Amid rockets and missiles, Birthright trips to Israel adapt to conflict

Shalev Ben David did not expect his all-expenses-paid trip to Israel earlier this month to end on the pool deck of a Cyprus-bound cruise liner – all while Iranian missiles rained down on Tel Aviv – but he and the roughly 1,500 other evacuees aboard made the best of their plight.

“We partied the second we got on the boat till we got off,” said Ben David, a 20-year-old stylist from Los Angeles.

Ben David is among some 30,000 people set to visit Israel this year on Birthright, a free trip to the country for young Jewish adults around the world.

After Israel launched a missile attack on Iran on June 13, sparking waves of retaliatory Iranian strikes over a 12-day conflict, Birthright organizers scrambled to evacuate some 2,800 participants from the country by any means possible – including by chartering a cruise ship to sail to Cyprus, where a sprawling operation was underway to house and feed the evacuees, and get them onto flights. Birthright trips through July 10 have been canceled.

Over more than a quarter-century of trips to Israel, Taglit-Birthright Israel, the Israeli nonprofit that organizes Birthright, has accrued “unfortunately, huge experience in protecting our participants” from security risks, CEO Gidi Mark said. “But this was a different level.”

Birthright describes itself as the largest educational travel organization in the world, focused on educating young Jews about Israel.

The trips, which maximize opportunities for participants to mix with their Israeli counterparts, have garnered a reputation for partying and romantic encounters. “Statistically, 187% of you will meet your future husband and wife on this visit,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joked to Birthright participants in a 2017 speech.

Birthright measures its success in part through statistics such as how much likelier participants are to have mostly or all Jewish friends (53%) or feel a sense of belonging among the Jewish people (54%), by its own measures.

But the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war and regional conflicts that have followed have changed the tenor of the trips. Beyond showing diasporic Jews the “start-up nation” and striking desert vistas, organizers realized they needed to change how they introduced participants to a country reeling from the trauma of the attack and mired in a multifront war. “Elements that were irrelevant before,” such as deep mindfulness sessions, were incorporated into the Birthright schedule, Mark said.

The first Birthright trip after Oct. 7 was held in November 2023. The parties continued, but the trip also featured a revamped itinerary that took participants to meet with the families of hostages and tour the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas militants.

“We realized that the program after Oct. 7 was at least (as), if not more, impactful than the years before,” Mark said. Participants “can party, but on the other hand, they need to be in touch with the day-to-day happenings here in Israel. We think that the balance is the most important thing.”

The resulting experience made Birthright “more meaningful in light of everything, which was ultimately what I wanted out of the trip,” said Zachary Dorff, a 22-year-old recent college graduate from New Jersey who went on Birthright in May. “I wasn’t really looking for a 10-day party. I was looking to really connect with this country.”

Birthright is also a forum for Jewish college students to grapple with how they navigate Israel’s changing international reputation. Israel faces steep criticism for its conduct in the Gaza Strip, where more than 56,000 people, the majority women and children, have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Prolonged blockades on aid have also pushed the enclave to the brink of famine.

Since its launch in 1999, Birthright, funded in part by the Israeli government, has become a major touchstone of the American Jewish experience. In 2020, the Pew Research Center estimated that some 20% of American Jews between the ages of 18 and 46 have embarked on the trip.

For some Jewish students, the trip has taken on new meaning as a reprieve from the embattled political environment on American college campuses, where some Jewish students have faced harassment for saying that Israel should exist as a state – or for simply being Jewish.

“There’s the sense of belonging that you feel in Israel as a Jew that is unrivaled anywhere else, especially on a college campus where you don’t always feel like you can even say that you support the country of your people’s existence openly,” Dorff said.

Birthright “relieves a lot of pressure that is mounted on young Jews when they are on campuses,” Mark said. “People come, and they speak in a much deeper way and much more emotional way. It’s nothing compared to before Oct. 7.”

Younger Jews are divided over Israel and Israeli government policy. A 2024 Pew poll found that 42% of Jewish adults 34 and younger believe Israeli’s conduct in Gaza is unacceptable.

Critics contend that Birthright serves as a form of propaganda that glosses over Israel’s military presence in the West Bank and Gaza, and the experiences of displaced Palestinians. In 2018, several Birthright participants engaged in “walk-offs” during their trips and visited Palestinian villages in the West Bank instead, drawing international media attention.

The organization says it “refrains from any political or ideological partisanship.”

“The fact that you are a Jew does not mean you need to support the opposition or … the coalition (government) in Israel,” Mark said. “We are not trying to convince” participants of a specific view. “We trust them.”

Participants said that even among themselves, fraught questions about Israel were rarely a focus. “During the trip, we didn’t talk about any politics at all,” Ben David said. “We were just having fun.”

Many Birthright travelers appeared determined to keep the fun going, even as Iranian missiles came down on Israel and brought their excursion to an abrupt end.

“I know Israel has its ups and downs, but at the end of the day, it’s the best, especially for vacationing,” Ben David said.