Changing Paths challenge day 4: Nature. 💚🌿

Many years ago, when I was a child, I was told that the Israeli settlers had planted trees in the desert and made Israel greener. I was told this at an event organized by evangelical Christians. This shows the prevalence of Zionism among evangelical Christians. (1)

Israeli settlers & Jewish tourists have planted 250 million trees in the last century—many of them pines unsuited to the region, but more recently native broadleaf trees—and many of these new forests were planted to hide the ruins of Palestinian villages that were destroyed in the Nakba, or more recently. Satirical films have been made about this situation in Israel. These trees are used as propaganda to argue that Jewish settlers have improved Israel whereas “the Arabs” neglected it. (2)

Israeli settlers also frequently bulldoze and burn Palestinians’ olive trees. These trees are the source of Palestinian farmers’ livelihoods. (3)

The current destruction in Gaza & the West Bank has destroyed farmland & released tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. While the world’s attention is focused on Gaza, settlers are attacking villages in the West Bank, denying farmers access to their land.

“Before 7 October, farms and orchards covered about 170 sq km (65 sq miles), or 47% of Gaza’s total land area. By the end of February, FA estimates from satellite data that Israeli military activity had destroyed more than 65 sq km, or 38% of that land.” (4)

References

(1) White evangelical Christians are some of Israel’s biggest supporters. Why? NPR, 2024 [back]

(2) “A Situation: A Tree in Palestine”. LIAT BERDUGO, 2020. Places Journal (must-read article) [back]

(3) In the West Bank, Israeli Settlers Are Burning Palestinians’ Olive Trees. CAROLINA S. PEDRAZZI (2023), in The Jacobin [back]

(4) ‘Ecocide in Gaza’: does scale of environmental destruction amount to a war crime? — The Guardian, 2024 [back]

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