Editor’s Note: Hours after it was announced that the Sierra Club would end its education trips to Israel, the Times of Israel reported that they will be reinstated. According to the website, Sierra Club vice president Ross Macfarlane informed Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to inform him of the decision.
Our most recent story on Sierra Club reinstating their trips to Israel can be found here: “Sierra Club immediately caves to pro-Israel pressure after backlash over trip cancellations“
The Sierra Club has canceled plans for a series of educational trips to Israel. The environmental organization made the decision after discussions between members of its board and a coalition of social justice groups.
“The fight for environmental justice has no borders,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, Executive Director at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, in a statement. “We must oppose colonization, militarism, land theft, and environmental destruction everywhere, in order to stop settler states from stealing native land and expelling the Indigenous people protecting it. The Sierra Club’s decision to cancel trips to apartheid Israel is a welcome step forward as together we struggle toward justice for the Palestinian people and liberation for all.”
“Conservancy contributed to the greenwashing of US settler colonialism and the cover up of the connected violences of European settlement; Sierra Club, unfortunately, has a role in and connection to this history,” said Krystal Two Bulls, Director of NDN Collective’s LANDBACK Campaign, “Land is not separate from the People who build their livelihoods upon it nor are Indigenous people separate from their land. Sierra Club canceling these ‘international outings;, that will contribute to the greenwashing of Israeli apartheid and Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian People, shows us that they are learning the tough lessons from the mistakes that they have made to Indigenous People on Turtle Island. We resolutely confirm that people of conscience cannot disconnect ‘outings on land’ from the people who make their livelihood and have had relationship to the land since time immemorial, nor can they shirk the responsibility and accountability to uplifting the demands of those people for liberation, freedom and return.”
The planned trips were scheduled to occur in occupied East Jerusalem, Israel’s Qumran National Park, the occupied Golan Heights and other areas.
After learning that the Sierra Club would carry out three educational trips to Israel this spring, nine groups ( Adalah Justice Project, Adalah-NY: Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, Jewish Voice for Peace, NDN Collective, Palestinian Youth Movement-NYC, The Movement for Black Lives, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and Visualizing Palestine) sent the organization a letter, detailing Israel’s repression of Palestinians and explaining how the country “greenwashes” the occupation via its environmentally responsible public image.
“In contrast with the global human rights community, The Sierra Club is instead reinforcing racist Israeli myths that European Zionsts established a state on ‘A land without a people’ and ‘made the desert bloom’,” reads the letter. “The trip descriptions tout Israel’s success ‘in preserving significant spaces for nature reserves, forests, and national parks’..But Israel’s apartheid and colonization are not green. As Visualizing Palestine notes, Israel uses parks, nature reserves and forests to conceal the ruins of depopulated Palestinian villages, appropriate land and curtail Palestinian access and development. 182 Palestinian villages that were depopulated by Israel are concealed in Israeli parks and forests, preventing refugees from returning.”
An email to volunteers from the Sierra Club’s National Outings team chair Mary Owens was obtained by The Jewish News of Northern California. “On February 22, the board received an email from a coalition of activist organizations … threatening that if we did not cancel the upcoming trips within a week, they would go public that the organization was violating the organizational values it recently rolled out,” explained Owens.
Owens said that acting the organization’s acting Executive Director Dan Chu then put together a panel to assess the situation and decided to cancel the trip after the decision was recommended by two of its members. Owens also linked to the list of organizational values that she references, which includes a section on anti-racism. “Recognizing, naming, and rejecting the norms of internalized racial oppression in ourselves, our work, our organization, and our communities. Individual acts of racism are supported by institutions and are nurtured by the societal practices that reinforce and perpetuate racism,” it declares.
The Sierra Club’s decision is already being denounced by pro-Israel organizations. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt sent Chu a letter denouncing the move. “The Sierra Club is validating and emboldening a campaign that seeks to undermine and demonize Israel’s legitimacy, while doing nothing to promote understanding, reconciliation and ultimately peace,” wrote Greenblatt. “We urge you to reconsider the short-sighted and misguided decision.”
“We do not believe for one moment that such a draconian move came about because of a single email,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Sierra Club in a statement. “Whether your leadership and supporters are aware of the sudden cancellation of regular trips to Israel—a country deeply involved in environmental issues—The Sierra Club was subject to a coordinated campaign by extremists. Your organization made no attempt to verify the allegations made by the hit squad of anti-Israel propagandists.”
Jewish Voice for Peace addressed the criticisms in a Twitter thread. “We know the Zionist playbook all too well – so its no surprise that Sierra Club is being hit hard with backlash right now, with the classic players calling the decision antisemitic and demanding a public apology to Jewish people,” it reads. “There is nothing anti-Jewish about ending complicity in Israeli apartheid and respecting the Palestinian picket line for freedom!”
The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights is circulating a petition to thank the Sierra Club for listening to the activists. “Write to the Sierra Club and tell them to stay steadfast in choosing justice over complicity with apartheid,” it urges. “It’s critical that they hear support for repairing their past harm towards Black and Indigenous communities and align with their stated values in support of Indigenous and environmental justice.”
Again and again, it comes down to the Benjamins. It’s apparent that the Sierra Club has done the math and determined that the amount in donations it will lose from progressives by deciding to participate in this greenwashing trip far outweighs the money it will lose from Zionist backers if it doesn’t.
Count me among the first group.