[GushShalom] From "birth right participant" to ISM spokeswoman

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

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Birthright participant turns pro-Palestinian activist 

By Annette Young 

`I'm helping the Jews by being here,' says Laura Gordon, who has 
joined the International Solidarity Movement It is probably not what the 
founders of Birthright Israel - the program that brings thousands of 
young diaspora Jews to Israel each year - would have ever imagined: 
That within months of arrival, a Birthright participant would become a 
spokeswoman for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-
Palestinian activist group operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 

Laura Gordon, 20, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, arrived in the country 
last December with thousands of Jewish students from some 30 
countries on the Birthright program. 

"I didn't have any money and I did want to come and see Israel," she 
told Anglo File this week. 

Told originally about the program by one of her professors at Grinnell 
College in Iowa, Gordon signed up and was interviewed by telephone 
by a Birthright organizer in New York. "I was asked if I was Jewish and 
if my level of 
religiousness was appropriate for the program," said Gordon, whose family are 
Reconstructionist Jews. She saw the program as an opportunity "to learn about 
the conflict and talk to people on both sides. I hoped as an outsider that I could 
have a more objective understanding of the situation and help bring peace to the 
region." 

Within three months, Gordon would become one of the nine foreign activists 
working with the ISM in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In recent months, 
the organization has attracted world attention after one member, Rachel Corrie, 
was killed and two other members were seriously injured while attempting to 
stop Israeli bulldozers from levelling Palestinian homes. 

During the 10-day Birthright program, Gordon visited a young Israeli who was 
seriously wounded in a Palestinian suicide bombing. "At that point, I was 
learning about that side, and now I'm learning about this side," she said. 

After Birthright, Gordon became even more curious to visit the Gaza Strip, 
having received e-mails from an American friend in Rafah. 

"I was being told by really sweet 18- or 19-year-old boys in the army that it 
was a really honorable thing, what was going on in the territories," she 
explained, adding that contrasted greatly to her friend's e-mails about the 
"Palestinians' daily subjection to fire and violence." 

Gordon made a quick trip to Rafah just days before Corrie's death in March but 
after hearing of the incident, decided to head back to the Gaza Strip for a longer 
visit. "Initially, like everybody who comes here, I thought it would be a month 
but it's turned out to be much longer," she said in a phone conversation this 
week. "Here in Rafah, I already have many, many families who I consider as my 
own family. They have been so welcoming, thanking us for bringing world 
attention to their plight." 

While her own family back in the U.S. supported her work, she said, they "were 
scared to death" about her safety. 

Asked how people reacted to a Birthright participant being involved in such 
activities, Gordon responded: "Some people, when they heard back in the 
States, said I had betrayed Birthright by doing this, but Birthright does not come 
with a stipulation that you must espouse certain values." 

The revelation about Gordon comes in the wake of government cuts to the 
funding of the Birthright program which until this year, was split equally three 
ways between a group of North American philanthropists, diaspora Jewish 
communities and the Israeli government. 

When informed of Gordon's role in the ISM, the international marketing director 
for Birthright Israel, Gidi Mark, told Anglo File that the criterion for accepting 
participants is that they have to be "Jews between the ages of 18 and 26 who 
will be coming to Israel on their first peer-group educational trip." 

"In the event of irregular behavior, including incitement against the State of 
Israel, participants are sent back to their homes," he said. "Some of the 
participants choose to extend their stay in Israel on their own. We do not follow 
the whereabouts in Israel of participants after they have completed the 10-day 
program that Birthright Israel provides." 

However, Mark stressed that "in the brief time that Birthright Israel exists, tens 
of thousands of Jewish young adults have become Israel's ambassadors on 
campuses throughout the world." 

Meanwhile, life for Gordon and other ISM activists has become even harder in 
the last week with the Israel Defense Forces announcing tough new regulations 
for foreigners operating in the Gaza Strip. Foreign nationals entering the Strip 
are now asked to sign a form in which they pledge not to enter military areas 
along the Israel-Egypt border or other areas of conflict. They are also being 
asked to sign a waiver exempting Israel from any responsibility in the event of 
injury or death. 

For its part, the IDF has charged that many of the self-proclaimed peace 
activists are "provacateurs" and "riot inciters" who deliberately interfere with the 
army's work in an effort to blacken Israel's image. 

In addition, last Friday the IDF raided the ISM's offices in the West Bank 
village of Beit Sahour, arresting a Palestinian secretary, Fida Gharib, and an 
American, Christine Razowsky along with an Australian human rights worker, 
Miranda Sissons, who was visiting at the time. 

The organization is now changing its direction, Gordon said, as "clearly, it has 
become dangerous to do direct actions, so we're refocusing our efforts on 
community development - such as writing papers on the water situation in the 
region." 

She added that "the situation has become more and more difficult, but we don't 
feel that by any means that it is the end of ISM. More and more people are e-
mailing us and offering their support." 

In addition, the group launched an e-mail campaign this week calling on those 
activists who had been in the region to return. 

"We are a nonviolent group and we maintain neutrality," Gordon stressed. "You 
try to distance yourself from the factions here while understanding that this is the 
result of the occupation. I would be thrilled to see the day when there are no 
more suicide bombers, but I don't see anything in place [that shows that] Israel 
is serious about reducing the violence here. Sincerely, I do believe that I am 
furthering the safety and long-term stability of the Jewish people by being here." 
Ha'aretz, Friday, May 16 - internet edition
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=293871&sw=ISM