preservation

Saving Israel’s environment

Israel’s Hula Valley is a major stopping place for migrating birds. (photo by D.J. Tiomkin)

Jay Shofet, the director of partnerships and development for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), presented an overview of the broad range of work his organization does in addressing environmental issues in the Holy Land during a Nov. 19 webinar hosted by the Jewish Community Centre of Victoria with the Canadian SPNI.

With 35,000 member households in Israel and thousands more around the world, SPNI is the largest Israeli group of its kind. It engages in environmental lobbying of the Knesset and hopes to foster a love of nature through its endeavours. SPNI has delivered environmental education in the Israeli school system and is known for promoting the country’s hiking trails.

Shofet began with the history of the environmental movement in Israel and the “traditional Jewish call for wise environmental stewardship of the land.” It was from this concept that SPNI was founded, in 1953, by a group of scientists, teachers and kibbutzniks who were trying to prevent the draining of swamps in the Hula Valley in northern Israel.

Among the highlights of SPNI’s history is an initiative it spearheaded in the 2000s: a cross-border and environmentally friendly cooperation with Jordan and Palestine to use barn owls rather than pesticides to reduce the rodent populations in agricultural lands.

Israel houses what the United Nations refers to as a “global biodiversity hotspot,” Shofet said. “It’s important to note that Israel is a land bridge between three continents and four climatic zones.”

The numbers of bird and animal species in Israel exceed that of the United Kingdom; the country is also home to a wide variety of flora. Species from Europe, North Africa and Asia commingle with those native to Israel and the eastern Mediterranean. And, each year, Israel is a major migration route for hundreds of millions of birds, including pelicans, which makes the country a destination for birders.

Elsewhere, SPNI has been active in stopping what it believes to be the wrong type of afforestation, the introduction of trees in areas to which they are not ideally suited and that infringe on the natural habitat, such as the batha, a unique Mediterranean scrubland, or what Shofet called “the Serengeti of Israel.”

SPNI is in charge of blazing and maintaining the Israel National Trail and other parts of the more than 10,000 kilometres of trail systems in the country. “It’s a rite of passage for young Israelis to hike the Trail,” Shofet said about the INT.

Recently, the organization has focused on maintaining what Shofet described as a “sustainability mindset.”

“Renewable energy, moving away from fossil fuels, is what the environmental movement is about today,” he said. “Climate change is the organizing principle of the movement…. Our bottom line is to find nature-based solutions to mitigate climate change.”

At the top of current environmental issues for Israel is land-use planning, said Shofet. One of the densest populations of the OECD countries, Israel confronts obstacles in the use of its land. In 2015, SPNI lobbied to stop a group of business and political powerhouses, including former United States vice-president Dick Cheney and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, from fracking in the centre of Israel.

Shofet emphasized that densely packed, sustainable cities like Tel Aviv are at the heart of protecting Israel’s biodiversity. “This is the only way to keep the open spaces open and to keep nature well-protected,” he said.

“Not all of Israel has to look like Tel Aviv, but Israel does have to build its cities in a smarter way and avoid suburban sprawl,” he told the audience. “Suburban sprawl is killing our open spaces and making life less interesting for people. Cities can be the solution to the environment. If the world had the global footprint of New York City, there would be no global warming.”

A niche for SPNI is urban nature. Such spaces are needed in green cities, said Shofet. To demonstrate this, he showed slides of the Jerusalem Bird Observatory near the Knesset, a place where schoolchildren and tourists alike visit and learn about ornithology up close, and Gazelle Valley Park, also in Jerusalem, Israel’s first urban nature reserve.

The final part of Shofet’s talk touched on the work SPNI is doing during the pandemic to try and ban Israel’s currently legal hunting season. As a start, SPNI has succeeded in getting the Ministry of Environmental Protection to call the laughing dove and the quail endangered species.

SPNI is also rehabilitating the nation’s rivers, trying to protect the diverse number of species and habitats found in its sea, promoting the use of solar energy, working to ensure that Israel has clean and accessible beaches, and encouraging the planting of trees in a way that is mindful of the country’s ecosystem.

Shofet’s concluding remarks offered a hopeful note to the current global environmental situation and Israel’s role in it, pointing out that the entrepreneurial spirit of the start-up nation is well-suited to tackling the challenges of adapting to the green economy.

For more information, visit natureisrael.org.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Autograph book resurfaces

Susi and Mænni Ruben, Copenhagen, 1960s. Mænni Ruben’s autograph book, compiled in Theresienstadt, is the focus of a new online exhibit launched by the Victoria Shoah Project. (photo from Victoria Shoah Project)

The Victoria Shoah Project has launched a virtual exhibit of an autograph book compiled by Mænni Ruben, a Danish violinist and graphic artist held prisoner at Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp outside of Prague.

The 1945 Theresienstadt Autograph Book Exhibit features panels and the 40-page book itself, which is replete with signatures, sketches and aphorisms from Ruben’s friends and acquaintances who were also incarcerated at Terezin.

The book records the closing period of the war as survivors were being liberated. It is a story not only of the horrors of Nazism, but of long-lasting friends, and the music and art that united them during dreadful times.

Ruben died in 1976 in Copenhagen. Though he never lived in or visited Canada, the book remained with his widow, Susi, who remarried after his death and settled in Victoria. Upon her passing, in 2018, the book came into the hands of Rabbi Harry Brechner of Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El. He subsequently showed it to member Janna Ginsberg Bleviss, who became the coordinator of the exhibit project.

“When the rabbi showed the book to me last year, I could see right away that it was special and should go to a museum. It is in remarkable condition for being 75 years old and is a tremendous addition to Holocaust studies,” Ginsberg Bleviss said.

“I was fascinated by the book – who were these people and what happened to them? Reading the pages filled with optimistic greetings, illustrations and pieces of music was like finding a hidden treasure, waiting to be opened. I wanted to discover who these people were and hear their stories,” she added.

“This virtual launch [which took place Aug. 20] is meant to honour both Mænni and Susi, and the memory of those whose lives intersected in space and time in the Theresienstadt camp. None of the artists, musicians, composers or rabbis who wrote in the book are alive, but we can sense their lives through their traces here,” said Dr. Richard Kool, a member of the Victoria Shoah Project.

A number of panels show the powerful drawings of artist Hilda Zadikow, whose husband, sculptor Arnold Zadikow, died at Theresienstadt. One depicts the coat of arms of Terezin under a Magen David made of barbed wire. Another features three sad, grey sketches of the camp itself. In a third, there is a happier scene of colourful opera figures.

Her inscription in the autograph book reads, “Your old friend Hilda Zadikow wishes you all the best and delight in beauty.”

A poignant message comes from Rabbi Leo Baeck, an intellectual and leader of the German Jewish community and the international Reform movement, who wrote: “What you forget and what you don’t forget, that is what decides the course of your life will take.”

Pianist Alice Sommer Herz, the subject of the 2007 book A Garden of Eden in Hell and the 2013 Oscar-winning documentary The Lady in Number 6, was another prisoner at the camp. Sommer Herz, who died at age 110 in 2014, wrote in Ruben’s book: “In memory of music at Theresienstadt and in strong hopes of a better future.”

And a touching note comes from Miriam Pardies, someone Ruben seems to have known only in passing: “We know each other only from having greeted each other in a friendly way, but that too is a good memory,” she writes in the book.

“There is a huge educational value to these pieces for students learning about the Holocaust, or for researchers who want to continue exploring the stories of these most interesting people during an important time at the end of the Second World War,” remarked Brechner.

Ruben and his family were sent to Theresienstadt in 1943. A place where the Nazis kept prominent Jews, the camp housed musicians, intellectuals, artists, religious leaders and hundreds of children. In 1944, the inmates performed a concert for German visitors and the visiting International Red Cross – the performers were forced to act as though life at the camp was normal.

Losing his father at the camp, Ruben returned home after the war. A few years later, he met his wife. They married and both played in the Copenhagen Youth Orchestra – she on cello and he on violin. Mænni Ruben also worked as a graphic designer and Susi Ruben as a fashion designer; they were together for 24 years.

After her husband died, Susi Ruben’s company sent her to Israel, where she met Dr. Avi Deston. They married in 1978 and went to South Africa for 13 years, where Deston taught physics at the University of Transkei. On his retirement, they came to Victoria, in 1992.

The autograph book will be donated to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg for their Holocaust gallery. To view the virtual exhibit, go to terezinautographbook1945.ca.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Harpers at Lake Hula opening

Laureen and Stephen Harper, centre left, and Daniel Atar, KKL-JNF world chair, centre, were among those who cut the ribbon at the Nov. 6 official opening of the Stephen J. Harper Hula Valley Bird Sanctuary Visitor and Education Centre. (photo by Michael Huri)

Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper was in Israel earlier this month for a four-day visit with a delegation from the Jewish National Fund of Canada, where he took part in the dedication of the new visitors centre at JNF Lake Hula Park in northern Israel, which is named in his honour.

Budgeted at $25 million Cdn, one-fifth of which was raised by the JNF of Canada, the Stephen J. Harper Hula Valley Bird Sanctuary Visitor and Education Centre south of Qiryat Shmona is seen as “the flagship project of Keren-Kayemet L’Yisrael (KKL),” the JNF’s Israel-based sister organization. Harper contributed to the cost of the project, and the auditorium is named for his wife, Laureen, in recognition of her service to Canada, friendship to Israel and dedication to the preservation of nature and wildlife.

Stephen Harper was honoured at the JNF of Canada’s 2013 Negev Dinner in Toronto. At the time, then-JNF chief executive officer Josh Cooper said: “Given his well-documented love of animals, we felt this would be an appropriate project to present to him.”

Now completed, six years after fundraising began, the facility promises to transform the experience of ornithologists and bird watchers who come to the Hula Valley. There, they can watch the twice-a-year seasonal migration of 500 million birds from more than 500 species, from Europe and Central Asia to Africa, and back.

The Hula Valley, located in the shadow of Mount Hermon, is considered the crown jewel of Israeli conservation efforts. Known in the Bible as Merom, up until the 1950s, it was full of swampland that was notorious for breeding malaria-carrying anopheles mosquitoes. In the 1950s, the wetlands were drained, with the hope that fertile farmland would result; instead, environmental devastation and the extinction of some indigenous species followed. Farming in the area was never successful and JNF ultimately decided to reflood part of the former lake.

Known in Hebrew as Agamon Hula (Little Lake Hula), the flat valley is filled with an array of birds, including cranes, pelicans and eagles. Visitors can observe the birds and also cycle around the site.

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At the gala dinner Nov. 5 in honour of Harper, which took place at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke about the danger Iran’s nuclear ambitions poses for Israel, the Middle East and the West.

“Iran expands its aggression everywhere. It seeks to envelop Israel. It seeks to threaten Israel. It seeks to destroy Israel. We fight back,” Netanyahu said. “I also want to say, given Iran’s efforts to expand its nuclear weapons program, expand its enrichment of uranium for making atomic bombs, I repeat here once again – we will never let Iran develop nuclear weapons. This is not only for our security and our future; it’s for the future of the Middle East and the world.”

Netanyahu was particularly concerned about Tehran’s plans to start injecting UF6 (uranium hexafluoride) gas into the centrifuges to enrich uranium to five percent at the heavily fortified underground Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, located inside a mountain 32 kilometres northeast of the Shi’ite holy city of Qom.

Earlier in the day, Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi promised that his country would violate the element of the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which Tehran had worked out with the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States). The United States left the deal last year and has imposed sanctions on Iran in an attempt to force it to renegotiate the document. Tehran, in turn, has begun violating the deal in an attempt to pressure the United States to recall the sanctions.

Under the 2015 agreement between Iran and world powers, Iran agreed to turn Fordow into a “nuclear, physics and technology centre,” where 1,044 centrifuges would be used for purposes other than enrichment, such as producing stable isotopes, which have a variety of civil uses. The deal bans nuclear material from Fordow and, by injecting UF6 into centrifuges, the facility will become an active nuclear site rather than a research plant as permitted under the pact.

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Since leaving Parliament after the Conservative party was defeated in the 2015 federal election by the Liberals, Harper has become president of the Awz venture capital fund advisory committee. The fund, founded by managing partner Yaron Ashkenazi, specializes in investments in Israeli security and intelligence startups, and manages $100 million in assets. The fund has invested in 12 companies to date, according to the Israeli financial website Globes.

Harper, an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, has visited many times. On Jan. 20, 2014, he addressed the Knesset plenum, saying: “It is, thus, a Canadian tradition to stand for what is principled and just, regardless of whether it is convenient or popular. But, I would argue, support today for the Jewish state of Israel is more than a moral imperative, it is also of strategic importance, also a matter of our own, long-term interests…. For too many nations, it is still easier to scapegoat Israel than to emulate your success.”

About the education centre, he said in a statement, “This park is one of the greatest restoration stories, just like this country is to the Jewish people. It is a magnificent honour to have this centre named after my name, and I am grateful for this beautiful occasion.”

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem, Israel.