To: Sierra Club President, Ramon Cruz, Board of Directors, and Dan Chu, Acting Executive Director,

As progressive organizers and activists who steadfastly advocate for the same bold climate action that your organization has historically championed, we write to express our dismay and deep concern with Sierra Club’s recent decision to cancel its trip to Israel.

As progressive Zionists who advocate for the self-determination and human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians, we also work tirelessly to promote needed dialogue and trust building initiatives to foster peace between the two peoples. The urgency to prevent the impending climate catastrophe is a cause that can uniquely bring both Israelis and Palestinians together against a mutual threat that knows no borders.

To single out Israel—apparently due to pressure from a few outspoken anti-Israel activists—does nothing to further Sierra Club’s mission, alienates the vast majority of American Jews who support the State of Israel (and who are a core, enthusiastic part of Sierra Club’s constituency) nor will it help build peace in a region ravaged by decades of conflict.

Here are three primary reasons why Sierra Club’s decision to cease its travel and educational programs to Israel and the region is ill advised and counter-productive to your mission:

1. Israel is a case study in water and energy innovation that climate experts and educators have sought to model, and why Sierra Club has long offered educational trips there;
2. Sierra Club supports the Green New Deal. In Israel, climate activists are working from the bottom up on a Green Blue Deal, which transcends borders to bring Jordanians, Palestinians and Israelis together to improve adaptive capacities on water, renewable energy exchanges and much more; and
3. Progressive engagement and activism is precisely what is needed at this moment. Ceding Sierra Club’s seat at the table only emboldens the more extreme voices in the discourse, invites bitterness, and alienates like-minded progressive partners. Progressive organizations in Israel are utilizing climate activism and innovation as a means of fostering meaningful and often challenging dialogue between young Palestinians and Israelis.

We urge the Sierra Club to change course and keep Israel as part of the solution in Sierra Club’s mission to halt an ever-deepening climate crisis, which requires that we come together as a global family.

Signed:

References/links: https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-innovators-working-on-solutions-to-climate-crisis/ https://ecopeaceme.org/gbd/ https://arava.org/dialogueproject/

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