This Monday in Israel, we celebrate Tu Bishvat, the New Year for the Trees. Traditionally a day for planting trees, in recent years it has become more and more a day for environmental awareness, turning form Israel’s Arbor Day into an Earth Day.
Tu Bishvat is also the birthday of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament in 1950, and so it seems appropriate that on February 10, the day following that anniversary, is when Israeli citizens go out to select the representatives in our national parliament.
In preparation for Israeli election day, we present a series of posts with a summary of the environmental positions of the parties running for the Knesset on the following topics: Open Areas and Beaches, Green Energy, Radiation and Global Warming, Sustainable Development, Recycling, Water, and Air & Industrial Pollution and Enforcement .
This summary was compiled as a joint initiative of the Environmental Clinic at the Bar Ilan University Faculty of Law, and the environmental umbrella organization “Life and Environment” (Chayim Usviva in Hebrew), where this summary is available in Hebrew. The information was compiled by Yael Morag and Liat Elifaz, under the direction of Ayelet Baram, Eti Rosenblum, Dr. Oren Perez From Bar Ilan and Naor Yerushalmi from Chayim Usviva. The list was translated by the greenprophet.com team, with special thanks to Shoshana Michael-Zucker and Bill Marcus.
Please come back for updates, more topics, and a discussion by our greenprophets about the platforms. And, as always, we encourage you to add your comments below.
We hope that these elections and the next Knesset will be the greenest ever!
The following political parties were surveyed:
Green Movement/Meimad: www.hayeruka-meimad.org.il
Green Party: www.green-party.co.il
Hadash: http://hadash2009.org.il
Israel Beytenu: www.beytenu.org.il
Israel Hazaka: www.israelhazaka.org.il/14-he/StrongIsrael.aspx
Kadima: www.kadima.org.il
Labor: www.havoda.org.il/14-he/Party.aspx
Likud: www.netanyahu.org.il, www.likud.co.il
New Movement-Meretz: www.newmeretz.org.il/aspx/default.aspx
Shas: http://shas.org.il
Topics summarized in this compilation include:
- Green Energy
- Sustainable Development
- Radiation and Global Warming
- Water
- Open Areas and Beaches
- Recycling
- Transportation
- Air & Industrial Pollution and Enforcement
photo:: Jonathan Shippin
I suspect we were on the same side then, too. There were lots of folks in the party that had similar sentiments and the final result is at least partially a product of that. Anyway, its a pleasure and – as Jack says – still crucial and important work! D.
still, a large job! good on you mate!
Ho Daniel O. Good to be discussing politics with you again, this time from the same side >grin<. Daniel P
This summary was compiled in Hebrew by the Bar Ilan Environmental Clinic and the Chayim Usviva organization. All we did was translate and post it.
Wow. This seems like a monumental amount of work. I hope the results are read far and wide. Thanks!