Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

They’re Back! Billions of Locusts Set To Go Biblical on Israel

Billions of locusts are spreading throughout Israel’s south.

The newly hatched locusts identified in the Negev Desert area are the offspring of locust swarms that entered Israel from Egypt in March.

A swarm of 30 million locusts first appeared near Cairo on March 2 and caused millions of dollars worth of crop damage in Egypt.

The young locusts currently are unable to fly and are not yet big enough to cause crop damage, according to reports.

Spraying of the locusts as they were laying eggs was not as effective as anticipated, according to reports.

Once the locusts begin to fly, in about a week’s time, they could cause serious damage to southern Israeli fruit and vegetable crops.

All Photos: Getty Images

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

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

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

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

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.