A report published last week found that the system of anti-Israel defamation in the Western world is a well-oiled machine, sometimes funded by friendly governments and allies of the Jewish state. "The fight against the slander campaign is a national interest," MK Sharren Haskel, chairman of the Education, Culture and Sports Committee, said in the Knesset recently.
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While the majority of the public might consider the report surprising, for the bodies entrusted with Israeli-diaspora relations and strengthening Israel's status in the world, the report only confirmed what they already know. World Jewry – in particular the younger generation – has, for quite some time, been facing a daily struggle to preserve Jewish identity and safeguard the bond with Israel and Zionist values.
The Taglit-Birthright program, which has provided tours of Israel to more than 750,000 Jewish youths since its inception, has worked diligently for years on making an itinerary that provides a strategic, long-term, and effective response to the challenges of antisemitic and anti-Israel attacks – whether on college campuses or in other Jewish living spaces. On these tours, the participants are exposed to Israel's multi-layered social tapestry and the reality of life here and are given the tools to cope with tough questions in an intelligent, critical, tolerant and pluralistic manner. They get to spend time with Israelis their own age, an experience that also affords them a direct relationship with Israel's diverse population. These tours have proved to be one of the most significant tools for systematically confronting antisemitic organizations, BDS supporters and others, which work to slander Israel on every possible stage, at any time and in every way possible.
These youths return to their countries as impassioned and important ambassadors for Israel, and as an asset whose value to our national strength and security is worth more than its weight in gold. Studies show that for a considerable portion of Taglit-Birthright participants, the tour was a pivotal point in their lives – an experience without which they would have drifted toward assimilation and detachment from Israel. Instead, they have become focal points of support for Israel on campuses, social media networks, and across all walks of life, especially in the United States.
Israel – which successfully built the technological wonder that is the Iron Dome missile defense system – must also build a strategic-Zionist Iron Dome and ensure that Zionist groups such as Taglit can continue coming to Israel even during the pandemic to continue reinforcing Israel's and the Jewish people's strategic home front over the coming years. This past summer, Taglit brought some 4,500 youths to Israel, all while meticulously upholding the Health Ministry's public safety protocols. Under the current circumstances, the importance of opening the skies to the youth of the Diaspora and sustaining these educational tours is critical for Israel and the Jewish community alike.
Taglit-Birthright is a long-term strategic asset for the enhancement of Israel and the Jewish people, and as such is an indivisible component of our "national interest."
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