Counter Tourism

It's pouring as Hannah Mermelstein and Dunya Alwan lead their tour group along the Israeli separation barrier in Bethlehem. The group gazes at the reinforced concrete wall, which rises more than 20 feet and is covered in graffiti: "I am not a terrorist." "We caged." "Bridges not walls." And, on a colossal closed gate: "We will open." The tourists stand in silence, running their hands along the wet concrete, snapping photographs, crying.

This is what Birthright Unplugged is all about. Founded two years ago, the tiny Boston- based tour of the West Bank was designed to give Jews and others an intimate look at Palestinian life on both sides of the wall. It was created by Mermelstein and Alwan as a sharp contrast to Birthright Israel (officially known as Taglit-birthright israel), a free Zionist tour of Israel that has become the standard first exposure to the country for thousands of young Jews around the world. The women reject the premise that Jews have a birthright to the land and condemn Israel's Law of Return, which grants citizenship to virtually any person of Jewish ancestry. With Birthright Unplugged, they lead tourists through Palestinian cities and villages, introduce them to Palestinians from farmers to politicians, and arrange home stays with families in refugee camps.

At one military checkpoint, hundreds of Palestinians wait in line as the tour arrives. The Palestinians' anger is palpable as, one at a time, each is screened with metal detectors and by soldiers. When it's the Unplugged group's turn, Alwan says, "We're about to be racially profiled and get the long straw." Indeed, Israeli soldiers wave the entire tour through without even a glance at passports. An older Palestinian man, not part of the tour, produces an Israeli permit but is denied passage with a dismissive wave. "Why?" he asks in English. "Just because," the soldier replies in Hebrew. The man is told later his pass was for the next day.

Mermelstein and Alwan say nothing about the incident. "Hannah and Dunya lead in a quiet way," says Marjorie Dove Kent of Jamaica Plain, who participated in the tour. At one point, Kent recalls, she and others witnessed settlers throwing rocks and shouting racial slurs at Palestinians. "I turned and looked at Hannah and Dunya," she says. "There was no lecture, no diatribe. They just looked back at me and let me think for myself."

Birthright Israel, funded partly by the government, has fl own more than 140,000 young Jews to visit Israel since 2000. Birthright Unplugged - funded by donations from participants, Boston house parties, and small grants - has brought in about 60 people. But in this lopsided battle to win the hearts and minds of young Jews, the two women are drawing media attention in Israel and the United States and counting their victories one tourist at a time. "We're really the little engine that could," says Alwan, who, along with Mermelstein, spends at least four months each year in the West Bank running the tour.

Over six days, participants - most are young Jewish adults, but anyone is welcome - use public Palestinian transportation and stay in youth hostels, refugee camps, and villages. The women try to avoid violence but say it is Israelis, not Palestinians, who threaten them, and there are occasional scares. On one trip, the group was assaulted with stones by Israeli children in Hebron when trying to visit a Palestinian family. (The tourists quickly took cover, and no one was seriously hurt.)

Alwan, 43, who lives in Jamaica Plain, attributes her passion to her parents' interest in the civil rights movement and her preteen years in Egypt, where she saw firsthand the plight of Palestinian refugees. The daughter of a Muslim-Jewish marriage, she also spent part of her childhood in Indiana, Washington, D.C., and Boston. Mermelstein, 27, a resident of Dorchester, grew up in a liberal Jewish family outside of Philadelphia, taking numerous trips to Israel. At the start of the 2000 Palestinian uprising known as the second Intifadah, she began seriously questioning Zionism. "I realized that some of my beliefs were contradictory," she says. She met Alwan in 2003 while both were volunteering for a West Bank-based human rights organization.

Birthright Israel initially threatened to sue Birthright Unplugged over its name but has decided against it. "We are not interested in promoting Birthright Unplugged," says Gidi Mark, Birthright Israel's international marketing director. "They ride on our success, and to take someone's name is immoral." Others disagree with the premise of the Unplugged tour. "I'm pained by Jews saying we have no birthright to the land of Israel," says Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. "It's sad and pathetic." He adds: "The problem is they're promoting absolute falsehoods about Israel being responsible for the Palestinian Arabs in refugee camps."

The women are undaunted by detractors. "I'm sitting here in Jamaica Plain and, with Jewish ancestry, I'm eligible to move to Israel, buy a home, have full citizenship rights and live in a place from which somebody else was displaced," Alwan says. "It makes no sense to me. . . . We teach 4-year-olds better when they start taking other people's toys."

The women also run a tour called Re-Plugged, a two-day trip for Palestinian children who want to visit their grandparents' ancestral villages, the Mediterranean Sea, and Jerusalem before age 16, when Israel restricts their mobility. "There is a powerful image that will never leave me," says former Unplugged participant Ilana Lerman, who helped chaperon kids on a Re-Plugged tour. "When Hannah and Dunya took the children to see the sea, one girl called her sister and told her to listen. She ran to the tide and placed the phone just over it."

"This is what I'd like to see more of in the world," says Alwan when reminded of the girl. "People of conscience saying, 'This is what should be happening. This is the right thing, and I'm gonna do it.'"

Benjamin Joffe-Walt is a freelance writer who lives in Tel Aviv. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.