The journey from 'birthright' to Palestine

posted on: Mar 30, 2015

My body rejected this land, this history, from the moment we stepped off the plane. My cousins had hyped this trip up so much, I half expected to touch down on a warm beach overlooking the Mediterranean, clinking glasses with a triumphant, “Mazeltov!”

Instead, I was suffocated by heavy airport questioning, watching barrels of guns sit on Israeli Defense Force soldiers’ waistbands, staring children in the face. “Don’t worry, young Jewish-Americans are not who Israeli soldiers are after,” my tour guide tells us, as if that makes it any more just.

I am told this land is my birthright.  “To be Jewish is to be Israeli,” my tour guide beams. I am told we are a tribe of refugees, a landless people finally come home. This land that Aseel’s family has been harvesting for generations, a land she cannot leave nor enter – not for hospital visits nor college classes.

Yet, I am told, I have a birthright.

Source: mondoweiss.net