{"id":431365,"date":"2026-01-26T19:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T19:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/431365\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T19:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T19:57:09","slug":"as-habonim-dror-camps-open-space-for-anti-zionist-views-some-families-push-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/431365\/","title":{"rendered":"As Habonim Dror camps open space for anti-Zionist views, some families push back"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was produced as part of\u00a0JTA\u2019s Teen Journalism Fellowship<\/a>, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2025, Habonim Dror North America, a progressive Labor Zionist youth movement, implemented a new principle, or pillar, welcoming non\u2013<\/a>Zionist and anti-Zionist perspectives into their summer camp programming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In response to this decision, Joanna pulled her teenage daughter out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just wanted everybody to feel comfortable that Israel would be supported,\u201d said Joanna, who only gave her first name to protect her family\u2019s privacy. \u201cThe reason why we would send her to Jewish camp is to get that foundation and nurture her love of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joanna ended up receiving a refund and sending her daughter to Camp Ramah, a Jewish camp in Colorado affiliated with the Conservative movement.<\/p>\n

Others have criticized the new pillar, which Habonim Dror leaders say was meant merely as a statement of inclusion, and not as a repudiation of either the liberal or Zionist principles of a century-old movement whose followers were instrumental in settling and building Israel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But following the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 and Israel\u2019s devastating response in Gaza, many young Jews, including current and former Habonim Dror members, have become increasingly disillusioned with Israel and its government, with some insisting that justice for the Palestinians is not possible if Israel persists as a Jewish state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pillar, called \u201cCollective Liberation of the Peoples in Israel-Palestine<\/a>,\u201d was an effort to acknowledge the pain of these members and let them know they had a place in Habonim Dror, said Lara Dutta, incoming co-chair of Camp Gilboa\u2019s board. Adopted by all six of Habonim Dror\u2019s North American summer camps, it defines \u201ccollective liberation\u201d as freedom \u201cfrom nationalism\u201d in an Israel-Palestine context, aligning it more closely with non- or anti-Zionist political frameworks than with traditionally nationalist Zionism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing that [the pillar] says that everybody freaked out about was that we are accepting of all people: Zionist, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists,\u201d Dutta said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think that that\u2019s far from what Habonim has always been, which is a place for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Formed in the early 1980s through the merger of two established Zionist youth movements with roots in Europe, Habonim Dror operates in more than 20 countries worldwide<\/a>, with its North American branch serving more than 1,500<\/a> campers ages 8-17 each year. It has propelled generations of alumni into social justice- and Israel-oriented organizations<\/a>, where many go on to hold leadership positions<\/a>. The announcement of the new pillar came just before the summer session began and gave some parents second thoughts about their involvement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although initially drawn to the Habonim Dror movement because of its youth-led aspect, Joanna, who lives in Los Angeles, felt concern over the lack of information available regarding the pillar.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found out after the last refund date,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen we had signed up for camp and registered, there was nothing on their website about it. So we didn\u2019t have that knowledge before we signed up for the camp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dutta acknowledged that the timing of the pillar\u2019s announcement was not ideal. \u201cWe should have had a better understanding ourselves of the pillar before we rolled it out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While Joanna\u2019s was one of only two families that ended up withdrawing their enrollment from Gilboa, concern around the new pillar was not isolated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After word got out about the change in mid-May, parents circulated a petition to postpone its implementation. The petition, named \u201cAnti-Zionism at Camp Gilboa,\u201d gained 80 signatures in less than a day. The petition has since been removed from Change.org<\/a> but JTA reviewed an email from the petition organizers who highlighted the \u201creversal of the camp\u2019s longtime Zionist philosophy\u201d and \u201clast-minute switch in curriculum\u201d as driving reasons for the postponement request.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Habonim Dror campers take part in an annual end of season ritual. Habonim Dror North America runs educational programs at six camps in the U.S. and Canada. (Wikipedia)<\/p>\n

Dutta said the petition reflected a \u201c100% misunderstanding of the pillar.\u201d After her conversations with the parent who authored it and a letter clarifying the camp\u2019s commitment to Zionism, it was taken down.<\/p>\n

The teens who authored the original pillar did not respond to JTA\u2019s request for interviews. The parents who started the petition declined to comment.<\/p>\n

As for the campers within Habonim Dror, the pillar sparked a range of responses as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Micah Lotan, a 17-year-old camper from Santa Monica who identifies with Reform Judaism, has attended Gilboa since 2019. He has long connected to the camp\u2019s emphasis on social justice and Jewish values such as hagshama (\u201cactualization\u201d) and avoda (\u201clabor\u201d), as well as its commitment to open dialogue. For him, the pillar was just an extension of that commitment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think about it, having all forms of thought be equally included seems pretty nice, you know?\u201d Lotan said in regards to the expansive language of the pillar. \u201cEveryone\u2019s allowed to express their opinion, freedom of speech, First Amendment, whatever. Those are both values that I hold very deeply to my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

In terms of the way in which the pillar was implemented, however, Lotan felt there was room for improvement.<\/p>\n

In particular, he recalled a camp educational program during which the campers read \u201cThe Iron Wall\u201d by Ze\u2019ev Jabotinsky, a right-wing Zionist leader influential in the first half of the 20th century. Historically, Jabotinsky and Habonim Dror sat on opposite sides of the Zionist spectrum, yet Lotan felt that some of the youth staff (known as Tzevet) were drawing on the essay merely to discredit Zionism.<\/p>\n

This shift from educational programming toward more ideologically driven messaging was one he noticed in recent years, particularly during the summer of 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like Tzevet were presenting only certain information on Zionism and trying to form an entire belief system off of that information alone rather than looking at the whole picture,\u201d Lotan said. \u201cIt felt like they were cherry picking the information and trying to present [it] in a biased way to have us think a certain way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting on claims of advocacy and bias, Dutta said she \u201cwouldn\u2019t be surprised if that\u2019s the case\u201d since \u201cwe don\u2019t have a lot of control over what Tzevet do\u2026There\u2019s no question that Tzevet were excited about the pillar. They may have run with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything that we\u2019re looking at has a bias and everything that we\u2019re looking at is not neutral,\u201d said Gilboa\u2019s youth education director Gigi Weisberg regarding Lotan\u2019s concerns. \u201cSo I think that it\u2019s actually a positive thing that [campers] are questioning what their Tzevet says because we\u2019re not perfect. We\u2019re all youth just trying to figure out how to run a camp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dutta added that the pillar was also a way for the movement to acknowledge the growing divergence between its progressive values and the current right-wing Israeli government. The intention behind the pillar, she observed, was to take a moral position rather than a political one. \u201c[The youth staff] are seeing it through the eyes of morals, like, \u2018we\u2019re Jewish. We believe everyone has a right to freedom. People are dying \u2014 who cares what the politics are?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Habonim Dror has always educated youth on the liberal side of Zionism, which believes in a Jewish state but also calls for accommodation and justice for Palestinians living in territory controlled by Israel.<\/p>\n

Especially since Oct 7, as leftist critiques of Zionism and Israel have grown louder, some in the movement have been challenging its Zionist principles<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[The pillar] is making room for people who don\u2019t know what to do with the pain,\u201d said J.J. Goldberg, editor emeritus of the Forward and an author who has chronicled Habonim\u2019s history for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis pillar is kind of a desperate attempt to stay inside the Jewish people\u2019s consensus while still being this movement of chaverut [comradeship], this intense community that it is,\u201d Goldberg said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a distilled capsule of what\u2019s going on in the Jewish community at large. You\u2019ve got two warring factions, and there\u2019s very little communication between them. And here\u2019s Habonim, that is almost alone, looking for a way to bridge them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Members of the Dror Habonim youth movement in the Indersdorf displaced person\u2019s camp, Nov. 29, 1946. Habonim and Dror, separate movements before their merger in the early 1980s, were closely associated with Zionist activism in Europe and the subsequent building of kibbutzim in Israel. (Ghetto Fighters Museum Archive)<\/p>\n

At Gilboa, the pillar also reshaped the camp\u2019s atmosphere in a more positive way. Dori Bachrad, a 16-year-old camper from Los Angeles who identifies as non-denominational, appreciated changes brought to the educational programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just brought us a new kind of comfortability with staff members and kids and just, like, no conversation is off the table and reassurance that all voices are heard and welcome,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In her eight summers at Gilboa, Bachrad said the staff encouraged different ideas and kept a hands-off approach during most programs. \u201c[This year] there was just generally a lot more conversation, a lot more feelings, a lot more tension,\u201d Bachrad said. \u201cBut I think if there\u2019s anywhere for that to happen, it\u2019s Gilboa.\u201d<\/p>\n

That tension was reflected in an incident where the \u201cZionism log\u201d in a camp log circle \u2014 a traditional installation in which each log represents one of Habonim Dror\u2019s pillars \u2014 was removed by a staff member overnight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just, like, took the log away in the middle of the night. We literally woke up one morning and the Zionism log was gone, and we were like, \u2018Hello, this is kind of crazy\u2019,\u201d Lotan said.<\/p>\n

Bachrad believed that the backlash over the log removal came from people attached to the Zionism pillar who were concerned about the introduction of the new one.<\/p>\n

The traditional Zionist pillar and the new one \u201care meant to coexist,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re not meant to be mutually exclusive whatsoever and I think that people were upset because they felt that the new pillar was replacing the Zionism pillar in a really inappropriate way.\u201d<\/p>\n

For campers in another Habonim Dror camp, however, the new pillar wasn\u2019t mentioned at all. Eliana Wallach, a 17-year-old New Yorker who identifies with Reform Judaism, had never heard of the pillar before. \u201cI don\u2019t know, I just think that it\u2019s interesting that, like, I had no idea that this even existed,\u201d said Wallach, who attended Camp Moshava in Hartford County, Maryland.<\/p>\n

Wallach, Bachrad, and Lotan all noticed differences in the programming throughout Habonim Dror post-Oct. 7. Bachrad and Lotan noted both tension and polarization as well as deeper understanding and meaningful results, with Bachrad calling the experience a \u201cdouble-edged sword.\u201d For Wallach, it was \u201cjust different\u201d, as she mentioned hearing from friends that the guided discussions were \u201cless \u2018Israel yay\u2019 and more \u2018Israel wrong.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For Bachrad, however, this tension was a natural result of aiming for change. \u201cThe discomfort is definitely a valuable part of the experience and is kind of something we know is going to happen and that happens for a reason\u2026If we wanted to just have easy conversations we would.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite referring to the summer as the most polarized of any year she had attended, Bachrad was firm in her belief that political programming belongs in Jewish summer camps as a form of \u201cacceptance and community rather than tension and animosity.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Dutta, the biggest takeaway from the pillar\u2019s first year was that the adults of Habonim and the youth camp members have very different definitions of what Zionism means. While she personally understands it as Jewish self-determination alongside Palestinian self-determination, she noted that others associate the term with Israel\u2019s occupation policies or locate its moral rupture in different historical moments, making it a term she finds increasingly imprecise without clarification.<\/p>\n

As a result of this, Camp Gilboa started a language committee to make sure that the organization is on the same page when using politically charged terminology. Currently this committee is specific to Gilboa, but Dutta hopes it will be taken up by the other Habonim camps.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lesson from what happened after the [new pillar] was that we have to do a better job explaining to parents what Habonim is,\u201d Dutta said. \u201cThis isn\u2019t just summer camp. There is a robust thing that can happen if your kid chooses to go this route.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article was produced as part of\u00a0JTA\u2019s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,690,204624,204625,3,21,19,22,20,25,24,26866],"class_list":["post-431365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-culture","tag-habonim","tag-jewish-camp","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}