An Anonymous Interview From Inside The Israel Lobby

A former FDD fellow talks about its program to take young conservatives to Israel. He cannot use his real name because he currently works for an Israeli tech company.

“Like most people, my price was precious little, especially as an impressionable undergrad.”

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When I published my post on the Israel lobby two weeks ago, an acquaintance told me that he had been a fellow with the Foundation For the Defense of Democracies when he was in college in 2007. This is a summary of my interview of him. Block quoted sections are direct quotes. Other sections are my paraphrases. He can’t use his real name so I’m calling him “Bart.”

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

I was a junior in college and had just finished studying abroad. I really had the travel bug. I turned on my Facebook feed and saw Earn a 3 week trip to Israel. Learn about the history, culture etc. … all completely paid for.

It was interesting even back then in 2007 how good the ad targeting was. I had listed my religion as ‘Viking’ which they must have took to mean I was conservative.

I clicked into the ad. It was from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies bills itself as a nonpartisan think tank whose mission is to educate the public about the threat terrorism poses to democratic societies.

It was billed as, hey this is competitive, we have to know that you pass the purity test i.e. are you a hardcore conservative, what do you think of the War on Terror?

These questions appeared on the application and they asked them again in the interview. Bart had a connection through his brother who was studying in DC and had a friend who had done the FDD program before. That friend helped him prep for the interview. Most kids don’t have the experience of being on a phone interview with someone who is trying to rattle you. The interviewer was very intense. The friend who coached Bart told him to give very concise answers.

“Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?”

“Do you believe terrorism is permissible in any context?”

“Do you believe that Democracies have the right to defend themselves?” The implication was that other forms of government don’t have the right to defend themselves.

The interview was like an interrogation. The interviewer wanted extremely short answers. One word answers of “yes” for question 1, “no” for question 2, and “yes” for question 3 would have been perfect.

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies claimed that being democratic is core to Israel’s justification. Bart believes that being democratic actually puts Israel in a perilous position.

This may be part of the Greater Israel project and the current war. Israel is seeing the writing on the wall with demography. They’re getting out-bred and out-immigrated by the Arab population there.

Many of the smarter families in Israel are leaving Israel for the US, which shrinks the Israeli Ashkenazi population even further.

The FDD’s definition of terrorism was “intentional mass targeting of civilians.” While on the bus in Israel, Bart got into an argument with the other fellows when he said that the Dresden and Tokyo bombings fit the FDD’s definition of terrorism.

This was around March 2007 and trip started in July of 2007. Free plane Ticket from [redacted] to JFK to Tel Aviv. Met the fellows there in the airport and did 3 weeks of terrorism tourism in Israel. Lots of lectures in Tel Aviv.

On the first day colonel Yona Fieghel from the institute for counterterrorism gave a lecture on psychological warfare and radical Islamic internet propaganda. The following days had lectures on the history of the PLO and the different motivations of Sunni v. Shia terrorists. A lot of the lecturers were from AIPAC.

Looking through his journal Bart laughed. “A lot of my journal form that time is narrative about trying to hook up with chicks in Israel.”

They did lots of terrorism tourism, including tours of military bases, and a trip to the Syrian border in the Golan Heights. In Tiberius Bart saw scarred landscape from recent rocket attacks. They toured prisons. The message was “look how well we treat our prisoners here.” They went to a winery in the Golan Heights, the headquarters of the Israeli prison service, and did touristy things in Jerusalem.

There were upwards of a dozen Universities represented. Lots of the fellows were from Evangelical Christian universities like Patrick Henry and Liberty University. The women on the bus were very unattractive women even by the standards of political staffers but the women in Israel were super-hot. “Tell everyone to be even-handed about Israel” Bart told me, “They do have really hot chicks.”

Bart became friends with one of the fellows who is now a high-ranking official at the Pentagon. That friend was the only liberal on the trip, and he started to make Bart think that Israel is not in America’s security interest. He and Bart kind of became apostates from the Israeli cause while on the trip.

At the end of the trip, everyone was told to commit to host 5 events on campus promoting Israel’s right to exist, fight terrorism, etc. FDD would reimburse their expenses for the event but FDD didn’t facilitate the events at all. Bart held screenings at his university of some pro-Israel documentaries.

At the follow up seminar 5 months later Bart and his friend took LSD and walked around the monuments. That person is now at the Pentagon and has spent much of his career trying to get Israel defunded, but even as a career bureaucrat there is pressure to toe the line.

After that Bart was on the hook for a couple more events, but he wasn’t interested in foreign policy so he took a private sector job. I, Simon Laird, always ask people about the path that led them to get their job, so I asked Bart if the Foundation For the Defense of Democracies trip had helped him launch his career post-college. He briefly considered the Navy, and they liked the FDD trip as a resume builder but it was a minor point because the Navy cares a lot more about ASVAB and Physical scores. But Bart said that if he had been interested in being a political staffer, the trip would have been a huge boost.

Conclusion

There’s nothing particularly nefarious about a country providing free trips to undergrads to gain their sympathy. Like most of the other activities of the Israel lobby, the Israel trips are perfectly legal.

Bart’s experience gives a glimpse of the Israel lobby from the inside. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy maintains a neutral front, but it is really focused entirely on Israel. Their claim that “Democracies have a right to defend themselves” is supposed to imply that Israel can do basically anything it wants to its enemies because its enemies are non-democracies.