In a recent post on the “Pine libel,”
EoZ focused on a commentary by the notorious
antisemite Gilad Atzmon who described the forest fires raging in many parts
of Israel last week as nature’s revenge against evil Zionist efforts “to make
Palestine look like Europe” by planting supposedly non-native pine trees. Well,
as EoZ showed, pines are native to the region – which kind of ruins Atzmon’s
triumphant conclusion: “Like the pine tree, Zionism, Israel and the Israeli are
foreign to the region.”
But Atzmon’s ignorant screed wasn’t even original: the claim
that Zionists planted pines “to make Palestine look like Europe” is rather
popular among anti-Israel activists, and can e.g. also be found in a lengthy Electronic
Intifada (EI) article
from 2010, where Max Blumenthal gloated about the devastating Carmel fire: “the
nonindigenous trees of the JNF were poorly suited to the environment in
Palestine” and “go up like tinder in the dry heat.” Inevitably, Blumenthal
later recycled the EI article for “Goliath,” his book-length demonization
of Israel.
With the fires raging in Israel last week, Ali Abunimah
promptly promoted Blumenthal’s 2010 article again, emphasizing
the claim that the “Zionist regime planted forests to erase traces of
Palestinians.”
In another tweet, Abunimah opined
that “Israel’s use of ‘forest planting’ of ill-suitied[sic!] tree species to
conquer Palestinian land is root cause of the fires.” He linked to a JTA
article
which he apparently hadn’t really read: the article didn’t say that Israel had
planted “ill-suited tree species,” but on the contrary quoted the JNF’s director
of forest management as praising “these pioneering pines” for doing “a
wonderful job for the first generation.” The article also explicitly mentioned
the “Aleppo pine, also known as the Jerusalem pine” – so Abunimah, who after
all claims to be Palestinian, could have noticed that the pine wasn’t named for
a European location…
But Abunimah insisted
that “Fires in ‘Israel’ are caused by planting of non-native pines by European
settlers and disastrous Zionist land mismanagement;” and he even mocked Jack
Mendel, a journalist for the British Jewish News: “‘journalist’
@mendelpol thinks I made up the facts about Zionist colonizer filling Palestine
with highly flammable non native pines.”
Well, if Abunimah had bothered to read the JTA
article he linked to so helpfully, he would know that his “non-native pines”
are named after the now so unfortunate Syrian town of Aleppo, and he could
actually also have learned something about “land mismanagement”:
“For centuries the area was covered
in a patchwork of squat, dense low-lying forest, especially in the native
woodland areas of the Carmel, Galilee and the Judean hills. But by the time the
early Zionist settlers arrived, much of the forestland had been depleted, used
over the years as firewood, building material, grazing land for goats and
sheep, and even train tracks in the Ottoman era.”
Let me also add that I don’t think anyone would ever accuse
Abunimah of making up facts – his record is clear: he’s always making up lies
about the “Zionist colonizer.” As it happens, this time the lies he made up
exposed his lack of knowledge about the historic Palestine that he claims as
his homeland.
But since Abunimah is the son
of a high-ranking Jordanian diplomat and presumably sometimes goes to visit his
family in Jordan, I have a suggestion: next time he visits, he could plan a family
excursion to the Dibeen Forest
Reserve, a “pristine pine-oak habitat” which is said to feature “Aleppo
pines” that “are some of the oldest and largest in the Kingdom.” According to
one travel
guide, it’s rather small but nevertheless “a nice destination for peace and
quiet” – how about it, Ali Abunimah? To get into the mood, you could check out
the relevant page
at “Magic Jordan,” which notes that Dibeen forest includes the “indigenous
Aleppo pine” and “is representative of the wilderness that once covered a large
part of north-western Jordan.”
Admittedly, the site’s photo gallery offers some views of
the reserve that look just like those places in Israel that monstrously evil
Zionists transformed from barren hills to “little Switzerlands” – and it’s a
depressing thought that some people might wish for it all to burn down just
because it doesn’t fit their ignorant ideals of a pristinely barren Palestine.
