Maybe, Keren, it would help if you took off the rose tinted glasses from SP. I love Israël and like Israëlis and israëli culture but the behaviour, especially of young people, is pretty uncivilized, particularly abroad. That said, behaving badly abroad is a characteristic of more nations. I don't think they should send these groups to Poland anymore. if young people want to go there they should do it at their own iniative while touring Europe.

How can you see Israeli Youngsters driving their cars with their music full volume ? you are living in East Jerusalem [ do you know already that the Arab shuk is not in west Jerusalem ? ] and walk around there . Here i hear the same noise from Israeli drivers , Jewish ones . Well what some say regarding the behaviour of our youth , is not always untrue . Take a bus when school finishes , you will see enough . I've met Israeli's at the "club med' in Switserland some years ago , sad to say , their behaviour was not so nice . This is maybe only one example , they were not teenagers , had two children .

poor elin, brainwashed by aftonbladet and swedish state TV...

Well. I live in Europe. And all the israeli turists that I have met in London etc. have behaved really nicely. You should see the british turists in places like Ibiza. They are disgusting, drunken, harassing women etc. Israeli youth are behaving well, leave them alone!

Since when has Polish Youth behaved well. Constantly drunken, mixed in drugs and crime. Actually 75% of foreign convicts in Finnish Prisons are Eastern Europeans. So they need to just shut up.

Why are we pouring tourist dollars into Poland, again? We can see pictures of the camps, and Nazi videos of what happened, all right here in Israel. These trips are a waste of money that could be better spent on helping the needy who are right here, and the children could be spending their time talking to, and giving a hand to, holocaust survivors who have slipped through the cracks in Israel.

the poles should be kissing their feet when they arrive begging forgiveness.

http://polishpress.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/israeli-teenagers-are-a-nuisance-in-poland/ Please publish, it's very credible in light of recent press reports in Israel about the same incidents !

honestly, it is not only teenagers.i've seen many Israeli tourists.. most of them are arrogant and impolite! it is really sad.

I thought it would be okay to speak in her own language, since we have to study it in Finland. And I have nothing against Swedes, I actually like them. Just too much Leftists among them!

Better to spend the money locally for education then to give junkets to teens.

Living in SP doesn't make anyone seeing things through rose tinted glasses but rather makes one more conscient on what is good and what is bad. I have lived in Israel for 7 months now and I observe the behaviour of the people ,and the behavior of the Israeli Jews are FAR,FAR,FAR,FAR,FAR,FAR and FAR better than the behavior of other youngs in many other countries. I am blessed for having the opportunity to do some travels and I can tell you thet for sure.At least that's my feeling. I saw many Israelis in India,for example ,and they are very nice and where they go everybody follow them since they are smart travellers. They go as well to Brasil,where I personally didn't met many,but I am sure they behave well too. One day ,I heard an antesemite from Australia and this disgusting woman critizized "those israelis" she met in Brasil because they were- fairly and normally-negotiating a price in a store.It was PURE antissemitism and idiocy ,of course! That's the mindset of those who criticize!

Sadly, it's true. While not all Israelis behave badly, only those who draw more attention then people who act normal, we do get anti-Polish propaganda in schools and everywhere else. Anyone who went to school in Israel knows what I'm talking about. Plus the army. It's only those who end up in Universities, that become introduced to different, more balanced ideas about the world. The problem lies with the school curriculum and general approach of "Never again!". ISraelis are taught that everybody hates us and that we're always under attack. For impressionable teenagers it's easy to turn this attitude into vindictiveness and animosity.

I believe there is hardly any better way of bringing the holocaust to this generation except for sending them to the spot where it all happened. No way to have the same impact via TV, books, etc. This is especially important for the 3rd. and 4th. generation! We, from the second generation, were brought up in the shadow of the gas chambers, so I will not go there, neither do I need to. I have nothing lost there that I can find and bring back to life. Not my brother, not my grandparents, nor my parents first partners. Whatever the behavior of these youngsters (I' ve heard about some misconduct), the Poles do not need any excuse for saying negative things about us. That was never a problem. Maybe we should have a hard second look into this "shoah tourism" and find some creative new alternatives. Surely we do not want those poles to make a living from our painful past whilst continuing loathing us.....

Dear #1, i work in a hotel in Israel, and i'm an Israeli my self and i'm telling you, we act like animal's, and i'm sorry for that!!!

Where and how did the Poles killed "1 million of Jews"? You're unable to make a difference between Nazi Germans and inhabitants of a country the latter occupied?

Or you stay silent , or , here , you don't say anything serious . Poor poor guy .

The monetary benefits from those trips primarily go to some Israelis "Society for Polish-Israeli Friendship in Israel and Cracovians Association in Israel both try to convince the government of their country, not to sent any more teenagers to death camps in Poland. Chances are slim. - ‘These trips are mostly a huge business for people who organise them’ - says Lili Haber - ‘including Israeli security agents’." And have you heard about Mr. Herschson lately? As for the benefits for Polish tourism in this article it is written that hotels in Cracow are not even interested in hosting the Israeli youth groups any more. http://polishpress.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/israeli-teenagers-are-a-nuisance-in-poland/

Israelis youths may be the same as any other teenagers on a trip. The problems, however, are the following: 1. Because of the nature of the trips one would expect more seriousness from the participants. 2. The youngsters are accompanied by security agents who act as if they were in occupied territories. 3. We know (because studies were made by the Israeli professor - Zimmerman, reported in Rzeczpospolita) that in consequence of those trips the youngsters have a very negative view of Poland. They are completely isolated, they have no contact with Poles, they are told to fear everything, they are not told about Polish victims or resistance during WWII and in consequence they confuse Poles with Nazis.

really saying that no Poles participated in killing the Jews? Or communists? How old are you? And how naive? Balanced picture is one thing (true, Poles had suffered tremendously under the Nazis, and true, many Poles saved Jewish neighbours and friends). But balanced doesn't mean you can deny the truth about the atrocities perpetrated by your compatriots. It happened, too.

Keren, please take of those pink sunglasses, wake up to the reality, you just arrived in Israel, you will see that Israelies can be very ruth, have little or no manners.... Frankly I never choose a country for my vacation where Israelies can go ( I have dual citizenship) so I will not get annoyed....my son didn't go to the trip to Poland but heard from his friends how terrible they behaved and none of the adults who were with them on the trip interfered......

BESIDES THE REG 18 YR OLD BEHAVIOR ALL WAS GOOD. ALTHOUGH ITS TRUE THAT SEEING ALL THE HORRORS U DONT WANNA BE FRIENDS WITH THE POLES>> BESIDES, IN MY CASE A COUPLE OF POLES ATTACKED US...

I don't know what's in Israeli schools curriculum (though I would be interested), but I suspect that the main problem lies in the organization of such trips. Israelis are not the only one who are taught that they are "constantly under attack". Poles have it too, and many other nations as well. I have a cousin teenager in Poland, and I see how he reacts to things he learns in school. First he learned about what Germans did in Poland and he was all shocked and vindicative and now he learned about the Russians and he goes on telling how he hates them and other inflammatory things. This is a teenager's reaction and he will most probably grow up from this. But if somebody in Poland came out with the idea of organizing trips to Russian gulags with youngsters waving Polish flags you would probably get many of the same problems that we see with the March of the Living. So I don't know, either we realize that one cannot do such sorts of pilgrimages with teenagers, or one make sure that those tendencies are recognized and countered, instead of being exacerbated.

A secular education with no Torah, no discipline, no basic beliefs in either the holiness of the land or personal dignity. This is the legacy of the Left: A youth disconnected from everything of value.

Saying that some Poles participated in the killings is one thing, saying that Poles killed "1 million Jews" is a very different thing...Gross established that Poles killed Jews in Jedwabne and surrounding villages. I don't know exactly how many people died there but it must be something around 1,000. And those were the biggest and the only mass killings of Jews committed by Poles. Other than that there is the Kielce pogrom in which 46 Jews died, and everything else are individual cases. One could only kill millions of people in concentration camps and Poles bear no responsibility for them. I'm sorry for discussing it all so coldly, but I if I have to discuss the shameful events in my people's history I'd like to discuss things that really happened, not made-up numbers.

Either supervise the kids 24/7 or else subsidize individual youth trips to Auschwitz when they go on their own - because They Want To Go - not because it's an opportunity to party with their friends away from home. It should not be a vacation but a pilgrimage, and treated with respect.

I think you guys are missing the point. Whether Poles killed 1000, 10000, or all of the 1,000,000 Jews in Poland is irrelevant. The Polish community today has nothing to do with the horrors its some of its ancestors have committed. To say that the Poles deserver the disrespect of Israelis or that they have no right to complain about it is ridiculous. If this story is true, Israeli youth must learn to respect the communities they visit, regardless of what their ancestors have done.