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JERUSALEM (JTA) – A group of American Jews visiting Israel on a free Birthright trip left the tour during a visit to the City of David in Jerusalem to visit a Palestinian family threatened with expulsion.
Six of the youth came from a Birthright tour and two of them came from a second group on Sunday.
One of the band members who left the tour aired the event live on Facebook, including asking each member about their reasons for leaving Birthright.
The group, guided by Hagit Ofran of Peace Now, visited the Sumreen family, whose home in East Jerusalem is led by Elad, who also runs the City of David National Park. Elad should install a Jewish family at home if the Palestinian family is deported. After Israel declared the family property absent at the death of the patriarch of the family, the house was to be sold to the Jewish National Fund in the name of Elad, who seeks expulsion from the family, according to Haaretz. The Sumreen family could not prove to an Israeli court that she owned the property.
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The tour guide with six of the young Jews who left their birth group explained that they were free to leave but that they could lose their surety for the free trip, that Birthright could decide to charge them for the entire trip, and that they may have to pay to change their return flight.
Those who leave a Birthright circuit can not join him. The eight men who left their groups on Sunday planned to visit other places in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, including the Bedouin village Khal al-Amar to be demolished and a visit to Hebron with Breaking the Silence, reported Haaertz
. This is the second group of young Jews to be removed from a Birthright trip in the last two weeks. On June 28, five women affiliated with IfNotNow, a left-wing Jewish group, left the last day of their Birthright trip to join a tour of the West Bank city of Hebron with Breaking the Silence.
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