Half the Story: What US Leaders Miss on Their Trips to Israel
Speaker Johnson and Democratic and Republican AIPAC Delegations this week could use a post-trip briefing on occupation, settlements and the realities driving the conflict.
This past week, I led a J Street delegation of former senior national security and foreign policy professionals on an educational mission to Israel/Palestine.
We were one of numerous such trips last week. There was a delegation led by Speaker Mike Johnson, sponsored by the U.S.-Israel Education Association, an Evangelical group focused on deepening American ties with West Bank settlements.
AIPAC’s educational arm sponsored two others — one for freshman Democrats in the House, another for Republicans the week before.
All these trips, including J Street’s, share some basics: briefings with the Israel Defense Forces, a visit to the Western Wall, and a trip south to Israeli communities on the Gaza border devastated by Hamas on October 7.
What matters isn’t the similarities, but what’s missing when American politicians visit Israel on these sponsored trips.
On a J Street trip, we spend equal time on both sides of the Green Line, hear from both Israeli and Palestinian activists, and visit Palestinian communities impacted by the 58-year Israeli occupation.
So, for those who didn’t travel with J Street, here’s a quick rundown of four things we saw that you likely didn’t.
Hebron
Hebron is the West Bank’s largest city, full of historic and religious significance, and home to the tombs of the patriarchs and matriarchs, starting with Abraham and Sarah.
Today, 600–800 Jewish settlers have turned the once-bustling heart of the city into a ghost town, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian residents.
The visuals in Hebron are stark. Visiting has been life-changing for many who had no clue this was happening.
Speaker Johnson’s group came to Hebron on Wednesday, just after we were there.
They stood outside the Tomb of the Patriarchs and took smiling tourist photos with their delegation. We walked the extra hundred yards to the checkpoint where Palestinians have, for decades, been barred from walking on their own streets.
What they and other delegations didn’t see: a once-bustling Old City turned to a ghost town; abandoned streets and markets; wire netting residents use to stop settlers from dumping trash on them or throwing stones at their windows.
Umm al-Khair
The Speaker’s delegation likely turned left after leaving Hebron and headed back to Jerusalem.
We turned right toward the South Hebron Hills to meet Bedouin communities being systematically driven from their homes.
These villages are denied running water and electricity. Homes and entire communities are regularly demolished. Residents face relentless extremist settler violence.
On Wednesday, we visited Umm al-Khair, where Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian videographer on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, had been shot and killed the prior week — allegedly by Yinon Levy, a settler so notorious he was personally sanctioned last year by the Biden administration.
We sat in the mourning tent for Awdah, steps from where his bloodstains still darkened the cement. The women of the village were absent, on a hunger strike demanding the release of Awdah’s body for burial. A hearing on the release was postponed precisely as we sat with the mourners.
Members of Congress we bring to the West Bank return home determined to ensure U.S. opposition to settler violence. Speaker Johnson, by contrast, reportedly pledged that when he returns, he will lead efforts to bar the federal government from calling it the West Bank.
The Temple Mount
The next day, we visited the Temple Mount/Haram a-Sharif — the holiest site in Judaism, the third holiest in Islam (home to the al-Aqsa Mosque), and close to the heart of Christianity’s foundational stories.
Other delegations visit the Western Wall, but many never go up on the Mount. And they likely aren’t told that last Sunday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir led hundreds of Jews in open prayer there — an action specifically prohibited under the “Status Quo” arrangements since 1967.
We were reminded that a visit by Ariel Sharon to the site — not even to pray — in September 2000 helped spark the Second Intifada. The Temple Mount remains the single most explosive flashpoint in the conflict.
American policymakers need to leave a visit here understanding not just the religious significance of these sites to all faiths, but that there is a growing extremist movement to rebuild a Jewish temple on the Mount — and that in this government, responsibility for putting out these kinds of fires has been vested in the country’s most dangerous religious arsonist.
E-1
Only ten minutes from the Temple Mount lies the Mount of Scopus. We bring groups there to look east toward Jordan and across the open desert linking the north and south of the West Bank.
One day, if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to end, there will need to be an independent, viable state of Palestine. (Even AIPAC’s website says it supports a so-called “two-state solution.”)
But there can only be a second state if the north and south of the West Bank have territorial contiguity.
For three decades, Israel has threatened to build a massive settlement known as E-1 that would block that contiguity. There’s good reason the plan is called the “fatal heart attack” for two states.
Planning, hearings, permits, approvals — the development process for E-1 has been going on for nearly 30 years. And for 30 years, America and the international community have had one simple message for Israel: Don’t do it.
This past Wednesday, the day before our visit, was the final government hearing on objections to the project.
The decision now rests with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
For those who didn’t get this briefing because they were busy having dinner with the Prime Minister in a settlement built illegally in occupied territory, your colleagues who’ve traveled with us will be happy to fill you in on – and invite you to join – their efforts to block this destructive project.
In all, it’s without question a bleak moment for those who seek a better future for Israelis and Palestinians.
Those who travel to the region — especially elected officials — have a responsibility to confront the full reality of what is happening in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. Anything less isn’t meaningful education, it’s tourism with a security briefing.
If U.S. policymakers keep returning from these trips unwilling to challenge settlement expansion, settler violence, and extremist provocation, then our government will remain complicit in entrenching this conflict.
There is still time to build a different future — but only if we stop looking away from the parts of the story that don’t fit neatly into a photo op.
Thank you for exposing them to the real Israel.
Thank you for sharing your visit to the mourning tent for Awdah Hathaleen. He was a zoom friend through Kehilla’s Hand in Hand program, initiated by our beloved Rabbi Burt Jacobson. May both their memories be for a blessing.