Environmentalist and Zionist Alon Tal (Photo: Moments Magazine)
Last Thursday, I joined about 40 others in San Francisco for an organic lunch with Dr. Alon Tal, co-founder of the Zionist Green Alliance and board member of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Tal, an American-born Israeli, is the unofficial leader of what critics describe as the greenwashing movement, producing green futures for Israel as a way of masking the inequitable status quo.
Before starting a greenwashing political party, Tal had a history of working against Bedouin land rights while publicly advocating for environmental service improvements, at the JNF and the leftleaning Arava Institute. Both organizations have public pro-Bedouin personas. However, a deeper look into the environmentalist's work reveals his red-lines. One example, dug up by Tali Shapiro from the Coalition of Women for Peace, is Tal's 2006 remarks in Ma'ariv, where he list Bedouins as one of Israel's "top ten environmental hazards."
The Bedouin harm open areas. They create a situation of over-grazing, which brings about land erosion. There are fifty thousand illegal structures in the Negev built by Bedouin. They are halting the development of the area since nothing can be done with land they've occupied. It's not fair towards the general public, who're supposed to enjoy these open spaces, to go on a retreat and even ride a jeep through the open landscape.
The interviewer with Ma'ariv responded to Tal's above remarks with:
So you suggest wiping out Bedouin culture so that Yuppies can drive in Jeeps?
Tal is not in favor of creating scenic driveways through every neighborhood the JNF marks for demolition. He made a one-time intervention to stop an eviction in Silwan in East Jerusalem, a move that seemed to buy him a touch of maverick street cred with the Zionist environmental community. But his site characterizes the occupied neighborhood as a "disputed" one and, based on his comments to me last week, that intervention reflected an effort to stave off Arab dissent, rather than an acknowledgment of land rights.
'Green' Jewish territorial expansion
During Tal's 30-minute lecture luncheon, he described “green” Jewish territorial expansion as a utopia, in which military vehicles will run off of alternative energy sources. In order to attain this colonial utopia, the green Zionist movement will return "harmony in society and the environment," by designating large tracts of lands as national parks or nature reserves, and lobbying all political parties to adopt green agendas.
And in fact, currently, the JNF is doing just that, forcibly removing 30,000 Bedouins from their homes for a new nature reserve in the Negev.
The Bedouin evictions are part of Israel's national zoning plans. Tal said the once "agriphobic" (fear of farming) idea of planning that dominated the 1950's era-- think Bauhaus-style Tel Aviv new urbanism--has since been exchanged for a new stage that favors open spaces. That old phase, Tal finds, was based upon the "bonanza" when "Israel won the lottery," in 1948, and proceeded to "create demographic facts."
In this new phase of Israeli planning, wide-open spaces are no longer viewed with fear as being undeveloped tracts of recently confiscated Palestinian land, and thereby ripe for Palestinian return. Such "territorial security issues" governed the first 100 years of Zionist expansion, Tal explained; and he looks to the next 100 years for building harmony with environment. This harmony is created through the designation of nature reserves, which often come at the expense of Palestinian and Bedouin residential and agricultural land use.
Tal also asserted that there are over "one million dunums of land waiting to be protected" as nature reserves, so that these lands are preserved for future generations. When asked, What of the Bedouins who are currently living on some of these lands, let alone their future generations "waiting to be protected," Tal expressed no sympathy. Becoming visibly irritated at the mention of Bedouins, he said they are "breaking the law," trespassing on lands for which they only have "ancestral claims."
He added, "they can't keep having twelve children, expecting to expand on the land, it can't happen."
In terms of "breaking the law," Tal is correct; the state does not acknowledge Bedouin land deeds in unrecognized villages. However in terms of expansion, Tal is wrong; 160,000 Negev Bedouins living in unrecognized villages use about 1 percent of the desert land, and their localities are systematically reduced/evicted/demolished by planning schemes from institutions like the JNF.
Later, I followed up with Tal on the separate issue of nature reserves outside of the green line. There are four Israeli parks in the West Bank. Tal's take was that they should become "peace parks," or buffer zones, meaning that he believes Israel should keep the confiscated land in the occupied territories. Unfortunately, our conversation then concluded abruptly.
"Excuse me, my cousin is here, I need to say hello," he said, and walked away.
Ending the event with a gracious smile, Tal waved to the receptive audience-- "we'll see you in Israel." But the eco-friendly Israel he imagines is one for future generations of Jewish Israelis only, without geographic and demographic constraints.
P.S. The lunch menu? Buffet style tuna wraps, cold pasta salad and
coffee--all served with compostable plates and silverware.
Tal’s thoughts on the environmental impact of settlement blocks?
If anyone is looking for the other perspective; Raja Shehadeh’s “Palestinian Walks, Forays into a Vanishing Landscape” is a wonderful book especially if one enjoys being out in nature.
green” Jewish territorial expansion as a utopia, in which military vehicles will run off of alternative energy sources.
The environmental damage caused by depleted uranium shells fired by the israeli Army in its regular wars outdoes whatever green porn the hasbaradim vomit. The IDF is the biggest emitter of CO2 in Israel.
The Bedouin took care of their desert environment for millennia. For the Israelis (as for any modern consumer society) the environment is there to be raped.
link to haaretz.com
The existential difficulties Jews face in Israel always serve as the explanation when violence is needed against humans or against the landscape. The land turns into a place that people do not really love, but rather a patriotic imperative. In order to really love a swath of land, to gaze at the hills, the olive trees and the streets, the rich travel to Tuscany. Those who are fighting to save the Yarkon Park in the southern Sharon, Timna, the Samar dunes and what is left of the Dead Sea are the buds of a late bloom – perhaps too late.
Do you think it’s a need to prove that they are more “deserving” of the land. That they think, “Silly Arabs, not taking advantage of all these resources. That’s why they don’t deserve it- they won’t recognize it’s true potential”
It’s pretty much the same argument made by the American settlers about Native Americans, before they obliterated the native buffalo and wolf populations.
Definitely
They went further than many colonisers do and wiped all trace of the Palestinians off the map
link to amazon.co.uk
As a young man Meron Benvenisti often accompanied his father, a distinguished geographer, when the elder Benvenisti traveled through the Holy Land charting a Hebrew map that would rename Palestinian sites and villages with names linked to Israel’s ancestral homeland. These experiences in Benvenisti’s youth are central to this book, and the story that he tells helps explain how during this century an Arab landscape, physical and human, was transformed into an Israeli, Jewish state. Benvenisti first discusses the process by which new Hebrew nomenclature replaced the Arabic names of more than 9,000 natural features, villages, and ruins in Eretz Israel/Palestine (his name for the Holy Land, thereby defining it as a land of Jews and Arabs). He then explains how the Arab landscape has been transformed through war, destruction, and expulsion into a flourishing Jewish homeland accommodating millions of immigrants. The resulting encounters between two people who claim the same land have raised great moral and political dilemmas, which Benvenisti presents with candor and impartiality. Benvenisti points out that five hundred years after the Moors left Spain there are sufficient landmarks remaining to preserve the outlines of Muslim Spain. Even with sustained modern development, the ancient scale is still visible. Yet a Palestinian returning to his ancestral landscape after only fifty years would have difficulty identifying his home. Furthermore, Benvenisti says, the transformation of Arab cultural assets into Jewish holy sites has engendered a struggle over the ‘signposts of memory’ essential to both people. “Sacred Landscape” raises troublesome questions that most writers on the Middle East avoid. The now-buried Palestinian landscape remains a symbol and a battle standard for Palestinians and Israelis.
We know who really got wiped off the map and who did the wiping – not the Iranians.
As to holy sites, the very recently discovered evidence – I’m inclined to say proof from Roman coins – that the western wall was not part of the Herodian Temple could do with more airing.
MHughes,
Despite the sensational way in which it was described by some media there is nothing ground breaking in the discovery that parts of the temple compound where completed after the death of king herod. Josephus flavius clearly states that the building project continued for decades after herod’s death, employing a workforce of 18,000 people.
Why do you feel that this minor archeological discovery is of great importance?
clearly
I remember reading one of the Israeli green movement periodicals where they expressed a negative attitude toward people using the Jordan River for Baptisms. Part of it was concern for the bathers’ health, but another part seemed negative too…
Then also there was the negative attitude toward the large numbers of pilgrims, also based on their pollution.
RE: “The Bedouin harm open areas. They create a situation of over-grazing, which brings about land erosion…” ~ Dr. Alon Tal
MY SNARK: That’s “mighty white of him!”
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
SOURCE – link to en.wikipedia.org
Ugh ugh ugh. If that was the case they wouldn’t have been living there for at least 1400 years. Most likely, before Israelis started encroaching on their territory, they could move from place to place, allowing an area of land to replenish itself. By settling on their grazing areas, the Bedouin are not able to allow the land enough time to replenish on its own. I won’t even begin to speculate where all that water used for irrigation is coming from or what areas it was providing water to before it was diverted to more “practical use”
Dr. Tal must be a big fan of the outcome of the supreme court case: johnson v Mcintosh in 1823. Here’s the most relavent part…
“According to every theory of property, the Indians had no individual rights to land; nor had they any collectively, or in their national capacity; for the lands occupied by each tribe were not used by them in such a manner as to prevent their being appropriated by a people of cultivators. All the proprietary rights of civilized nations on this continent are founded on this principle. The right derived from discovery and conquest, can rest on no other basis; and all existing titles depend on the fundamental title of the crown by discovery”
It’s not fair to the general public
Not fair?
Call the medical journals! Call the World Health Organisation! Call the Guinness Book of World Records! We are looking at the worst case of irony deficiency in the history of mankind.
If he cares so much about the environment, he should not push people from the land they live on, but rather convince the maniacs in Tel Aviv to stop planning war against Iran. I’m sure millions of explosions are harming the environment much more than “over-grazing”.