Climate movement splinters as activists target Israel

Ever since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack and Israel’s counteroffensive, prominent climate activist groups such as , , and have led anti Israel protests, attempting to align the Palestinian cause with the global climate cause. But this messaging is deeply flawed, and as a 24 year old Jewish climate commentator, I fear it could seriously divide and impede the climate movement.

My heart breaks for the thousands of innocent Gazans and Israelis who have been killed and the hundreds of Israeli hostages still in captivity. I believe both sides’ governments stoked tensions, failed their constituents, and need new peace oriented leadership. I also believe Israel is our native homeland as Jews, has the right to exist, and is the most special place on Earth.

And when Greta Thunberg leads “ ” chants at climate rallies, and protesters disrupt the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade shouting “ ,” I worry the climate movement now blindly opposes Israel, and anyone like me who has a more nuanced perspective. Climate activists have every right to support other causes.

But many have taken it a step further, using skewed facts to infect the mainstream climate cause with an anti Israel bent. This phenomenon weakens the movement’s credibility, gets in the way of its mission to mitigate climate change, and discourages those of us with differing views on Israel Hamas from supporting it.

Anti Israel climate activists have attempted to connect the two issues by suggesting that Israeli attacks in Gaza are actually about , citing news that Israel 12 offshore gas exploration licenses on Oct. 29. This accusation grossly minimizes Israel’s true goal of bringing hostages home, and can be disproven by one glance at a map.

The exploration leases are located about west of Haifa in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea — nowhere near any Palestinian territory. One would have to believe Palestinians own everything to call these resources Palestinian. If activists believe all resources in Israel belong to Palestinians, that’s their prerogative, but claiming “Israel is stealing Palestinian gas” without context misleads readers into believing these leases are in Gaza or the West Bank.

This is deliberately deceptive, and erodes trust in the broader climate movement. Climate activists have also argued that Palestinians are “ ” by Israeli military orders. This is partly true. Israel treats all water as , and has for all water projects. Though the of the West Bank’s population is under Palestinian Authority control, Israeli officials have discriminately Palestinian infrastructure permits and even unpermitted cisterns in the West Bank areas they administer — a practice rightly condemned as unlawful and inhumane.

This issue does not apply to Gaza which . Rather, by the Palestinian Water Authority in the late 1990s led saline water to contaminate the Gaza Coastal Aquifer. Since then, Hamas has intended for water and sewage management for terrorism, and even pulled out of the ground to turn into rockets. It is important to criticize Israeli officials who unjustly enforce permitting laws, especially as warmer temperatures and massive population growth rates increase in the West Bank.

But climate activists lose integrity when they mischaracterize the actual issue and fail to additionally call out negligence from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Contrary to climate activists’ framing, the world could learn a lot from Israel’s indigenous environmental stewardship. Despite efforts across millennia to conquer us, Jews have in Israel since the kingdoms of David and Solomon.

Upon achieving self determination, Israelis sprung to action. Facing water scarcity, Israeli engineers developed desalination which of the nation’s drinking water, and of wastewater gets recycled for agricultural irrigation. Experiencing warming at a rate as the global average, Israeli entrepreneurs have launched over climate solutions companies, earning Israel a ranking of No.

6 on the . And since 1901, the Jewish National Fund has planted over through Israel, making Israel the on Earth with more trees in 2000 than in 1900. Typically, climate advocates ally themselves with Indigenous communities — they know how to manage their land best. But when , the movement for Jewish self determination in our indigenous homeland, led to hundreds of solutions that transformed Israel and could benefit the entire world, climate leaders not only refused to listen, but actively rooted for its demise.

Prior to Oct. 7, 100+ Israeli companies and 1,000+ Israeli individuals were to attend the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai last month, many planning to present their groundbreaking climate solutions at the forum. Due to the war, only could attend, operating under as delegates, demonstrators, and world leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa used the climate conference as a .

Nothing offers more opportunity for inclusion than environmentalism, even among adversaries. Everyone needs clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment. It’s why an Israeli company and an Emirati company could launch a in 2020, the United States and China could agree on in 2023, and last month, all 195 countries signed onto a “ .” And for Israelis and Palestinians living in one of the regions of the world, opportunity for common ground on climate rings doubly true.

For example, if Israel supported Palestinians in building and , Israel would no longer have to supply these resources, Palestinians could get jobs and meet their needs, and perhaps hostility would decrease. If climate activists advocated for mutually beneficial solutions like these, they could grow support and But lambasting Israel will only divide the movement further, worsening a downward spiral as the share of Americans identifying as “environmentalists” from 78 percent in 1991 to 41 percent in 2021.

I am devastated by the tragedies in Gaza and Israel, and I respect climate leaders using their platforms to shed light on them. But with anti Israel climate activists spreading lies and gatekeeping the cause from anyone who disagrees, I’m left squaring my desire for a sustainable future with a movement trying to kick me and my people to the curb..