Nowhere in a letter from the Green Party was there a calling for an end to the Palestinian war on nature.
By JOSHUA S. BLOCKIsraeli teens, Meshy Elmkies (R), 16, and Lee Cohen, 17, co-managers of Instagram account, Otef.Gaza, show Reuters journalists an incendiary kite launched from the Gaza Strip, during an interview in Kibbutz Kerem Shalom which borders the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel November 11, 2018(photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
The day of March 30, 2018, marked the beginning of violent Hamas-orchestrated riots along the Israeli-Gaza border. Many thousands of acres of Israeli farmland and beautiful wildlife reserves have been destroyed because of a willful assault on nature, carried out by incendiary airborne devices launched by Palestinian terrorist organizations.The shameful weaponization of nature is a major concern to the global green movement that advocates a progressive, socially democratic left-wing agenda informed by ecological wisdom and environmental protection.Or, you would think so.But while Israel’s farmlands were devoured by flames and defenseless animals suffocated in raging fires, representatives of the American Green Party traveled in November to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to deliver a letter calling for a full investigation into alleged “war crimes” committed by Israel against the Palestinians.The letter claims that Palestinian rioters “have defended themselves mostly with rocks, burning kites, balloons and tires, homemade rockets and starkly tragic human suicide bombers” in the face of “the heavily blockaded Gaza border.”Nowhere in the letter was the Green Party calling for an end to the Palestinian war on nature, even though the deliberate stockpiling and burning of thousands of tires on the border fence caused serious environmental damage and jeopardized the health of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians.Neither were they calling for an immediate stop to animal cruelty, even though Hamas used animals to set the fires – and with barrages of incendiary kites and balloons, caused an unprecedented destruction of their natural habitats, as well as the animals themselves.In a world that faces continuing environmental and ecological catastrophes in the form of mass pollution, climate change, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, it is indeed absurd that the US Green Party has chosen to make the stigmatization of Israel as a priority.Lending extra absurdity to the stigmatization policy is the fact that Israel excels in many areas championed by the international green movement – from the protection of natural resources to cutting-edge solutions for water shortages, reduced pollution and sustainable energy conservation. The Jewish state has taken strides in ecologically friendly innovations, living up to its status as one of the world’s top innovators in the field of clean technologies.Then why is the Green Party so obsessed with Israel?
A check on the organization’s website reveals that it is populated with chilling anti-Israel ideas and associations. Far from erecting an inclusive liberal-progressive group, the party has embraced brazenly illiberal causes dedicated to the singling out of the only Jewish state in the world.For one, the Green Party promotes “the creation of one secular, democratic state for Palestinians and Israelis on the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan” – a thinly veiled call to end Israel as a Jewish state, which echoes the rallying cry of Palestinian terrorist organizations: “From river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”But that’s not enough. The Green Party also supports the virulently anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that is aimed at ending Israel’s very existence. In the name of its so-called “social justice” and “identity politics,” intersectionality has forced artificial coalitions between causes that have nothing to do with each other.Worse still, there have already been incidents where the boycott has extended beyond Israel to the Jewish community as a whole. In June 2017, three women who attended the Chicago Dyke March were expelled for displaying rainbow LGBT flags embossed with Jewish stars. Similarly, in an interview with The Nation, Women’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour asserted that the feminist movement ought to exclude Zionists. The vast majority of American Jews identify as Zionists.Cloaked in the language of progressive idealism, far-Left antisemitism has been mainstreamed by traditional left-wing actors. That’s why this form of antisemitism is so dangerous. The Labour Party in Britain is one example. The Green Party in the US – which is prepared to endorse a form of discrimination that other democratic parties have made clear is completely unacceptable – is another.There’s nothing “green” about the ghettoization of Israel.
