In response to backlash from pro-Israel groups the Sierra Club has reversed its decision to cancel a series of educational trips to the country.
“From exploration treks to backpack journeys to leisurely vacations in far-off destinations, the Sierra Club has offered outings opportunities to enjoy and explore culturally and environmentally rich corners of the world,” said Dan Chu, the organization’s Acting Executive Director, in a statement. “For nearly a decade now, Israel is one of the countries we’ve offered outings to. As such, we intend to update our schedule soon to offer new outings to Israel later this year. We are committed to working with stakeholders to ensure these trips are crafted in a way that better reflects the range of diversity in the region.”
Last month nine social justice 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 Chu, and the organization board members, a letter about a series of education trips to Israel that were supposed to be carried out this month. The letter accused the Sierra Club of helping to “greenwash” the Israeli government’s repression of Palestinians by promoting the country’s environmentally responsible image. The letter also drew attention to a series of organizational values that the Sierra Club recently rolled out, which includes a commitment to ending structural racism.
“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,” the coalition pointed out. “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.”
Earlier this week Palestine activists celebrated an apparent victory after Sierra Club National Outings team chair Mary Owens sent an email out to volunteers saying that the trips had been canceled. According to Owens, after discussions between coalition behind the letter and Sierra Club board members, Chu “appointed a group to handle the response” and made the decision after multiple members recommended cancelation.
The move was immediately denounced by Zionist groups and pro-Israel organizations. “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 Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote Chu in a public letter. “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, said 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, one of the groups that successfully pressured the Sierra Club to cancel the trips, addressed the backlash 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,” they wrote. “There is nothing anti-Jewish about ending complicity in Israeli apartheid and respecting the Palestinian picket line for freedom!”
The Sierra Club apparently caved to the pressure in a matter of hours. The Times of Israel reported that Ross Macfarlane, the organization’s vice president, called Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to notify him of the reversal. “We appreciate that the Sierra Club acted quickly to reverse the announced cancellations of trips to Israel which placed the famed American conservation organization directly into the crosshairs of BDS, anti-Israel, and anti-peace zealots,” Cooper told the website. A short time later Chu released his statement.
The coalition that sent the Sierra Club the letter have put out a statement criticizing the reversal. “Not only did Sierra Club recommit to taking nature trips to Israel, but astonishingly, the statement from Chu is written as though Indigenous Palestinians do not exist and fails to apologize for the anti-Palestinian racism of its past tours,” it reads. “Chu’s statement names Israel five times. It does not mention Palestine once. It condemns antisemitism – when there is nothing antisemitic about withdrawing one’s complicity in Israeli apartheid. It does not mention anti-Palestinian or anti-Indigenous racism once.”
Coalition groups also addressed the issue on social media. “Your engagement with our coalition was dishonest and reprehensible,” tweeted the Adalah Justice Project in response to Chu’s statement. “Indigenous and Palestinian women expressed their pain at the harm you’ve caused erasing our existence. You introduced yourselves with land acknowledgements and then disposed of us as soon as your funders threatened.”
“Sierra Club officials caved from pressure from the right-wing and reached out to a Zionist organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center to update that the trips were back on. In doing so, Sierra Club is perpetuating racist principles from its founding that it had pledged to change, and failing to uphold new commitments to racial and Indigenous justice,” said the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights in a statement. “Sierra Club is heeding the demands of Zionist organizations like the Wiesenthal Center—which recently listed Jewish Voice for Peace among their top 10 targets in spite of JVP’s principled work against Zionism, antisemitism, and all forms of racism—rather than maintain steadfast solidarity with the Palestinian people and their Black and Indigenous allies. It’s important that we keep emailing and keeping up the public pressure!”
Chu’s statement curiously declares that “the Sierra Club’s mission is to enjoy, explore and protect the planet, and we do not take positions on foreign policy matters that are beyond that scope. We do not have a deep understanding or knowledge necessary to do so, nor is it our place to do so.” However, the organization has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in recent weeks.
