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Thursday, February 15, 2007

Arabs destroy Tu B'Shevat trees

Tu B'Shevat, on the Hebrew calendar, marks the New Year for trees. Although this has various Jewish legal ramifications, in modern Israel it means that this was the traditional time to plant new trees.

From Arutz Sheva:
An American-born leftist and liberal rabbi led Arabs and foreign activists in an effort to prevent thousands of school children in the B'nai Akiva movement from planting trees in honor of Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish New Year for Trees.

The children this past week began to hike up a hill at the industrial area of the southern Hevron Hills, between Be'er Sheva and Hevron, in order to plant more than 5,000 pine and cedar trees.

Liberal rabbi Arik Ascherman, a few other left wing activists and several Arabs, stood in their path.

The police, fearing a confrontation, told the children not to continue until authorities from the Civil Lands Administration arrived and showed Ascherman documents and permits proving that the land belongs to the regional council. Regional council official Akiva London said permits were obtained for the event.

As Ascherman left the area, children overheard him say, "There is day and there is night." Two nights later, vandals uprooted approximately half of the 5,000 cedar and pine trees that the children had planted. Footprints leading to nearby Arab shacks indicated the source of the damage.

"How do you explain to children that Arabs uprooted trees they planted with their own hands?" asked Akiva London, an official of the southern Hevron Hills.

...The regional council is carrying out re-planting of the trees that survived the vandalism and plans to build a fence and install a surveillance camera in the area to prevent future more uprootings.
This is another great opportunity to point out Elder's First Rule of Arab (and Muslim) Projection: Arabs will project their own crimes and worldviews on everyone else. In this case, Arabs are far more guilty of destroying Jewish-owned trees than Jews are of Arab-owned trees. Yet you will never see the mainstream media mention that fact.