Fires ablaze in a stolen land: Israel's trees planted over Palestinian villages are in flames

Mail & Guardian

07-05-2025

Wildfires in Israel. (X)
The forests that cover the demolished Palestinian villages of the 1948 Nakba are ablaze at a time when Israel prepares to celebrate its 80th anniversary of colonial settler independence.
This is an apt symbol for the smoldering toxins in a failing Zionist system turning to ash. The genocidal apartheid state requests the West for help to fight the fires, while, without any scruples whatsoever, its military burns children and adults alive in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, courtesy of United States, British, French and German bombs, to the cheers of most Israelis and the Zionist international.
Those like me, who were seduced as innocent children by the thieving Jewish National Fund (JNF) into providing pocket money to plant trees ostensibly to make the desert bloom, can feel redeemed by whatever cause is now wiping the stolen terrain of its camouflage.
I am proud that when I was minister of water and forests in the democratic South African government, I prevented a so-called South Africa Forest in the Galilee area of Occupied Palestine from being re-named the Nelson Mandela Forest.
The implanted vegetation conceals the depopulated and destroyed Palestinian village of Lubya, visited by South African filmmaker Heidi Grunebaum, who made a moving documentary, The Village Under the Forest. South African activist and renowned Middle East analyst Naeem Jeenah, who accompanied her on the trip searching for the site, recounts the experience.
'Heidi and I were the two non-Christians who were part of a South African delegation at a Christian conference in Bethlehem. After the conference, all eight of us were determined to visit Lubya — even though it was far out of our way. As we drove out to it, we all had mixed feelings, including a great deal of anger. Lubya had been depopulated in 1948, and alien trees had been planted over the village, and this new 'forest' was named after us!
'We found remains of homes, a water well, even a small mosque — partly buried under sand. One reverend in our group was determined to rip out every JNF tree that covered Lubya, a hopeless task, but his spirit reflected how we all felt: anger, defeat, betrayal. Perhaps we should have destroyed the board that said 'South Africa Forest', with a picture of our flag on it. Heidi's very personal film about Lubya, in different ways, mirrored how all eight of us felt on that day.'
The JNF planted alien trees from Europe and Australia, such as the pine and eucalyptus, full of inflammable sap that explodes like napalm, in hot, dry climates.
Those are thirsty trees that, like the alien Zionist settlers, guzzle up precious water from the aquifers at the expense of the Palestinian populace, and despoil the environment. The indigenous cedar and olive trees of the region were obviously shunned as being too Arabic.
The settlers planted trees to create their little Europe in the Levant, pretending they were making the desert bloom, and then, when the ethnic cleansing came, planted trees at a pace to cover up the scenes of butchery and demolition of hundreds of villages, hoping to obliterate any sign of a Palestinian presence.
The JNF boasts of having planted more than 260 million trees since it was founded by Theodor Herzl in 1901. Amid the Gaza genocide and onslaught on the West Bank, demented settlers carry out pogroms and set fire to the precious olive groves, source of Palestinian livelihood, sustenance, family heritage, bonds of love and culture, destroying nearly one million since 1967.
Alon Mizrahi, an exiled anti-Zionist Israeli, comments: 'From personal experience, those groves and 'forests' don't feel real. Like those who planted them, they emit a sense of shallowness and fragility. I grew up next to one, and, without knowing anything about the history of Zionism, they always felt strange to me, and never magical, the way a true forest feels.
'And so the fires raging today in those 'nature parks' of fake, sinister European pines can be seen (if you have a soul and an imagination) as an act of resistance and rejection by Palestinian communities who have been gone for decades but never abandoned, or forgotten, their homeland.'
The burning settler forests of Israel, a colonial blot on the stolen landscape, take me back to the opening of the armed struggle in South Africa in 1961, when we set alight the sugar cane and wattle plantations of colonial settlers who, like the Israelis, had dispossessed the indigenous people and stolen the land.
As a sign of the paranoia gripping Israel, Hebrew Channel 14 correspondent Hillel Biton Rosen has reflected the fear gripping settler minds: 'A mystery: dozens of fires have broken out across the country — and not a single one is in an Arab area.'
He is correct. The reason, of course, is that 'the Arab areas' have indigenous trees, and these are not flammable like the non-native trees are. Maybe there are other areas? In the dark days of apartheid rule in South Africa, there was a recurring fear among the white supremacist community that black servants would serve them poisoned coffee at wake-up time or slit their throats.
Those are the fears of settlers who like to enjoy life undisturbed by any sign of rebellion, and can never enjoy the sleep of the kind-hearted. Just as we South Africans overcame settler colonialism and apartheid, the Palestinian people's resistance, reinforced by international solidarity, will see victory as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
Ronnie Kasrils is a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, and South Africa's former minister for intelligence services, activist and author. This article first appeared in The Palestine Chronicle.