NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s
`Birthright Israel’ Connection
Steinhardt also revealed
in his 2001 autobiography other ways in which he has apparently historically
collaborated with the militaristic Israeli establishment that has historically
violated Palestinian human rights:
“…I also set up the
Steinhardt Family Foundation in Jerusalem…I have derived the most satisfaction
from my most ambitious…project `Birthright Israel…’ In the spring of 1997…I ran
into Charles Bronfman…whose family controlled The Seagram Company…We agreed to
each put up $5 million to start developing an organization called `Birthright
Israel.’,,,
“By the summer of 1998,
we had developed a plan that would fund `Birthright Israel.’ In
Jerusalem,…Benjamin Netanyahu announced he would commit $20 million a year to
the project…In addition, Charles and I would raise another $20 million a year
on our own…Starting Jan. 1, 2000, 15,000 college-aged Jews would be brought to
Israel…In 1999, Charles and I each wrote a check for $9 million…The kids…met
Israeli politicians…A number of them took Jeep trips…through the Golan
Heights…After seeing the topography…they were absolutely opposed to giving up
the Golan Heights in any peace negotiations…”
According to a July 4,
2011 article by Kiera Feldman (no relation to this writer) in The
Nation magazine, between 1999 and 2011 Steinhardt’s
“Birthright Israel…spent almost $600 million to send more than 260,000 young
diaspora Jews on free vacations” to Israel. The same article also noted that by
2011, “far-right Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson” was “the largest individual
donor, having given Birthright $100 million over the” previous “five years,”
while “the Israeli government provided Birthright $100 million during the
program’s first decade; and in 2011 Israeli “Prime Minister Netanyahu…announced
another $100 million in” Israeli “government funding” for NYU Administration
funder Steinhardt’s project.
One reason the
militaristic Netanyahu government was so eager to spend $100 million more to
fund Steinhardt’s Birthright Israel project in 2011 was perhaps because “after
the 2006 Lebanon war, Brandeis researchers found that Birthright alumni were
more likely than other young American Jews to view Israel’s military conduct as
justified,” according to The Nation magazine article.
The same article also described Birthright Israel’s 2000 to 2011 U.S.-based
funders in the following way:
“…Most of them just
happen to share hawkish Israel politics. In 1998, during his first term as
prime minister, Netanyahu gave the initial guarantee of Israeli government
funding. By 2000…at least eight funders were trustees of AIPAC’s think-tank
spinoff, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy—including Steinhardt and
Bronfman. Casino magnate Adelson…once…broke with AIPAC—for not being
conservative enough. Other notables: oil billionaire Lynn
Schusterman,…thirty-five-year AIPAC veteran and the purse for many `pro-Israel’
youth initiatives such as the Israel on Campus Coalition,…; diamond baron and
settlement construction impresario Lev Leviev; Slim-Fast billionaire
S. Daniel Abraham, a
member of the AIPAC board; and neoconservative philanthropist Roger Hertog,
emeritus chair of the Manhattan Institute. Then there’s [now-deceased] donor
Marc Rich, a founding Birthright board member, the billionaire oil trader
controversially pardoned by President Clinton; throughout his business
dealings, Rich gathered intelligence for the Mossad.
“Several Birthright
donors, including family foundations operated by the Gottesmans, Grinspoons,
Steinhardts and Schustermans, have also financially supported illegal Jewish
settlements…”
But in an Apr. 29, 2013
article that was posted on The Electronic
Intifada website, three non-Israeli Jews who launched the website Renounce
Birthright called for an end to Steinhardt’s Birthright Israel
program, because it is “based on the belief that Jews have a right to settle in
modern-day Israel, to the exclusion of the indigenous Palestinians” and
“operates under the premise that all Jewish people have an exclusive `right’ to
Palestinian land;” while “a Palestinian refugee population of nearly 7 million
people is to this day excluded from returning to their lands by Israeli state
discrimination.”
As a late September 2014
press release of the Loyola University Chicago Students for Justice in
Palestine [SJP] chapter—that was issued after 15 Palestinian students lined up
on Sept. 9, 2014 at a Birthright Israel table on Loyola University’s campus and
asked if they, as Palestinians whose families were expelled from villages
inside present-day Israel, could also register for a Birthright trip—also
observed:
“…Birthright
Israel is an Israeli government-funded program that sponsors free trips to
Israel exclusively for Jewish students…Any Jewish student worldwide can
register for the program, while indigenous non-Jewish Palestinians are not only
ineligible for the program, but often are denied the right to live in or even
visit their homeland freely.”
(end of part 6)
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