Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

As Tu B’Shvat Nears, Environmentalists Feud

On the eve of Tu Bishvat, two of the country’s leading ecological groups are feuding over the character of open spaces in northern Israel. The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI ) wants to see natural woodlands maintained, while the Jewish National Fund (JNF ) would like to expand the region’s forests.

The SPNI, which is Israel’s largest environmental organization, noted earlier this week that while the JNF has done much to protect open spaces, it lacks “legal and professional tools that allow management of the areas under its aegis, with a view that gives top priority to nature protection and prevention of harm to protected natural assets.”

The Tu Bishvat planting ceremony the Jewish National Fund has organized next week in the Lower Galilee’s Beit Keshet Forest is a case in point – the JNF will be planting oak trees for Jewish Arbor Day in an area the SPNI wants to see continue to be a nature reserve rather than a planted forest.

Over the past two years, the SPNI has been fighting the JNF in the northern district’s Planning and Building Council after the JNF’s request to rezone areas of Mount Gilboa and Beit Keshet as forests.

Until now, these areas have been nature reserves. The SPNI has even included these areas in its annual report on threatened open spaces in Israel.

For more, go to Haaretz.com

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!

Explore

Most Popular

In Case You Missed It

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.