Do you want to look back at your college years and reminisce about how you spent Spring Break in an apartheid state? If so, Israel Trek is the trip for you.
Over 100 students are sponsored by Harvard Hillel every year to attend Israel Trek—a heavily-subsidized trip organized by former Israeli Occupation Force soldiers who unapologetically whitewash Israel’s crime of apartheid. The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee and your Palestinian peers are asking you to do one thing: Boycott Israel Trek.
While the organizers of the trip claim to offer an honest depiction of “the region,” you will never hear them acknowledge Israel’s crime of apartheid, despite consensus by international and Israeli human rights organizations that Israel’s actions should be classified as such. Instead, the organizers will insist on denying the reality of the occupation under the guise of ‘balanced narratives’ or ‘two sides of the story.’ Think about apartheid South Africa —which side would you have been on?
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Such paradoxes are only natural when one hopes to entice you to relax and explore in a settler-colonial state.
If you go on Israel Trek, you will be promised an immersive experience but will you dare cross checkpoints with Palestinians who experience violent and dehumanizing acts daily in order to commute to work and school? Have you heard of Shadi Khoury, the 16-year-old student arbitrarily arrested by Israeli soldiers after passing a checkpoint every day to get to school? Would you like to tell him about your cultural immersion?
If you go on Israel Trek, yet preach about social justice and equality in your discussion sections, how do you have no trouble ignoring the Palestinian children held, tortured, and killed in cold blood by the settler colonial regime? I hope you are able to explain to the 81% of Palestinian children who endure physical abuse at the hands of the occupation that your visit is “apolitical” and that you want to “ask the hard questions.”
If you go on Israel Trek, you will insist on your willingness to see “both sides,” but when will you see Gaza—the world’s largest open-air prison, whose 2 million residents live on about 141 square miles of blockaded land, have limited access to basic amenities like food and potable water, and cannot even leave to seek healthcare? Will you go to Gaza, and will you visit the graves of the 67 children the Israeli military killed in May 2021?
If you go on Israel Trek and say you are pro-Palestine, you will conveniently forget this stance on your visit to colonial settlements that violate international law, engaging cordially with settlers squating on stolen Palestinian land. I hope you can explain how formative meeting a settler was to over 6 million Palestinian refugees—your classmates and teachers among them—who have been forcibly expelled from their homes and are refused the right of entry to their homeland?
What can Israel Trek guarantee you? A party in Tel Aviv while Palestinians are being massacred only a few miles away. Great fun with tour guides who love showing you the Palestinian food they call Israeli as much as they love parading around their machine gun. Snorkeling with dozens of other Harvard students who, like you, did not mind the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh, do not see why the forced displacement of the town of Masafer Yatta means they cannot go ATV’ing nearby, and who, like you, had no problem with the murder of Magda Obaid, 60-years-old and of Jenin, by the Israeli military this January.
It’s not fair, really. How could Israel Trek offer a “balanced perspective?” What is happening in Palestine is not a “conflict” between two equally-matched sides. There is no “other side” to show. Instead, there is the destruction, displacement, and devastation caused by a violent settler colonial regime that continues to occupy an oppressed group who remains steadfast despite the colonizer’s ever-increasing violence and facism.
“Dialogue” is a fantasy which benefits the oppressor. If you are going on Israel Trek, you might like to sit around a dining hall table and talk it out, hear the other side, feel better, and go on your trip, but this is not a luxury my Palestinian family/friends can afford.
Harvard is not a ‘neutral’ environment: even here, the power dynamic between Trek leaders and Palestinian students persists, and our families and loved ones are constantly at risk in Palestine.
The Israeli apartheid regime in Palestine is not a reality in a faraway place but is present here. From the unconditional aid the United States gives Israel annually from your tax dollars to our University’s endowment investments. You cannot claim to be pro-Palestine if you refuse to engage with Palestinian organizers on campus.
Choosing to speak up so that you can learn about the reality of a military occupation and make the “extremely difficult” decision to boycott Israel Trek puts both us and our families at risk. But we still do it and ask only one thing from you: take a stance, choose to boycott, tell Harvard that you stand for human rights, and tell your Palestinian peers that their cries are not falling on deaf ears.