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ecocide
'Ecocide': Israel Accused of Deliberately Starting Wildfires in Lebanon
“They had already bulldozed the whole village," said one mayor of a southern Lebanese town. "Then they set fire to the trees."
Aug 12, 2026
Environmental and rights advocates are condemning what one academic called "the latest in a neverending series of international crimes" by the Israel Defense Forces as firefighters and residents in southern Lebanon report that the IDF has purposely started destructive wildfires by continuing to bomb the region.
The blazes are an attempt, one town mayor said Wednesday, to make it appear "as though nobody had ever lived here.”
Israel renewed attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon in March, as the US-Israeli war on Iran widened across the Middle East. Following a "ceasefire" agreement in June, Israeli forces have continued occupying about 20% of Lebanese territory after forcibly displacing over 1 million people from the southern part of the country.
Israeli officials have said they aim to apply the "Gaza model" to Lebanon, deploying the kinds of attacks that have destroyed 90% of civilian infrastructure in Gaza since the IDF began attacking the exclave in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack, and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz recently boasted that the IDF had destroyed 24 villages “that had existed for hundreds of years."
Now, Hafez Ghasham, mayor of the southern town of Yaroun, told The Guardian, “they are trying to make the land uninhabitable."
“They had already bulldozed the whole village. Then they set fire to the trees. What remained in this particular area were the olive trees—large groves, with very old olive trees," Ghasham told the newspaper. “Many of these trees, most of them, in fact, were inherited from our grandparents and parents. They have enormous sentimental value. The trees were also an important source of income for the people of the village."
Residents who had been forced out of Yaroun said they learned from people in nearby Christian towns that their olive and fruit groves as well as many homes had been set on fire by Israeli soldiers.
The head of Civil Defense in the Nabatieh region said about 30-40% of the land in the area had been affected by the fires, and firefighters have been forced to withdraw as they've tried to extinguish the flames as the IDF has launched drone strikes after the initial attacks that sparked the fires.
"There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned," Hussein Fakih told The Guardian.
Kelley B. Vlahos, editor-in-chief of Responsible Statecraft, noted that "while the rest of the world is trying to put out forest fires this summer, Israel reportedly started them as a military tactic," even following the Lebanon ceasefire.
Last Friday, large wildfires were caused by Israeli munitions and drones that struck woodlands in Kfarchouba and in the area between Jezzine and the western Bekaa valley.
The Israeli military has accused Hezbollah of using woodland areas as cover for its military outposts and tunnels. The IDF has similarly defended extensive bombing of Gaza's schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure by claiming Hamas operates in tunnels beneath the buildings.
In a statement, Hezbollah's media relations officials said the fires represent "a continuation of urban destruction, the bulldozing of infrastructure, and the theft of ancient olive trees."
"The party called on the government, the Ministry of Environment, and all relevant authorities to speak out and act immediately to halt Israeli savagery against the environment, human life, and infrastructure," reported Al Mayadeen.
Hisham Younes, the founder of Lebanese conservation group Green Southerners, told The Guardian that Israel's bombing of forested areas amounts to "ecocide."
“These are long-established woodlands," said Younes. "They perform critical functions. The wider area is also an important passage and resting ground for migratory birds."
“It is not about any single fire or attack, but a pattern of destruction that progressively erodes the ability of ecosystems to function, regenerate, and sustain life," Younes added. "When those cascading effects also undermine livelihoods and people’s ability to return to and remain on their land, environmental destruction becomes inseparable from the wider transformation of the territory itself.”
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'Earth's Greatest Enemy' Shows Us We Have No Choice
A new documentary details how the US military is destroying all forms of life—from oceans, plants, and animals to the communities it attacks and even the people who fight its wars.
Nov 08, 2025
In the opening scene of Abby Martin and Mike Prysner’s new documentary, Earth’s Greatest Enemy, an unhoused veteran sits and plays piano in an encampment in Brentwood, California. He lives in an encampment popularly known as “Veterans Row,” where tents are draped in US flags and people walking by are reminded of how often the U.S. military chews people up and spits them out. The man starts reciting the lines to an old Army recruiting commercial; the film cuts to the commercial itself, featuring the same unhoused veteran. He still remembers all the lines.
Earth's Greatest Enemy is a documentary about the climate crisis and imperialism: how the US military is the largest institution pushing us toward ecological collapse. At face value, the opening scene of a veteran who lives out on the street might seem unrelated. Over the course of the film, Martin, with careful precision, illustrates that the destruction of the climate by the US military is not only being done to the environment around us, but being done to us, as is shown in the scenes highlighting the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune.
Earth’s Greatest Enemy captures the unfathomable breadth of ecological and human suffering caused by militarism. It covers the cost of war to the oceans, animal and plant life, fresh water, and more. If someone lives in the belly of this military beast, Earth's Greatest Enemy should be a required watch.
One segment of the film focuses on the US military’s impact on Earth’s oceans, specifically during the US-led war games, RIMPAC, the largest maritime military exercise in the world. They fly Growler jets over the ocean and practice sinking exercises, exploding decommissioned ships in the open water. They fire live rounds and pollute the ocean for five or six straight weeks. Martin documents the US military detonating mountains in Okinawa and taking the dirt to fill in coral reefs so the military can use the land for part of a base. One of the film’s most surprising revelations is that the US military determines how many sea mammals they can kill. All of this, of course, affects fishing and biodiversity that sustains the oceans—and human and animal life around the world, most directly the people of the Pacific, whether it be Hawai’i, Okinawa, or the other islands where the US has set up permanent military outposts.
To fight for the future of the planet, we in the anti-war movement must join forces with the climate movement. Our enemies are one and the same: the war profiteers and politicians driving us toward climate collapse.
Earth’s Greatest Enemy also explores the water pollution caused by the US military. Halfway through the film, we hear from Kim Ann Callan, who has spent the last 15 years uncovering the impact of toxic waste from the military at Camp Lejeune. For years, the military poisoned the groundwater, which, in turn, poisoned military families. As a result, whole families got sick with cancer; the US military tried to cover it up. The film shows Callan walking through a cemetery with rows of gravestones of infants, with headstones reading “born and died” on the same date. Multiple families lost more than one baby to the illnesses caused by the military’s pollution.
Callan reflects: “Going into this, I had a whole different vision of the military. And I had a lot of respect for the military… I don’t have respect for the government or the military anymore.” The poisoning of military families on the base didn’t just happen at Camp Lejeune: The film exposes how toxic US military bases are worldwide—with just as devastating stories in each of the 800-plus military bases globally in over 80 countries and in hundreds throughout the US.
Martin, of course, discusses the impact conventional warfare has on the planet, like when the US or one of its proxies, like Israel, relentlessly bombards land over an extended period of time. The result is often total ecocide, where survivors have next to nothing left to grow and live off of.
The film reveals the cumulative impact of the bullets fired in Iraq. Conservative estimates suggest that, for every person killed in the US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 250,000 bullets were used. Each bullet injects lead, mercury, and depleted uranium into air, water, and land. Furthermore, studies have found titanium in the lungs of US soldiers on bases and in the hair samples of children in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US wages wars not only on the air, water, and land, but also on bodies, bloodlines, and generations of human beings.
The US military is destroying all forms of life. And for what? Even those who fight the wars are ultimately left out on the street when they return home.
By the end of the film, it’s abundantly clear: The US military is truly Earth’s greatest enemy. It controls—and threatens all life on Earth. Yet as organizers within the anti-war movement, it’s abundantly clear how siloed the fight against it can be from the rest of the environmental movement. To fight for the future of the planet, we in the anti-war movement must join forces with the climate movement. Our enemies are one and the same: the war profiteers and politicians driving us toward climate collapse.
Organizers on the front lines of the struggle against this planetary crisis of militarism—from Hawai’i to Okinawa to Atlanta—understand this. The struggle for the land is inextricably bound to the struggle against militarism. We have no choice but to cut through the political, philanthropic, and organizational red lines that separate us. Because, as Martin and Prysner elucidate, through compassionate human storytelling and radically honest journalism, the war machine will eventually come for us all. We must act now.
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Fossil Fuel 'Oil-Garchs' Reap Billions in Payback for Trump Support
A new report tracks the monthly wealth of fossil fuel billionaires.
Jan 17, 2025
Welcome to the age of Oil-Garchy, where the concentrated wealth and power of the fossil fuel industry dominates our political system. After donating heavily to Trump’s campaign, the industry has already begun to reap return on their investments.
Trump has nominated some of the most vociferous climate deniers and advocates for the oil, gas, and coal industries for key positions overseeing the environment, energy, and public lands. Former Congressman Lee Zeldin has been nominated to run the Environmental Protection Agency and Chris Wright, CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy, is poised to oversee the Energy Department.
In addition to putting drillers in charge of the watershed, the financial returns are beginning to flow in likely anticipation of pro-oil and gas policies. The top 15 fossil fuel industry billionaires have already seen their personal combined wealth rise from $267.6 billion to $307.9 billion, a gain of over $40 billion, or 15.2 percent since April 2024.
The Climate Accountability Research Project (CARP) released its first monthly tracking report, Pipeline to Power: Trump and the “Oil-garch” Wealth Surge, that will monitor wealth gains and losses by top billionaires in the sector over the coming year. According to the report, the first wave of big wealth gainers include:
- Richard Kinder, Chairman and CEO of Kinder Morgan who saw his wealth increase from $8.1 billion to $11 billion, a gain of 35 percent. Pipeline magnate Kinder may be realizing speculative gains in anticipation of new liquified natural gas (LNG) infrastructure and export capacity.
- Lyndal Stephens Greth, chair of Endeavor Energy Resources, saw her wealth increase from $24.3 billion to $29.9 billion, a gain of 23 percent. Greth family wealth is probably surging in anticipation of the resumption of “drill baby drill” policies under the Trump administration. Endeavor Energy Resources, one of the largest private oil producers in the U.S. and owner of more than 500,000 acres of Texas oil country, was sold to Diamondback Energy in September for $26 million in stock and cash.
- Koch Industries billionaires, Julia Flesher-Koch (wife of the late David Koch) and Charles Koch, saw their wealth increase from $58.5 billion and $64.3 billion, respectively, to $67.5 and $74.2 billion.
Return on Investment
On April 11, 2024, the CEOs and leaders of the oil and gas industries gathered at Mar-A-Lago for a meeting with candidate Trump about energy policy. Trump used the occasion, according to witnesses present, to make a brazen transactional pitch: raise $1 billion for his campaign and he would do their bidding. Trump told the assembled that the amount of money they would save in taxes and legal expenses after he repealed regulations would more than cover their billion-dollar contribution. Trump implied that if elected, he would expand offshore drilling, weaken environmental rules, and scrap electric vehicle and wind policies and other regulations opposed by the industry groups. Trump vowed to reverse President Biden’s pause on new LNG exports.
Present at the Mar-a-Lago Club on that April day were industry leaders such as Harold Hamm, the wildcat fracker and chairman of Continental Resources, who played an influential role in Trump’s first administration, pushing for Scott Pruitt to serve as Trump’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Also present was Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota and Trump’s nominee to Interior Secretary, a position overseeing gas leases on public lands. Other attendees included leaders from the American Petroleum Institute and executives from Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, along with fracking producers Cheniere Energy and EQT.
Harold Hamm and Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, organized donors within the fossil fuel sector to support Trump and funnel money to his campaign. They didn’t raise a billion dollars, but they helped move hundreds of millions to PACs supporting Trump and directly to the candidate.
According to Climate Connections at Yale University, the fossil fuel industry spent $219 million to influence the new U.S. government. This included $26 million in direct oil and gas industry contributions to the campaigns of policymakers taking office in 2025, with 88 percent going to Republican lawmakers. The analysis found an additional $151 million in outside spending, including donations to political action committees (PACs), and $67 million to PACs supporting candidates. Nearly $23 million in oil and gas industry funds went directly to candidate Trump and his PACs.
Trump’s mega-donors included banking and oil scion Timothy Mellon and Timothy Dunn, CEO billionaire of CrownQuest, a major oil and fracking company based in Texas. George Bishop, the CEO of oil and gas company GeoSouthern Energy, donated $1 million to Trump’s campaign, with his wife forking over an additional $500,000. Fossil fuel billionaires Kelcy Warren and Harold Hamm donated $5 million and $1 million respectively to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.
This is what “Oil-garchy” looks like. See the whole report, Pipeline to Power: Trump and the “Oil-garch” Wealth Surge, at www.climatecriminals.org.Keep ReadingShow Less
The World Stayed Silent as Israel Destroyed Gaza 'for Generations to Come'
One wonders if the world had paid even the slightest attention to Gaza and the cries of people trapped behind walls, barbed wire, and electric fences, whether the current war and genocide could have been avoided.
Jan 15, 2025
The first official reference to Gaza becoming increasingly uninhabitable was made by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTAD, in 2012, when the population of the Gaza Strip was estimated at 1.8 million inhabitants.
The intention of the report, The Gaza Strip: The Economic Situation and the Prospects for Development, was not merely to prophesize, but to warn that if the world continued to stand idle in the face of the ongoing blockade on Gaza, a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent.
Yet, little was done, though the U.N. continued with its countdown, increasing the frequency and urgency of its warnings, especially following major wars.
Even after the devastating war on Gaza ends and the rebuilding of the strip concludes, the ecological and environmental harm that Israel has caused will remain for many years to come.
Another report in 2015 from UNCTAD stated that the Gaza crisis had intensified following the most destructive war to that date, the year before. The war had destroyed hundreds of factories, thousands of homes, and displaced tens of thousands of people.
By 2020, though, based on the criteria set by the U.N., Gaza should have become "uninhabitable." Yet, little was done to remedy the crisis. The population grew rapidly, while resources, including Gaza's land mass, shrank due to the ever-expanding Israeli "buffer zone." The prospects for the "world's largest open-air prison" became even dimmer.
Yet, the international community did little to heed the call of UNCTAD and other U.N. and international institutions. The humanitarian crisis—situated within a prolonged political crisis, a siege, repeated wars, and daily violence—worsened, reaching, on October 7, 2023, the point of implosion.
One wonders if the world had paid even the slightest attention to Gaza and the cries of people trapped behind walls, barbed wire, and electric fences, whether the current war and genocide could have been avoided.
It is all moot now. The worst-case scenario has actualized in a way that even the most pessimistic estimates by Palestinian, Arab, or international groups could not have foreseen.
Not only is Gaza now beyond "uninhabitable," but, according to Greenpeace, it will be "uninhabitable for generations to come." This does not hinge on the resilience of Palestinians in Gaza, whose legendary steadfastness is hardly disputed. However, there are essential survival needs that even the strongest people cannot replace with their mere desire to survive.
In just the first 120 days of war, "staggering" carbon emissions were estimated at 536,410 tons of carbon dioxide. Ninety percent of that deadly pollution was "attributed to Israel's air bombardment and ground invasion," according to Greenpeace, which concluded that the total sum of carbon emissions "is greater than the annual carbon footprint of many climate-vulnerable nations."
A report issued around the same time by the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) painted an equally frightening picture of what was taking place in Gaza as a direct result of the war. "Water and sanitation have collapsed," it declared last June. "Coastal areas, soil, and ecosystems have been severely impacted," it continued.
But that was over seven months ago, when parts of Gaza were still standing. Now, almost all of Gaza has been destroyed. Garbage has been piling up for 15 months without a single facility to process it efficiently. Disease is widespread, and all hospitals have either been destroyed in the bombings, burned to the ground, or bulldozed. Many of the sick are dying in their tents without ever seeing a doctor.
Without any outside assistance, it was only natural for the disaster to worsen. Last December, Médecins Sans Frontières issued a report titled Gaza: Life in a Death Trap. The report, a devastating read, describes the state of medical infrastructure in Gaza, which can be summed up in a single word: non-existent.
Israel has attacked 512 healthcare facilities between October 2023 and September 2024, killing 500 healthcare workers. This means that a population is trying to survive during one of the harshest wars ever recorded, without any serious medical attention. This includes nearly half a million people suffering from various mental health disorders.
By December, Gaza's Government Media Office reported that there are an estimated 23 million tons of debris resulting from the dropping of 75,000 tons of explosives—in addition to other forms of destruction. This has released 281,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air.
Once the war is over, Gaza will be rebuilt. Though Palestinian sumud (steadfastness) is capable of restoring Gaza to its former self, however long it takes, a study conducted by Queen Mary University in the U.K. said that, for the destroyed structures to be rebuilt, an additional 60 million tons of CO2 will be released into an already severely impacted environment.
In essence, this means that even after the devastating war on Gaza ends and the rebuilding of the strip concludes, the ecological and environmental harm that Israel has caused will remain for many years to come.
It is baffling that the very Western countries, which speak tirelessly about environmental protection, preservation, and warning against carbon emissions, are the same entities that helped sustain the war on Gaza, either through arming Israel or remaining silent in the face of the ongoing atrocities.
The price of this hypocrisy is the enduring suffering of millions of people and the devastation of their environment. Isn't it time for the world to wake up and collectively declare: enough is enough?
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The Fires in Gaza Are the Fires in Los Angeles
Our endless wars have pushed forward the climate crisis, and now its catastrophic results are once again terrifyingly visible inside the belly of the beast.
Jan 11, 2025
Earlier on Wednesday, January 8th, I saw a prominent Zionist commentator and Twitter/X User post, “Has Greta Thunberg taken her keffiyeh off to address the fires in LA yet or are there too many Jews living here for her to be concerned?” The weird implications about a mythical antisemitic malice that climate activist Greta Thunberg has to supposedly fuel her anti-genocide and ecocide beliefs aside, the post is equally embarrassing in its lack of understanding about the exacerbators of Los Angeles’ most destructive fires in the metropolitan area’s history.
Sadly, the disconnect that this post showcases is representative of many people and institutions, not only in explicitly pro-Israel spaces but also in the environmental movement. The US military is the #1 institutional polluter in the world. Cities across the country have been sacrificed by the local and federal prioritization of militarism and policing. Our endless wars have pushed forward the climate crisis, and now its catastrophic results are once again terrifyingly visible inside the belly of the beast.
For decades, the military-industrial complex has been destroying ecosystems, cities, and nations across the SWANA region for the sake of dominance in the oil industry. For 15 months, the US-Israeli bombing unleashed on Gaza has released insane amounts of fossil fuel into the atmosphere while poisoning the soil with each shell. Israel recently detonated an “earthquake bomb,” which some reports have suggested could have been possibly nuclear. The genocide in Gaza has devastated the ecosystem and will make agricultural survival in any eventual rebuilding effort extremely difficult. The war in Ukraine has resulted in explosions of the Nordstream pipeline. Bases around the world, expanded for meaningless escalation with China, have resulted in soil contaminated with toxic PFAS chemicals, harming the soil. Biodiversity is at risk globally.
Forest fires are a natural part of California’s ecosystem. They are needed to survive. The long-time development in inevitable natural burn zones, combined with the suppression of these natural cycles for the sake of billionaire Malibu homes, has not helped this situation at all. This disregard for a balanced ecosystem has historically and continuously come at the expense of middle and working-class neighborhoods in LA vulnerable to preventable fires. The threat to LA is only further magnified by the extra dry air and almost 100mph wind speeds created by the war economy’s climate crisis.
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg attends a solidarity with Palestine event on December 06, 2024 in Mannheim, Germany. Thunberg, who was a central figure in the global movement calling for action on climate change, has been outspoken in her support for Palestine ever since the Israeli invasion of Gaza in October of 2023. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)
This local neglect of the natural environment comes from a similar place as the Jewish National Fund’s planting of non-native pine trees across Palestine, often above bulldozed Palestinian villages, at the expense of crucial biodiversity. In both instances, the interests of the war economy that prioritizes those in power are what remain above respect for Indigenous caretaking practices and life. And the results in both cases are catastrophic. Amidst a world that has gone through imperialist ecocidal war for decades, the world’s biodiversity, much of which is in sovereign Indigenous land, has been decimated.
This climate-sacrificial militarism isn’t just on the international stage either. In Atlanta, the proposed “Cop City” police training facility is supposed to be built on the Weelaunee Forest: sacred indigenous land also described as the “lungs” of the city. Not only does the forest provide crucial air quality, but it also acts as flooding protection. Recently, Appalachia and Atlanta suffered extreme flooding. Cop City will only make this worse as the forest is destroyed. Those prioritizing these military training facilities and exchange programs with Israeli Occupation Forces are doing so at the expense of the city itself. LA’s Mayor, Karen Bass, recently proposed allocating an extra $123 million to the police while cutting the budget of the fire department by $23 million. Now, the city is burning uncontrollably, and the fire department can only attempt to save residents.
This was avoidable. The flooding in Appalachia is avoidable. Future devastating flooding in a post-cop city Atlanta, NYC, and the entire coastal region is avoidable. Did anyone really think that we could continue to wage ecocide across the world without it coming back to us? Or prioritize militarism at home that trains with our genocidal proxy above human services? The fires in Gaza are the fires in LA. They are brought about by the same institutions and are fixable through overlapping measures. The former was intentional, and the latter is a ricochet. Both are devastating, heartbreaking, terrifying, and infuriating.
Climate organizations are warning about what the fires in LA represent. Some amount of federal funding left over from our shiny new nearly $1 trillion military budget will be allocated to helping the people of L.A. But the same organizations releasing these statements and the same politicians allocating emergency funds are the ones fanning the flames. Either by the silence that deliberately or neglectfully hides the crisis or warmongering that actively drives it further.
So no, Greta Thunberg should not “take off her keffiyeh” to talk about the fires. The only way to fight the fires is through the understanding that should come with wearing one.
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Water, War, and Women in Gaza
Israel’s omnicide in Gaza has destroyed much of its already-stressed water infrastructure, and women and children suffer for it.
Sep 18, 2024
In late 2020, a report titled
Saving Gaza Begins With Its Water stated:
The water crisis in Gaza is a problem of daunting proportions, with grave implications for the more than 2 million inhabitants of the Palestinian enclave... The Coastal Aquifer from which Gaza pumps water is diminishing; but more dangerously, it is experiencing significant deterioration from seawater and highly saline groundwater intrusion, as well as sewage pollution.
Fast forward to 2024: Gaza’s water scarcity pollution is severely worsened by its forced closure of water and wastewater treatment plants due to Israel’s blockade of fuel to Gaza to run the plants in its 2023-2024 war.
The authors of Saving Gaza Begins With Its Water end on a cautiously positive note. “The crisis of water in Gaza also holds promise,” they wrote, ...“because Gaza’s water problem will require cooperation between antagonists, to their mutual benefit. There is no solution that can be achieved by Gaza or Israel in isolation” because one of Israel’s water sources is the same Coastal Aquifer.
But this affirmative conclusion presumes that the people of Gaza have not been annihilated by Israeli bombing, inflicting a daily death rate greater than any major war of the 21st century, combined with the induced famine across all of Gaza by Israel’s blockades of food aid, and rampant disease including the recent polio virus. At the current rate of killing and death, 15-20% of Gaza’s people could be dead by the end of the year, a United Nations expert stated and almost entirely exterminated within a few years.
What can be done? Nothing without Israel and the United States agreeing to end their totalistic war.
Prior to the current war, Gaza had more than 150 small-scale desalination plants to produce potable water. By mid-October 2023, Israeli missile attacks destroyed the drinking water desalination plants; and its almost total blockade cut off fuel to run the other water treatment plants, as well as metal parts to repair them. Gaza’s drinking water production capacity dropped to just 5% of typical levels.
With no power to run Gaza’s five wastewater treatment plants, sewage has flowed freely through the streets, causing a record increase in cases of diarrheal illnesses. By December 2023, cases of diarrhea among children under five in Gaza jumped 2,000%, because of which children under five are over 20 times more likely to die from the illness than from Israeli military violence.
More than three-quarters of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are internally displaced to southern Gaza and, even there, continually forced to re-locate because of Israeli bombing. In some of the most overcrowded shelters in southern Gaza, there is one toilet per 600 internally displaced persons and little to no running water.
Every human being in Gaza suffers soul-shattering existence from this war variably described as genocide, ecocide, domicide (destruction of homes), and scholasticide (destruction of schools and universities). Indeed, two American trauma surgeons, who have volunteered for surgical missions in crisis situations all over the world, stated that they have never seen cruelty like Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Women and their children are its gravest victims. Daily in Gaza children are having one of both legs amputated without anesthesia. More than 25,000 children have lost one or both parents.
Recently members of the Uncommitted National Movement spoke at a press conference during the Democratic National Convention and accused the Biden administration of “hypocritical action” in saying they are working on cease-fire while providing the weapons massacring Palestinians in Gazan. At the same conference, American doctors who had volunteered in Gaza pleaded with Kamala Harris to “embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.” The doctors attested that the killing and suffering is on “an entirely unprecedented scale.” None has seen anything “so horrific, so egregious, so inhumane.”
Impacts of War on Women
As of early 2024, The U.N. estimated that some 700,000 women and girls in Gaza experience menstrual cycles but lack adequate access to basic hygiene products like pads, toilet paper, soap, running water, and toilets because of the war nor privacy to manage menstrual hygiene. These conditions put women and girls in Gaza at grave risk of reproductive and urinary tract infections. The challenge of trying to find an available bathroom is especially difficult for pregnant women who have pressure on their bladder, and women who have just given birth and are going through weeks of postpartum bleeding.
By early March 2024 Relief/Web reported: There has been a steep rise in malnutrition among the more than 155,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women. Every day about 180 women give birth in unimaginable conditions, no longer having health-care facilities to deliver their babies. Many mothers who have given birth since the beginning of Israel’s war are too malnourished to produce milk for their newborns.
Although mothers and adult women are tasked with sourcing food, they are the ones who eat last, less, and least.
What can be done? Nothing without Israel and the United States agreeing to end their totalistic war. Dima Nazzal, a systems engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, believes that while rebuilding Gaza is “a daunting prospect,” with “cooperation, coordination, and courage, it is not unachievable.” But first the war must be ended.
Israel has sought security through militaristic means since its founding: expelling 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 (the Nakba—“catastrophe” in Arabic), claiming Palestinian land by force, enforcing apartheid conditions for Palestinians in Israel, establishing colonizing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and now omnicide in Gaza. The only way for Israel to live in security is through a political compromise, in the spirit of Isaiah 59:8, that guarantees the human and political rights of the Palestinians who have lived on the land of Palestine for thousands of years. Without justice—the U.S. ending its criminal trafficking of weapons to Israel, a permanent cease-fire, the U.N. recognizing Palestine as a state and then organizing the rebuilding of Gaza with supportive countries—there can be no peace.
Pat Hynes gave a talk on the plight of women in water-starved Gaza during a conference on Memorial Day weekend sponsored by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom entitled Water on the Frontlines for Peace. This piece is a much abbreviated and updated version.
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Pacific Islands Push ICC to Recognize Ecocide as International Crime
"This is a moment of generational change, one that is needed to safeguard our environment and signal to coming generations that the world is truly serious about doing so," said one legal expert on ecocide.
Sep 10, 2024
Campaigners against ecocide, the destruction of nature, applauded what one leader called a "key moment" in the fight to protect the natural world and communities that are most vulnerable to climate damage on Monday as three Pacific island nations proposed that the International Criminal Court formally recognize the crime.
Vanuatu, which first made a similar proposal in 2019, was joined by Samoa and Fiji in submitting the proposal to the ICC, which was established in 2002 to prosecute cases regarding genocide and crimes against humanity.
"Vanuatu considers it imperative that the international community takes this conversation seriously, and we warmly invite all member states to engage," said Ralph Regenvanu, special envoy for climate change and environment for Vanuatu, in a statement. "Legal recognition of severe and widespread environmental harm holds significant potential to ensure justice and, crucially, to deter further destruction."
The recognition of environmental and ecosystem destruction as a crime could allow the court to prosecute individuals accused of ecocide, such executives of pollution-causing companies whose activities are linked to planetary heating and the sea-level rise and intense storms small island nations increasingly face and officials of governments that continue to emit high levels of greenhouse gases.
Philippe Sands, a law professor at University College London and co-chair of an expert panel on the legal definition of ecocide, said that as drafted, the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, "cannot adequately address environmental harms" and must be changed to reflect "a growing recognition that severe environmental destruction deserves the same legal accountability as other grave international crimes that focus on the human."
"People clearly understand that the most severe forms of environmental destruction harm all of us, and that there is real deterrent potential in creating personal criminal liability for top decision-makers."
“There is a manifest gap in the statute of the ICC, and ecocide is now firmly on the agenda, a vital and necessary moment for an effective international law," said Sands. "This is a moment of generational change, one that is needed to safeguard our environment and signal to coming generations that the world is truly serious about doing so."
Sands told The Guardian that he is "100% certain" that ecocide will ultimately be recognized as an international crime, but with the matter tabled for a full discussion by the ICC at a later date, a long deliberation process is expected.
The Pacific nations introduced the proposal at the ICC days after the Global Commons Survey, conducted by Ipsos UK, found that 72% of people in G20 countries believe ecocide should be recognized as a crime.
Jojo Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Stop Ecocide International, said last week that "widespread civil society demand" has driven the European Union to recognize "conduct comparable to ecocide" as a "qualified" offense, and Belgium to adopt ecocide as a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison and fines as high as $1.8 million.
"We're seeing significant policy shifts in favor of ecocide legislation at the domestic, regional, and international levels," said Mehta. "People clearly understand that the most severe forms of environmental destruction harm all of us, and that there is real deterrent potential in creating personal criminal liability for top decision-makers. Damage prevention is always the best policy, which is precisely what ecocide law is about."
Some of the world's biggest polluters, including the United States, China, and Russia, are not member states of the ICC, and could challenge the court's jurisdiction if accused of ecocide—but Mehta said Monday that "by establishing legal consequences, we create a guardrail that compels decision-makers to prioritize safety for people and planet, fundamentally altering how they approach their obligations."
"We also create a route to justice for the worst harms," she said, "whether they occur in times of conflict or in times of peace."
Regenvanu said Vanuatu has prioritized the recognition of ecocide as a crime after suffering significant climate damage for years, with the government already having relocated six towns due to irreversible sea level rise.
"Environmental and climate loss and damage in Vanuatu is devastating our island economy, submerging our territory, and threatening livelihoods. This tragedy is not unique to Vanuatu but is shared by many small island nations that, despite bearing the least responsibility for the crisis, suffer most from its impacts," said Regenvanu. "We urge ICC member states to take note of the very substantial civil society support for this initiative around the world as it moves forward in this crucial discussion."
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In Rich Nations, 72% Say Climate Damage Should Be 'Criminal Offense'
"People clearly understand that the most severe forms of environmental destruction harm all of us, and that there is real deterrent potential in creating personal criminal liability."
Sep 06, 2024
Nearly two-thirds of people living in the world's largest economies believe it should be "a criminal offense" for decision-makers in government or big businesses to knowingly cause serious harm to the climate, according to polling published Friday.
Conducted by Ipsos U.K. for Earth4All and the Global Commons Alliance (GCA), the Global Commons Survey focuses on residents of Austria, Denmark, Kenya, Sweden, and all countries that represent themselves at the G20 other than Russia.
Across the 22 countries, 72% of people agreed that "it should be a criminal offense for leaders of large businesses or senior government officials to approve or permit actions they know are likely to cause damage to nature and climate that is widespread, long-term, or cannot be reversed."
"The majority support (72%) for criminalizing actions which allow serious damage to the climate surprised us," said Earth4All co-lead Owen Gaffney in a statement. "The majority of people want to protect the global commons; 71% believe the world needs to take action immediately. Our survey demonstrates that people across the world's largest economies are acutely aware of the urgent need to safeguard our planet for future generations."
Keyna had the greatest share of people signaling support for ecocide legislation, at 91%, followed by Argentina, Mexico, and South Africa, all at 85%. The United States was 68%. The only country with less than a majority was Japan, at 43%.
"We're seeing significant policy shifts in favor of ecocide legislation at the domestic, regional, and international levels," said Jojo Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Stop Ecocide International. "Most notably, at the start of this year, the European Union included 'qualified offenses' in its newly revised Environmental Crime Directive that can encompass 'conduct comparable to ecocide.' This means E.U. member states now have two years to bring these rules into national law—a huge moment felt across the globe."
"We know this policy-level progress has been significantly driven by widespread civil society demand," she continued. "The new Global Commons Survey makes it obvious that there is already a strong foundation of public support for this law. People clearly understand that the most severe forms of environmental destruction harm all of us, and that there is real deterrent potential in creating personal criminal liability for top decision-makers. Damage prevention is always the best policy, which is precisely what ecocide law is about."
Other legal responses to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency have included filing civil lawsuits against oil and gas giants for their decades of deception and exploring the possibility of bringing criminal charges against corporate polluters for deaths tied to extreme weather that's becoming more frequent and devastating.
In addition to the ecocide findings, the Global Commons Survey shows that 69% of all respondents believe Earth is close to climate and nature tipping points, 61% are advocating for strong action to protect the environment, 59% are very or extremely worried about the state of nature, and 52% feel very or somewhat exposed to climate and environmental risks.
The groups that commissioned the poll noted that "people in emerging economies such as India (87%), China (79%), Indonesia (79%), Kenya (73%), and Turkey (69%) feel more personally exposed to climate change compared to those in Europe and the United States."
There were also gender disparities—women exhibited higher levels of concern and were less likely to think claims about environmental risks are exaggerated or believe technology can solve such problems without individuals making big lifestyle changes.
"People everywhere are very worried about the state of our planet and they're feeling the pain already," said GCA executive director Jane Madgwick. "Awareness that we are close to tipping points is high, as is concern that political priorities lie elsewhere."
"It all comes down to what we can do collectively to safeguard and restore the global commons which sustain all life on Earth and protect us from the most severe impacts of climate change," she added. "This is going to take bold leadership and a truly global effort, connecting actions across nations and from the ground up."
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'Horrific': Israel's War on Gaza Also Destroying the Climate, Study Finds
"This report lays bare the hypocrisy of Western nations who moralize about the perils of climate breakdown... while funding, aiding, and enabling the Israeli regime's catastrophic war," one expert said.
Jun 06, 2024
In addition to its death toll, Israel's war in Gaza comes at great cost to the climate, mainly because of the emissions that will be required to reconstruct tens of thousands of buildings there, a study published Thursday shows.
The study looked at the first four months of the war, during which time the authors estimated that some 156,000 to 200,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged in the Gaza Strip. The resulting climate costs were greater than the annual emissions of each of the world's 135 lowest-emitting countries, the study, a preprint that was posted to SSRN and is currently under peer review, shows.
"While the world's attention is rightly focused on the humanitarian catastrophe, the climate consequences of this conflict are also catastrophic," Ben Neimark, a co-author and lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, told The Guardian.
Though the vast majority of the estimated climate cost comes from the future rebuild, the study authors also looked at the immediate climate emissions from wartime activities, most of which came from flights by Israeli fighter jets and U.S. cargo planes that supplied weapons, fuel, and other supplies. There were 244 round-trip cargo flights from the U.S. to Israel during the four-month study period.
Experts not affiliated with the study, which was an update on earlier work, responded by expressing outrage at the multiple layers of Western complicity in the Gaza onslaught.
"Quite apart from the unspeakable destruction in Gaza and across Palestine, this report lays bare the hypocrisy of Western nations who moralize about the perils of climate breakdown and the responsibility of every nation to protect the planet—all the while funding, aiding, and enabling the Israeli regime's catastrophic war and its implications for those affected by ongoing and future climate change," Zena Agha, a Palestinian-Iraqi policy analyst at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, a think tank, told the paper.
New from our team: In addition to the harrowing human costs of the Genocide in Gaza, acts of genocide themselves have serious climate consequence- our work calculates the climate impacts of the 1st 120 days after Oct 7. 🧵 https://t.co/5LeIJFvcrb
— Patrick Bigger (@patrickmbigger) June 6, 2024
Patrick Bigger, a study co-author and research director at the Climate and Community Project, has separately called for a cease-fire and an end to apartheid in Palestine, arguing that the "climate crisis in Palestine cannot be detached from the Israeli occupation."
The people of Gaza, who prior to the war used solar panels to an exceptional degree, are themselves particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, authorities there say.
The biggest threat to Palestinians before the war was the climate crisis, Hadeel Ikhmais, head of the climate change office at the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority, told The Guardian, referring to rising sea levels, extreme heat, and increased occurrences of flooding and drought.
"As long as this war continues, the implications will be exacerbated with horrific consequences on emissions, climate change, and hindering climate action in Gaza," he said.
The environmental impacts of the war go well beyond the contribution to climate change coming from new emissions. "Gaza's water, soil, and air have been devastated," Al Jazeera reported earlier in the war.
In its assault on Gaza, the Israeli military had by March destroyed more than 2,000 agricultural sites, including 40% of all used farmland, according to research by Forensic Architecture, a London-based research group, which called the destruction a "deliberate act of ecocide." Humanitarian groups have suggested that the destruction is deliberate and that starvation is being used as a "weapon of war," as Human Rights Watch has repeatedly argued.
The new study, full of "conservative" estimates, likely underestimates the climate impact of the war, as many factors could not be precisely accounted for, especially given military secrecy regarding emissions. Globally, military emissions account for roughly 5.5% of total emissions, according to a recent report, but are not required to be reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
However, new findings released by a U.N. agency on Monday indicate that the new study may have slightly overestimated the number of destroyed buildings in Gaza. About 137,000 buildings had been damaged, destroyed, or possibly destroyed by May 3, the United Nations Satellite Center concluded—which, though a bit less than the new estimate, is still more than half of the buildings in Gaza, by the agency's estimate.
Regardless of the exact figures, legal experts have accused Israel of "domicide"—"the mass destruction of dwellings to make the territory uninhabitable," as defined by an editor at The Guardian.
The continuing war, coupled with climate-related extreme weather events, could jeopardize Palestinian rights still further, experts said.
"One of the serious consequences of the war in Gaza has been the massive violation of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment… which represent a serious risk to life and the enjoyment of all other rights," Astrid Puentes, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, told The Guardian. "The region is already experiencing serious climate impacts that could get even worse."
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the comparison between the climate costs in Gaza and the annual emissions of the world's 135 lowest-emitting nations. That error has been corrected. The article has also been updated to clarify SSRN’s role as a repository of preprints.
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In the Midst of Ecocide in Gaza, Some People Are Still Birding
If it weren’t for the Israeli occupation—and now the full-scale war that has killed more than 34,000 people, 72% of them women and children, and damaged or destroyed 62% of all housing—Gaza would be a birder’s paradise.
May 03, 2024
He’s a funny little chap: a sharp dresser with a sleek grey jacket, a white waistcoat, red shorts, and a small grey crest for a hat. With his shiny black eyes and stubby black beak, he’s quite the looker. Like the chihuahua of the bird world, the tufted titmouse has no idea he’s tiny. He swaggers right up to the feeder, shouldering bigger birds out of the way.
A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have known a tufted titmouse from a downy woodpecker. (We have those, too, along with red-bellied woodpeckers, who really should have been named for their bright orange mohawks). This spring I decided to get to know my feathered neighbors with whom I’m sharing an island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. So I turned up last Saturday for a Birding 101 class, where I learned, among other things, how to make binoculars work effectively while still wearing glasses.
Along with scholasticide, Gaza is living through an ecocide, a vastly sped-up version of the one our species seems hell-bent on spreading across the planet.
At Birding 101, I met around 15 birders (and proto-birders like me) whose ages skewed toward my (ancient!) end of the scale. Not all were old, however, or white; we were a motley bunch. Among us was a man my age with such acute and educated hearing that he (like many birders) identified species by call as we walked. I asked him if, when he hears a bird he knows, he also sees it in his mind.
“It’s funny you should ask,” he responded. “I once spent almost a year in a hospital, being treated for cancer. I lost every sense but my hearing and got used to listening instead of looking. So, yes, I see them when I hear them.”
Human-Bird Connections
I’m not expecting to convince everyone who reads this to grab a pair of binoculars and start scanning the treetops, but it’s worth thinking a bit about those tiny dinosaurs and their connections to us human beings. They have a surprising range of abilities, from using tools and solving complicated puzzles to exhibiting variations in regional cultures. My bird-listening friend was telling me about how the song sparrows in Maine begin their trills with the same four notes as the ones here in Cape Cod, but what follows is completely different, as if they’re speaking another dialect. Some birds cooperate with humans by hunting with us. Others, like Alex, the world-famous grey parrot, have learned to decode words in our language, recognize shapes and colors, and even count as high as six. (If you’d like to know more, take a look at The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman.)
We owe a lot to birds. Many of us eat them, or at least their eggs. In fact, the more I know about chickens, in particular, the harder it becomes to countenance the way they’re “farmed” in this country, whether for their meat or their eggs. Most chickens destined for dinner plates are raised by farmers contracted to big chicken brands like Tyson or super-stores like Walmart and Costco. They live surrounded by their own feces and, as The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof has written, over the last half-century, they’ve been bred to grow extremely fast and unnaturally large (more than four times as big as the average broiler in 1957):
The chickens grow enormous breasts, because that’s the meat consumers want, so the birds’ legs sometimes splay or collapse. Some topple onto their backs and then can’t get up. Others spend so much time on their bellies that they sometimes suffer angry, bloody rashes called ammonia burns; these are a poultry version of bed sores.
Those factory farms threaten not only chickens but many mammals, including humans, because they provide an incubation site for bird flus that can cross the species barrier.
Birding in Gaza
Many of us, myself included a few times a year, do eat birds, but an extraordinary number of people all over the world are also beguiled and delighted by them in their wild state. People deeper into bird culture than I am make a distinction between birdwatchers—anyone who pays a bit of attention to birds and can perhaps identify a few local species like the handsome rock dove, better known as a pigeon—and birders, people who devote time (and often money) to the practice, who may travel to see particular birds, and who most likely maintain a birding life list of every species they’ve spotted.
Mandy and Lara Sirdah of Gaza City are birders. Those twin sisters, now in their late forties, started photographing birds in their backyard almost a decade ago. They began posting their pictures on social media, eventually visiting marshlands and other sites of vibrant bird activity in the Gaza Strip. They’re not trained biologists, but their work documenting the birds of Gaza was crucial to the publication of that territory’s first bird checklist in 2023.
If it weren’t for the Israeli occupation—and now the full-scale war that has killed more than 34,000 people, 72% of them women and children, and damaged or destroyed 62% of all housing—Gaza would be ideal for birding. Like much of the Middle East, the territory lies under one of the world’s great flyways for millions of migrating birds. Its Mediterranean coast attracts shorebirds. Wadi Gaza, a river-fed ravine and floodplain that snakes its way across the middle of Gaza, is home to more than 100 bird species, as well as rare amphibians and other riparian creatures. In other words, that strip of land is a birder’s paradise.
Or it would be a paradise, except that, as the Daily Beast reported a year ago (long before the current war began):
Being a bird-watcher in Gaza means facing endless restrictions. Israel controls Gaza’s territorial waters, airspace, and the movement of people and goods, except at the border with Egypt. Most Palestinians who grew up in Gaza since the closure imposed in 2007, when Hamas seized control from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, have never left the 25-by-7-mile strip.
Gazan birders encounter other barriers, as well. Even if they can afford to buy binoculars or cameras with telephoto lenses, the Israeli government views such equipment as having “dual use” potential (that is, possibly serving military as well as civilian purposes) and so makes those items very difficult to acquire. It took the Sirdahs, for example, five months of wrangling and various permission documents simply to get their birding equipment into Gaza.
Getting equipment in was hard enough, but getting out of Gaza, for any reason, has become nearly impossible for its Palestinian residents. Along with most of its 2.3 million inhabitants, the sisters simply couldn’t leave the territory, even before the present nightmare, to attend birding conferences, visit exhibitions of their photography, or receive awards for their work. They were imprisoned on a strip of land that’s about the size of the island in Massachusetts where I’ve been watching birds lately. When I try to imagine life in Gaza today, I sometimes think about what it would be like to shove a couple of million people into this tiny place, chase them with bombs and missiles from one end of it to the other, and then start all over again, as Israel seems to be about to do in the southern Gazan city of Rafah with its million-plus refugees.
Wiping Out Knowledge, and Knowledge Workers
The Sirdahs collaborated on their bird checklist project with Abdel Fattah Rabou, a much-honored professor of environmental studies at the Islamic University of Gaza. Rabou himself has devoted many years to the study and conservation of birds and other wildlife in Gaza. The Islamic University of Gaza was one of the first institutional targets of the current war. It was bombed by the Israeli Defense Forces on October 11, 2023. Since then, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the project of wiping out Gaza’s extensive repositories of knowledge and sites of learning has essentially been completed:
The destruction of Gaza’s universities began with the bombing of the Islamic University in the first week of the war and continued with airstrikes on Al-Azhar University on November 4. Since then, all of Gaza’s academic institutions have been destroyed, as well as many schools, libraries, archives, and other educational institutions.
Indeed, the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights has observed that “with more than 80% of schools in Gaza damaged or destroyed, it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide.’” U.N. experts report:
After six months of military assault, more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers, and 95 university professors have been killed in Gaza, and over 7,819 students and 756 teachers have been injured—with numbers growing each day. At least 60% of educational facilities, including 13 public libraries, have been damaged or destroyed and at least 625,000 students have no access to education. Another 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques, and three churches have also been damaged or destroyed, including the Central Archives of Gaza, containing 150 years of history. Israa University, the last remaining university in Gaza, was demolished by the Israeli military on 17 January 2024.
I wanted to know whether Professor Rabou was among those 95 university faculty killed so far in the Gaza war, so I did what those of us with Internet access do these days: I googled him and found his Facebook page. He is, it turns out, still living and still posting, most recently about the desperate conditions—illness, pollution, sewage rash—experienced by refugees in temporary shelter centers near him. A few days earlier, he’d uploaded a more personal photograph: a plastic bag of white stuff, inscribed with blue Arabic lettering. “The first drop of rain,” he wrote, “Alhamdulillah [thank God], the first bag of flour enters my house in months as a help.”
The Sirdah twins, too, still remain alive, and they continue to post on their Instagram account.
Along with scholasticide, Gaza is living through an ecocide, a vastly sped-up version of the one our species seems hell-bent on spreading across the planet. As The Guardian reports, Gaza has lost almost half its tree cover and farmland, with much of the latter “reduced to packed earth.” And the news only gets worse: “[S]oil and groundwater have been contaminated by munitions and toxins; the sea is choked with sewage and waste; the air polluted by smoke and particulate matter.” Gaza has become, and could remain for years to come, essentially unlivable. And yet millions of people must try to live there. At what point, one wonders, do the “-cides”—scholastic-, eco-, and the rest—add up to genocide?
Birds of Gaza
Gaza’s wild birds aren’t the only birds in Gaza. Caged songbirds can evidently still be bought in markets, and some of Rafah’s desperate inhabitants seek them out, hoping their music will mask the sounds of war. Voice of America recounts the story of a woman evacuee from northern Gaza who, halfway through her journey south, realized that she’d left her birds behind. She returned to rescue her caged avian friends, displaying a deep and tender affection for her winged companions. However, Professor Rabou is less sanguine about the practice. “As a people under occupation,” he says, “we shouldn’t put birds in cages.”
“Birds of Gaza” also happens to be the name of an international art project created to remember the individual children killed in the war. The premise is simple: Children around the world choose a specific child who has died and draw, paint, or fabricate a bird in his or her honor. Participants can choose from, God help us, a database of over 6,500 children who have died in Gaza since last October, then upload photos of their creations to the Birds of Gaza website. From Great Britain to South Africa to Japan, children have been doing just that.
Did you know that Gaza—well, Palestine—even has a national bird? The Palestine sunbird is a gorgeous creature, crowned in iridescent green and blue, and sporting a curved beak perfect for extracting nectar from plants. The West Bank Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar designed a postage stamp celebrating the sunbird. “This bird is a symbol of freedom and movement,” he says. “It can fly anywhere.”
Birding for a Better World
Back in the United States, the Feminist Bird Club (with chapters across North America and Europe) is committed to making birding accessible to everyone, especially people who may not have had safe access to the outdoors in the past. “There is no reason why we can’t celebrate birds and support our most cherished beliefs in equity and justice at the same time,” they say. “For us, it’s not either/or.” Last year they published Birding for a Better World, a book about how people can genuinely connect with beings—avian and human—whose lives are very different from theirs. They sponsor a monthly virtual Birders for Palestine action hour, in which participants can learn what they can do to support the people of Palestine, including their birders.
As I watch a scrum of brilliant yellow goldfinches scrabbling for a perch on the bird feeder in my yard, knowing that, on this beautiful little island, I’m about as safe as a person can be, I think about the horrors going on half a world away, paid for, at least in part, with my taxes. Indeed, Congress just approved billions more dollars in direct military aid for Israel, even as the State Department released its 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. As The Jerusalem Post reports, in the section on Israel, the report documents “more than a dozen types of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary detention, conflict-related sexual violence or punishment, and the punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative.”
Somehow, it’s cheering to imagine that, in spite of everything, there are still a few people birding in a devastated Gaza.
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