Sierra Club cancels green-washing trips to racist Israhell

[yankeedoodle]

Sierra Club cancels trips to Israel at urging of progressive and anti-Zionist groupshttps://www.jta.org/2022/03/11/israel/sierra-club-cancels-trips-to-israel-at-urging-of-progressive-and-anti-zionist-groups

The national environmental nonprofit Sierra Club, headquartered in Oakland, has canceled its scheduled trips to Israel in response to pressure from progressive and anti-Zionist groups.

The decision came after activists alleged the organization was "greenwashing the conflict" and "providing legitimacy to the Israeli state, which is engaged in apartheid against the Palestinian people," a volunteer leader with the nonprofit summarized in an email this week.

"Greenwashing," like "pinkwashing" which refers to LGBTQ rights, is a term used by critics of Israel to refer to the act of obscuring Israel's treatment of Palestinians by focusing on the country's liberal environmental values or policies.

News of the Sierra Club's decision came in a mass email obtained by J. that was sent out by Mary Owens, the chair of the Sierra Club's National Outings team, to hundreds of volunteers who lead part-recreational, part-educational, conservation-focused trips around the world.

For years the Sierra Club, established in 1960, has offered trips to Israel to explore the country's biodiversity, bird migrations, desert landscape and ancient ruins. Last year's trip was called "Natural and Historical Highlights of Israel," offered for two weeks in March for about $5,000 per person. It advertised a "comprehensive journey through this enduring land," with birdwatching, sea snorkeling, a visit to the Dead Sea and evenings on a kibbutz. Sierra Club outings are a major source of fundraising for the organization.

The volunteer leader for that Israel trip was Shlomo Waser of Sunnyvale. Waser did not respond to a request for comment from J.

On the Sierra Club's website more than 250 upcoming trips are listed, including more than 200 to sites in the U.S. and others to places like Malaysia, Nepal and Antarctica. A trip to China is planned for October. The website no longer lists a trip to Israel, and a number of webpages with information on past Israel trips were down on Friday afternoon. A notice appears at the top of the Middle East destinations landing page noting "There are currently no Middle East trips scheduled."

The email from Owens, who said she was not authorized to speak to the press, described the Sierra Club's decision to cancel its trips — one scheduled for this month, and another for March 2023 — as the result of an advocacy push from one "Jewish American activist" and a host of both progressive and anti-Zionist groups, including the pro-Palestinian Adalah Justice Project, the Indigenous rights group the NDN Collective, the Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Sunrise Movement and the Movement for Black Lives.

An employee with the NDN Collective confirmed he was aware of his organization's efforts but was not authorized to say more. A request for comment from JVP, the Jewish anti-Zionist group, went unanswered.

The email from Owens read: "On January 20, the board of directors received an email from a Jewish American activist urging us to cancel our upcoming trips to Israel (scheduled for March 15 and 29, 2022 and March 2023), saying that we are greenwashing the conflict there and providing legitimacy to the Israeli state, which is engaged in apartheid against the Palestinian people."

The board notified Owens and the National Outings team, which "sent our standard response which states that we don't restrict our trips due to regional conflicts or politics," Owens wrote. "The activist was not satisfied and said he planned to get additional activist groups involved.

"On February 22, the board received an email from a coalition of activist organizations ... threatening that if we did not cancel the upcoming trips within a week, they would go public that the organization was violating the organizational values it recently rolled out."

Acting executive director Dan Chu, the email said, "appointed a group to handle the response" and notified Israel trip leaders.

The special group appointed by Chu met with the progressive activists, the email said, "who insisted that there was no room for compromise and reiterated their demand that we cancel the trips by March 7."

The group "spent the next few days reviewing the pros and cons of each outcome," Owens wrote, adding: "the National Outings team did not want to cancel the trips."

In the end, two members of the group appointed by Chu recommended that he cancel the trips, "and he agreed," Owens wrote.

The Sierra Club's national press office did not respond to a detailed list of questions from J.

The decision comes as the Sierra Club, one of the oldest and most influential environmental nonprofit organizations in the United States, has made a push to fold progressive values and language more overtly into its mission, including rhetoric around social justice and anti-racism.

A webpage linked in Owens' note includes a guide to "practicing anti-racism at Sierra Club," listing the need for "focused and sustained action," "maintaining accountability" and "rejecting norms of internalized racial oppression," among other tenets.

On June 17 of last year, the organization announced for the first time its support for reparations for Black Americans. "It is impossible to create a healthy, safe, and sustainable planet without acknowledging and materially addressing the past and present economic, cultural, psychological and spiritual impacts of racism," the statement said.

Some longstanding members of the group see in the embrace of social justice concepts an ideological shift leftward within an organization that has historically been a big tent. Its decision on Israel has reinforced that view.

"It's a pendulum, and it's very much swung to the progressive side of things," said David Neumann of Oregon, a Jewish Sierra Club member since 1968 who leads outings in California and his home state.

"Obviously, people who care about the environment aren't necessarily progressives," he said. "You can care about the environment and have different political views. We have Republicans among us."

Neumann said he strongly opposed the decision to cancel the Israel trips, calling it the result of an ideological "purity test" and a capitulation to progressive groups who "put the screws" to Sierra Club leadership.

"I knew they were really into equity and justice, as am I, and that's all fine," he said. "But these groups that call Israel an apartheid state — that's so far out there," he said. "That's so not mainstream. That's crazy."

Owens, the chair, wrote that she and the outings administrative committee were also "very disappointed with the decision."

"A terrible precedent has been set," she wrote, that "can potentially put other international as well as domestic trips at risk of being subjected to the same treatment."

[yankeedoodle]

A man holds up a protest sign during a demonstration by Druze residents of the village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights against Israeli construction of wind turbines in the territory.

Israeli plans to seize land in Syrian Golan Heights for 'greenwashing' wind farm
https://israelpalestinenews.org/israeli-plans-to-seize-land-in-syrian-golan-heights-for-greenwashing-wind-farm/

Syrians in the occupied Golan Heights protested an Israeli project that will see their farmland confiscated to make way for a wind farm.
reposted from The New Arab, February 28, 2022  https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/syrians-occupied-golan-protest-israeli-wind-farm-plan

Dozens of Syrians in the occupied Golan Heights protested on Monday outside the courthouse in Nazareth against an Israeli plan that could see thousands of acres of their farmland seized to make way for a wind farm.

The project, led by the company Energix, would see scores of wind turbines constructed on land in the occupied Golan Heights, a border region between Israel and Syria – two-thirds of which has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.

The project would see locals in three villages – home to nearly 25,000 people – lose thousands of acres in agricultural land.

The approval for the plan hinges on the court's decision, which will reach a verdict on 15 March.

"We object to giving this company the license to implement their project because of the harm their turbines will cause," Dr. Youssef Abu Saleh from Majd Al-Shams, the largest village in the Occupied Golan told The New Arab's Arabic-language service.

"We support clean energy and the conservation of our environment, but the damage done by these turbines is far higher than their benefit. Their goal is to seize our lands and confiscate our livelihoods."

Emil Massoud from the People's Committee Against Turbines said they have been resisting the project for years, and petitions to the court have been signed by more than 5,000 locals.

"The project will take away [...] a quarter of our agricultural land, which is the main source of our livelihood," he added.

The Golan Heights is a region of Syria that has been militarily occupied by Israel since 1967.

Israel has constructed a series of settlements and construction projects in the region to further annex the region and bring it under its administrative control.

Israeli has been repeatedly accused of using seemingly environmental-friendly projects and endeavors to distract from its occupation of the West Bank and oppression of Palestinians in a process known as "greenwashing".

[yankeedoodle]

That didn't take long, did it?  It seems they acted "hastily," so the quickly learned not to act "hastily" ever ever again.   

Sierra Club reinstates Israel trips after outcry over decision to nix visits
US environmental group says it made decision 'hastily' without enough consultation with outside groups, after being accused of 'greenwashing' alleged Israeli crimes
https://www.timesofisrael.com/sierra-club-reinstates-israel-trips-after-outcry-over-decision-to-nix-visits/

The US environmental nonprofit Sierra Club said Tuesday it will reinstate trips to Israel, reversing course after canceling scheduled visits in response to pressure from anti-Zionist and progressive groups, including far-left Jewish activists.

The about-face came after a campaign from mainstream Jewish groups, and comes as the California-based nonprofit seeks to accommodate contemporary racial justice concerns with its 130-year-old environmental mission.

"Recently, the Sierra Club hastily made a decision, without consulting a robust set of stakeholders, to postpone two planned outings to Israel," the organization said in a statement attributed to Acting Executive Director Dan Chu. "The process that led to this was done in ways that created confusion, anger, and frustration."


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"We do not take positions on foreign policy matters that are beyond that scope. We do not have a deep understanding or knowledge necessary to do so, nor is it our place to do so," the statement said. The group also committed to combating antisemitism.

The statement said the Sierra Club has offered trips to Israel for nearly a decade, and "we intend to update our schedule soon to offer new outings to Israel later this year."

In future trips to Israel, the Sierra Club committed to get "input from a wide range of partners" to deepen participants' understanding of the region.

"By failing to engage all stakeholders, from our members and supporters, to a wide range of allies, traditional and otherwise, we caused deep pain on a personal and spiritual level," the statement said.

An array of US Jewish groups pushed back after the Sierra Club announced the cancellations last week.

The Jewish Community Relations Councils of San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Jewish Federations of North America, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Hazon environmental group and the California Legislative Jewish Caucus all called on the Sierra Club to reverse the move.

Jewish groups applauded Tuesday's announcement.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco said it was "pleased Sierra Club addressed Jewish community concerns about postponed outings to Israel, and its leadership are working with Jewish organizations on education and growth."

The group's director, Tyler Gregory, said, "It is critical we not allow cynical attempts to delegitimize Israel to push Jews and others with personal connections to Israel out of social justice spaces."

"Of equal importance, we cannot allow an existential issue as critical as combating climate change to be derailed by toxic political infighting," Gregory said.

Ross Macfarlane, the Sierra Club's vice president, phoned Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to inform him of the decision, the center said Tuesday.

Macfarlane apologized for the sudden cancellations of trips to Israel, said the visits will continue in the future and denounced the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, the Weisenthal Center said.

"We appreciate that the Sierra Club acted quickly to reverse the announced cancellations of trips to Israel which placed the famed American conservation organization directly into the crosshairs of BDS, anti-Israel, and anti-peace zealots," Cooper said.

The Sierra Club is a national US organization based in California. It had said it was canceling its Israel trips after progressive and anti-Zionist activists accused it of "greenwashing" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Greenwashing" is a term used to anti-Israel activists that accuse the Jewish state of using environmental causes to disguise alleged human rights violations. "Pinkwashing" is a common charge against Israel relating to LGBTQ rights.

The Sierra Club has been striving to widen its scope to include social justice causes, alongside its environmental focus, after the group came under fire in 2020 for allegedly racist statements by its founder, John Muir, a leading environmentalist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Muir made statements deemed derogatory toward Black and indigenous people, describing other racial groups as "dirty" and "lazy," for example. Other early Sierra Club figures also held racist views, the group has acknowledged.

"The Sierra Club is a 129-year-old organization with a complex history, some of which has contributed to and certainly reflected those systems of oppression," the group said.

"While we have made major strides over the past decade in reckoning with and addressing these issues, we still have a very long journey ahead of us to become the anti-racist organization we need to be," it said.

[yankeedoodle]

Sierra Club reschedules Israel trips that it canceled under pressure from pro-Palestinian groups
https://www.jta.org/2022/08/16/united-states/sierra-club-reschedules-israel-trips-that-it-canceled-under-pressure-from-pro-palestinian-groups

Five months after canceling its planned trips to Israel, and then — following outrage from Jewish organizations — apologizing days later and saying the trips would be reinstated, the Sierra Club has quietly posted a new excursion to Israel for next year.

Called "Natural and Historical Highlights of Israel," the two-week trip in March 2023 will include many of the same activities the Sierra Club offered before activists convinced the environmental nonprofit to cancel two Israel outings: snorkeling, bird watching, nights on a kibbutz and a visit to Tel Aviv.

Participants also will be meeting with Palestinians working on conservation to hear "first-hand about their daily and ongoing challenges," according to the itinerary that was posted Friday. The itinerary additionally lists a visit to the Arava Institute, which brings Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians and students from around the world together for environmental studies and research, and whose motto is "Nature knows no political borders."

The planned trip is the latest development in a saga that saw one of the country's oldest and most influential environmental groups — which traditionally avoids politics in favor of a big-tent approach to environmental conservation — embroiled in a public controversy that drew ire from large Jewish organizations and prompted intervention by California politicians.

Jesse Gabriel, a California Assembly member who chairs the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, joined a virtual meeting with Sierra Club Executive Director Dan Chu along with other members of the caucus after J. broke the story March 11 that the Sierra Club had indefinitely postponed its trips to Israel at the urging of groups who claimed Sierra Club was "greenwashing" the conflict. The Sierra Club is headquartered in Oakland.

"It immediately caught my attention, as it did for a number of my colleagues in the [caucus]," Gabriel said. "A lot of us do work in the environmental space and have good relationships with the Sierra Club. People were obviously very upset by that, and very disturbed by it."

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt also met with Sierra Club leadership in March and said he was "encouraged" by those conversations. "Experiencing Israel through its environment, geology, history and people does not negate, nor 'greenwash,' the pressing reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he wrote in an open letter to Chu.

Among the organizations that urged Sierra Club leadership to scrap its planned Israel outings were the U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group the Adalah Justice Project, the Indigenous rights group the NDN Collective, the Movement for Black Lives coalition and the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.

The groups leveled claims that Sierra Club was supporting an apartheid regime and providing cover for Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians by celebrating its environmental stewardship. Sierra Club, in general, has said it does not get involved in foreign policy matters, and it offers outings to a host of countries, from Tanzania to China.

The advocacy groups, many of which support boycotts of Israel, celebrated after Sierra Club decided to scrap its Israel trips and removed all mention of them from its website. JVP called it a "positive step forward for environmental justice and Palestinian freedom." Later the groups soured after Chu published a statement March 15 apologizing for Sierra Club's decision, saying it was made "hastily," and that new trips to Israel would be on offer "soon" and would involve "input from a wide range of partners."

Internally, the episode created uncertainty and tension within the Sierra Club. Its leadership was split on the decision, which alienated some longtime members and volunteer leaders.

David Neumann of Oregon, who has led outings since the 1970s, saw the decision as indicative of a pendulum swing left at the nonprofit, which he said was off-putting to a number of longtime members he knew. Neumann is Jewish and said the news hit him hard: "I haven't had a lot of sleep lately," he said at the time.

The Sierra Club last week warned its employees about the new trips to Israel and the challenging feelings they might engender, according to a note obtained and published by the Adalah Justice Project.

"On Friday Sierra Club will announce details of an upcoming outing to Israel and Palestine," said the note, which was addressed to Sierra Club managers. "We have created optional spaces tomorrow and Friday to equip managers to support their teams and support people on their teams as well as managers who have identities related to Palestine and Israel."

The group did not respond to requests for comment. But it addressed the Israel controversy in a public statement last week that situated the episode within the Sierra Club's efforts to examine its own role "in perpetuating white supremacy."

Founded in 1892, the group was "basically a mountaineering club for middle and upper-class white people" in its early years, it has said in previous public statements. Recently, amid a national reckoning over race, the group has made internal changes designed to increase equity and oppose racism, including by rethinking, for example, its veneration of Sierra Club founder John Muir, the turn-of-the-20th-century naturalist who made derogatory comments about Black and Indigenous people.

The controversy over the Israel trips became "a critical inflection point in our journey to becoming an organization that fully illustrates anti-racism, balance, collaboration, justice and transformation," the Sierra Club said in a statement published late last week, titled "Toward Just and Transformative Outings."

In the statement, the Sierra Club again apologized for its abrupt decision to cancel the trips, both for derailing planning that had already taken place by trip leaders and participants and because of anger from "some of our Jewish community members who perceived our decision as a political statement."

The decisions to cancel and then plan new trips "were perceived as conflicting, were made in quick succession, and ultimately perpetuated harm and confusion throughout our entire community, especially our our Palestinian, Indigenous, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and Jewish staff, volunteers, members and partners," the statement said. "While we intended to satisfy our various and valued partners, our execution caused an adverse reaction that lead us on a path of repairing and rebuilding with key members of our community — including our volunteers, our staff, our partners, our members, and our donors — who were deeply harmed and frustrated by not only the original trip, but by the non-consultative process that ensued."

Pro-Palestinian groups exploded with public statements late last week excoriating what they called the nonprofit's "apartheid tours."

"In February, we demanded Sierra Club cancel Israel outings greenwashing Israeli colonization and its disastrous impact on the Palestinian people," a joint statement from the Adalah Justice Project and the NDN Collective read. "Sierra Club canceled two trips but backtracked after pressure from racist anti-Palestinian groups.

"We condemn Sierra Club's upcoming trips to apartheid Israel that green light Israeli colonialism and harm Indigenous Palestinians," the statement said.

Along with Jewish Voice for Peace, the groups urged a social-media campaign to push back at the Sierra Club on Instagram and Twitter. "Demand that Sierra Club cancel their upcoming apartheid tours!" an Instagram post from Adalah said. "There can be no environmental justice without Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous people leading the way," another post read.

The San Francisco-based office of the ADL welcomed the news.

"As the itinerary highlights, Israel is rich in history and home to many natural wonders and initiatives of interest to anyone who is concerned about the environment," said Seth Brysk, the ADL's regional director. "Experiencing Israel through its environment, geology, history and people provides essential opportunities for first-hand enriching engagement into the many complex issues that must be globally addressed."

The two-week trip is scheduled to depart March 14 and has a capacity of 15 people. It costs $5,455 per person, and will include floating in the Dead Sea, a hike up Masada and a visit to Eilat, one of the world's most important stop-over sites for migratory birds.

The itinerary also includes visits to a Druze village, the Bahai Temple in Haifa and an "eco village" where Palestinians and Israelis work together on water conservation issues. The trip leader is Shlomo Waser, a Bay Area resident who was born in Israel and holds a life membership in the Sierra Club. Waser did not respond to a request for comment.

[abduLMaria]

Not unlike the US military bragging about their "Energy Efficiency" programs.