They had worked on Palestinian solidarity campaigns and planned to volunteer in the West Bank after the trip to help protect communities from settler violence.
'I was curious about how the narrative was being framed in this moment,' they said. 'And then I got there, and it was so much more insane than I was prepared for. With Gaza, it was just said to be this place where terrorists are — and that Israel is the most moral army in the world.'
The trip was jam-packed, from visits to Hostages Square, the plaza in Tel Aviv where families of Israelis taken hostage on October 7 are still camping out to demand their relatives' return, to the border of Gaza with a former Israeli lieutenant colonel, followed by visits to wineries and yoga sessions, with 'little reckoning,' they said. They took audio recordings and videos throughout the trip of the lectures and conversations.
'The last thing on my mind is guarantees for the Palestinian people in terms of their security,' their American trip leader said on a bus in one video clip viewed by The Intercept. 'I don't care right now. I really don't give a shit.'
Other activities included a seminar on Israel advocacy, where armed settlers in the West Bank were referred to as 'local volunteers' for Israel, and videos of Arab fighters allegedly shouting 'death to Jews' were played, although the source questioned the Arabic translation. There was a tour of Mount Herzl, Israel's national cemetery, where respects were paid to lone soldiers, who had undertaken 'another kind of bravery to move from America and do it by choice,' the group leader said.
In a talk by Aharoni, the Israeli diplomat, he talked about how to correctly, and incorrectly, take people on a tour of Israel, using American politicians as references. Jamaal Bowman, the former U.S. representative for New York who lost in 2024 in part due to pro-Israel lobbying against him, 'went exactly the other way,' Aharoni said. 'Instead of doing what we did with Ritchie Torres, they took him to see the Palestinians and the West Bank, and he came back completely for Palestinians to the point he forgot that he's representing Americans in Congress.'
At the end of the 10 days, the participants sat down to talk about their highlights of the trip. One said 'they gained a lot more respect for IDF soldiers' and realized they weren't 'older, big, scary beings.'
Another said, 'It's going to be really interesting to go home and tell everybody that Israel seems, honestly, safer than the U.S.'
