Water-a-Plenty – Even in Israel?

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 We’re accustomed to the doom-and-gloom prophecies of Israel’s chronic water shortage and how the thirst of the growing population of a country that is over 50% desert is going to crash and burn one day in the future. So it came as a shock to the system to hear Machiavellian German hydrogeologist, Clemens Messerschmid insist […]

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Water, water everywhere: Oceans

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  The wonderful wild weather of last week, and according to forecasts, in the week to come; has inspired a series of special water-related posts. This first one examines the findings of a new International report focusing on the condition of the World’s Oceans. It does not unfortunately make for happy reading…………………. Ben Halpern, a […]

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Israeli Forests Are Pining Away

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While most Israelis take pride in having made the desert bloom, some of the imported “blooms” have been contested over the years as threats to the ecosystem. In a land where Biblical passages echo everywhere, it’s sometimes disconcerting to realize just how dramatically the face of the landscape has been changed in recent years, and […]

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The Kishon River: Polluted No More?

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The Kishon River was once a notorious dumping ground for seven chemical plants, with the result that the entire ecosystem died and the river was even blamed for causing cancer in soldiers (though that has never been proven conclusively). In recent years, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has initiated what they refer to as a […]

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Let it Rain In Israel

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It’s a yearly ritual in Israel: we worry about rain. We worry when we don’t have rain in the winter, when it is supposed to fall; and we worry when we get rain if it’s the wrong time for the crops. This is not a new phenomenon: the Jewish religion is richly interwoven with customs […]

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