When her vegan summer camp counselor explained to a fifteen-year-old Rachel how the dairy industry pollutes the groundwater in poor rural communities and causes global warming, there was no turning back. Her green fire lit, Rachel became increasingly passionate about the relationship between human societies and the natural environment, particularly about the systemic injustices associated with environmental degradation.
After snagging a B.A. in Peace and Justice Studies at the University of Maryland, where she wrote an undergraduate thesis on water injustice in Israel/Palestine and South Africa, Rachel was awarded the New Israel Fund/Shatil’s Rabbi Richard J. Israel Social Justice Fellowship to come and spread the green gospel in Israel for the 2009-2010 academic year. She currently interns for Friends of the Earth Middle East in their Tel Aviv office.
When Rachel is not having anxiety about her ecological footprint, carbon and otherwise, she can be found in hot pursuit of the best vegetarian food Tel Aviv has to offer. She also blogs about her experience as an NIF fellow and environmentalist in Israel at organichummus.wordpress.com.
Rachel can be reached at rachelbergstein (at) gmail (dot) com.
Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) is a longtime advocate of sustainability and environmental peacebuilding in the region. Fresh off the pages of Time Magazine, where FoEME’s directors were recently named Heroes of the Environment 2008, FoEME is hosting…
For Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, lack of infrastructure is a big obstacle for protecting the environment. Old and malfunctioning infrastructure (or often none at all!) for properly managing things like solid waste and sewage is a major…
Events over the past week indicate that Palestinian surface and ground water resources are in great danger. Last Friday, around three hundred Palestinians protested the reopening of an Israeli dump site near the West Bank village of Deir Sharaf, outside…
Although Palestinian environmental activism is clearly on the rise, Palestinians still face a myriad of environmental and social challenges. These issues often have both ecological and political aspects; the current water shortage, for instance, is influenced both by global climate…
Israel’s search for solutions to solid waste management has been no secret. Last year, for instance, the Knesset passed new taxes for dumping in landfills, and a law requiring businesses to recycle tires. Luckily, it’s not only the policymakers who…
Over the past few months, we’ve seen a lot of Prophecies about eco-tourism all over the Middle East. There are dozens of eco-travel options in Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen. There is also, however, a very special opportunity…
Last week I took a tour of unrecognized Bedouin communities in the Negev/Naqab, similar to the one that James did with Rabbis for Human Rights. This tour was fascinating because of its subject matter, but also because I was introduced…
Israel’s water crisis has been in the news a lot lately. We have all heard how low the Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) is, and seen suggestions on how to save water this summer. Although it receives much less media…
The Gaza Strip seems like the last place in the world where we would hear good news on the environmental – or any – front. Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip last summer, Israel has imposed a nearly…
Leaders from Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority concluding talks in Tokyo yesterday with the announcement that they plan to start building an agro-industrial park in the Palestinian Territories by next year. The agro-industrial park could provide jobs for up…
