Turning Over the Meaning of Tu B’Shvat, Dev Brous
[I wrote this piece in 2006 and it is STILL relevant in 2022: #Shevat)
Devorah Brous, Executive Director, Bustan (Feb. 2006)
This week, as Jews the world over plant trees in celebration of the Jewish return to the Land of Israel, a Bedouin family residing in the land of their forefathers stands in lamentation over their uprooted fields. Early on the morning of 2/8/06, the 'Green Patrol' and the Israel Lands Authority (ILA) brought a single tractor to the south of the Negev government planned town Rahat, and without so much as a day's notice, without even a word, began to overturn the barley and wheat fields planted by the family of Yousef Abu Zayd and his neighbors. While Jews plant this Tu B'Shvat it helps “make the desert bloom,” while Bedouin plant in the same desert, it is a criminal act - subject to uprooting.
Perhaps you have heard this story before. In the past several years, the State sent crop duster planes repeatedly to Bedouin fields, spraying toxic herbicide over food crops, affecting both the land and the agrarian people. Despite a high court ruling last year that aerial crop-poisoning operations are now illegal. This prompted by the environmental justice organization Bustan and 8 partner NGO’s new methods of destroying Bedouin subsistence farming have emerged. Crops are now simply "overturned" by tractors, some say in order to 'redeem' the land from the hands of 'non-Jews.'
Looking at the 'Green Patrol,' we can see how the Green concept is used as a tool by all ends of the political spectrum. For many, the most basic association that comes to mind when one thinks of the Green concept involves the aesthetic quality of 'natural' areas (this is too wordy, i prefer how i originally wrote it...)-- For some, Green is fresh air:forested spaces, open fields, nature reserves, and national parks, � the protection and nurturing of which is associated with environmental consciousness, national development, and a higher quality of life for the country. The Green concept appears 'neutral,' carrying humanistic connotations of inclusiveness imbued with seemingly benign national memories. For others, Green is a means for yielding food (and therefore income) for families and communities. Abu Zaid's decision to plant food crops , was in conscious defiance of the image of Bedouin as a burden on the State. Abu Zayd planted barley and wheat in vacant Negev space "to be self-sufficient, and make a dignified living - instead of draining the state's welfare resources, and relying on handouts." . Yet for precisely these reasons, the Green concept has become an insidious tool, concealing hegemonic political goals to demarcate and claim contested space. Instead of subsidizing the efforts of its Bedouin citizens to grow food as part of the State's national project to bloom the desert, Israel lobs Bedouin farmers into the same category as Palestinian fellahim throughout the West Bank, and institutionalizes the job of radical settlers, uprooting ancient olives to “redeem” lands.
No amount of Green rhetoric (greenwashing) can disguise the fact that the "Green Patrol' has for nearly three decades uprooted an immense amount of Green potential. The Green Patrol enforces laws which criminalize Bedouin subsistence agriculture which experts at Ben Gurion University agree are actually beneficial to Desert ecology. In a letter submitted to the Jerusalem Post in 1978, Israel's three top desert ecologists argued for the economic and environmental advantages of managed goat-herding.
Nevertheless, the Green Patrol maintained that protecting the Israeli nature-lover's pride, the Negev, "girdling" the Bedouin who had long shaped the Negev by coercion. In the midst of all the environmentalist lingo of the Israeli government and the romance around Israel's only wilderness landscape, the Bedouin of the Negev suffer extreme environmental racism.
For Abu Zayd, Vice Mayor, a municipal employee in Rahat, the assault on his crops were a surprise. A day after, he told Bustan, "I was very disappointed. There was no discussion, no negotiations, no chance to get to the courts. I am a public figure, and I thought that since I know the police very well, for years through my work, and our relations are one of respect, and even friendship. I didn't expect to see them destroying my land." Such acts reinforce the perception of many Arab citizens of Israel that, for the State, making the desert 'bloom' means Judaizing the landscape of Israel, leaving merely remnants of traditional Arab way of life for touristic purposes, and making way for Jewish development. This is the message the State of Israel wishes to send on Tu B' Shvat, let us not be fooled.
This weekend, there are many options to plant with your family as part of inspired community action to mark the Israeli holiday of Tu B'Shvat and the feast of El Shadjara. Plant in celebration of tradition. Or, plant in protest of overturning land planted by Bedouin, unbridled politically green development, or the racist land grab. This week, we reclaim the Green Concept; Planting is our tool.
Additional Reading:
Avnery, Uri. Abolish the JNF. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12642
Blouground, David. The Jewish National Fund. Policy paper, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (2001). http://www.iasps.org/policystudies/ps49.pdf
Ha'aretz Editorial, "Who Needs the JNF?" (September 24, 2007), www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?
Morris, Benny. "Yosef Weitz and the Transfer Committees, 194849"
and "Yosef Nachmani and
the Arab Question," in 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians (revised edition, 1994).
"Protesting the JNF" http://stopthewall.org/worldwideactivism/1577.shtml
Kankar, Sonia. "Rooted Like an Olive Tree."
http://desertpeace.blogspot.com/2007/09/palestinerootedlikeolivetree
html://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Tu_Bishvat/
The Iron Wall (http://www.theironwall.ps/)
Arna's Children (http://www.arna.info/Arna/)
Palestine is Still the Issue (http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/pisi.html)
The Diaries of Yossef Nachmani ((http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/theatrical_catalog4a.html)
Al Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948 (http://www.arabfilm.com/item/2/)
