For decades , Birthright Israel has offered free trips to Israel for young Jews around the world. The purpose is to grow the bond between the global Jewish population and the state of Israel. But while the trips help connect young Jews with Jewish heritage and culture in Israel, what they don’t do is expose them to the realities of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians — the people displaced by the creation of Israel and currently living in refugee camps and behind military checkpoints. This is no surprise, as the program is partly sponsored by philanthropists associated with the Jewish and Israeli right — casino magnate and GOP donor Sheldon Adelson pledged $70 million toward it this year. On June 28, five program participants on the 10th and final day of their Birthright trip decided to take a stand. They walked off their bus and met up with the group Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation group run by former Israeli soldiers. From there, they went to occupied Hebron, where they met Palestinians living under occupation. Before they walked off the bus, they read a statement to fellow participants. “We each came on this trip separately with hope that — especially in light of the recent killings of more than a 100 protesters in Gaza and Trump moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem — Birthright would trust its participants enough to give us an honest education,” they said. “We came with questions about what’s happening in the occupied territories and wanted to engage with new perspectives, but what became clear over the course of 10 days was that Birthright did not want to truthfully engage with our questions. It’s clear that young Jews who have critical questions about Israel are not welcome on Birthright. It’s shocking that given all the recent violence Birthright would continue to act as if we can’t handle the truth.”

In the mid-2000s, as Israel was building its separation wall through occupied territory, Birthright faced a similar issue, with trip participants walking off and joining protests against the construction of the barrier. Katie Fenster, 25, was one of the participants who walked off of the bus this time. Going on Birthright was important to her as means of connecting to a larger Jewish community. She had just moved from Philadelphia to the town of Brookings, South Dakota. “I’m the fifth Jew in the town I moved into, I’m number five!” she told The Intercept, laughing. “I came on the Birthright trip because Birthright’s just so huge in the Jewish community, and it’s so huge in the education of the Jewish community.” During her time in Philadelphia, she had met activists from IfNotNow, a movement led by young Jews who organize to end the American Jewish community’s support for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. She began to question Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, and was hoping the Birthright trip would also be an opportunity to meet Palestinians and explore the dynamics that sustain the occupation. “I really wanted to learn more and try to reconcile my feelings between knowing that Judaism is about social justice and seeing all the violence that is happening in Gaza,” she explained. But whenever she and a small group of other participants asked the Birthright tour leaders about the occupation, they would be evasive. At one point, they traveled to a beach in the West Bank, and they started asking questions about the occupation nearby. “We were told, ‘No, that’s not part of the program,'” she said. IfNotNow has launched a formal campaign — called “Not Just a Free Trip” — to encourage Birthright participants to pressure the organization to educate young Jews about the occupation. “[Birthright] brings 40,000 Jews every summer to Israel on its trip. It has a responsibility to be honest about what’s going on in the region, and we’re saying that … as young Jews, we are going to demand that they tell the truth, and we can handle the truth, and we need to know that complexity,” spokesperson Sarah Brammer-Shlay told The Intercept. Fenster also noted that while the trip advertises itself as apolitical, participants were handed a map of Israel that does not demarcate the occupied territories — a message that Israel owns all of the land and that the Palestinians are not to be recognized.