The incident exposed an inherent tension in Israeli tourism during wartime. Shulkind, who leads one of the largest Jewish day schools in the U.S., said Milken came “as an act of Zionism to experience Israel for all of its wonder and all of its pain post-Oct. 7.”
“The Israeli teenagers chased our students and their much older siblings came from the other direction on the promenade and sprayed pepper spray at 10 Milken students,” she continued. “In two cases, our students were also pushed, punched, and kicked as well.”
As far as this particular incident goes, I’m kind of inclined to wave it off as “kids can be assholes”
That said, regardless of what sides of the conflict you support on this, I really have to question what the hell was going through these kids’ parents’ minds when they signed the permission slips for this trip.
“You want me to send my 13 year old to a country that is actively engaged in an armed conflict within/along its borders? Where missile attacks are a fairly regular occurrence? Etc. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”
Even when tensions weren’t quite so high, the idea of Israeli tourism always just sounded like a bad idea to me, because even when things are relatively good, every other news story out of the country is the kind of shit that should scare everyone the fuck away.
When I was that age, I had a hard time convincing my parents to let me go on a trip with my boy scout troop to Canada
Let’s see: go to a war zone with a busload of religious lame-os, in a country with no pork and a desert with no casinos. Where do I sign up?
Assholes with pepper spray apparently.