When Nature Conservation Becomes a Colonial Crime: How Israel-hate hijacked environmental sciences
Environmental protection has long operated on a shared, global consensus: that safeguarding endangered habitats and species is an objective scientific good. Yet a quiet shift within Western academic literature is subverting this empirical foundation, turning the hard sciences of ecology, biodiversity conservation, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation into an ideological weapon.
Academic antizionism has built three pillars that sustain its ideology: settler-colonialism as the main framework to understand environmental problems, denying the indigeneity of Jews in Palestine, and a romanticised picture of Indigenous Peoples.
Reputable scientific journals publish academic articles, where routine ecological management is no longer evaluated through biodiversity metrics, compliance with legal obligations, or resource sustainability; instead, it is systematically recast as an instrument of ‘green dispossession,’ ‘ecocide,’ and ‘colonial violence,’ particularly when taking place in Israel.[1]
This emerging literature abandons the empirical foundations of ecology and natural resource management for Lysenkoist[2] ideological interpretations — bending science to match a political doctrine — and polarised storytelling.
The scientific integrity of an environmental assessment relies on applying methods uniformly across all observed data. But here this foundational principle gives way to a profound methodological asymmetry. When these academic papers evaluate the various administrative functions of the Israeli state, they employ a hyper-critical framework that focuses exclusively on environmental outputs while systematically ignoring any variables and circumstances driving the decisions.
At the same time, when evaluating Palestinian land use, as well as traditional farming or foraging, the authors abandon empirical metrics altogether. The research design completely excludes standard ecological indicators, such as soil degradation, ecosystem services decline, and ecosystem resilience indices. Instead, traditional resource extraction is presumed to be ecologically benign or inherently sustainable, entirely insulated from the scientific scrutiny typically applied to modern land management.[3]
A recurring topic of this literature is that the primary purpose of tree planting in Israel is displacement and ethnic cleansing, allegedly proven by the choice of species (pine) and planting methods (dense monocultures). Trees are said to deliberately hide former Arab villages, while pine needles are described as ‘toxic,’ meant to prevent Palestinian return.[4]
What these accounts leave out is that throughout the twentieth century, afforestation with conifers was a widespread forestry practice aimed at stabilising sand, reducing wind erosion, and building soil — practices observable across the Middle East. Early industrial forestry favoured resilient, fast-growing species and planted monocultures. Israel was no outlier. For example, Lebanon’s famous pine forest, the Bkassine was planted in phases since the 16th century. Algeria’s anti-deserification measure in the late 1960s was to plant a thousand kilometres long belt of Aleppo pine. Since the 1990s, driven by climate change and ecological considerations, forestry practices worldwide have gradually shifted towards greater species diversity, reduced fire risk, and the preservation of native habitats.
Similarly, when Israel restricted the wild harvesting of Syrian oregano (Origanum syriacum) and akkoub (Gundelia tournefortii) to halt severe overexploitation, activist-scholars reframed this conservation measure as a targeted assault on Palestinian culinary identity. In reality, field ecologists urged protections to prevent local population collapse, but state authorities translated those ecological warnings into strict blanket bans that were enforced unevenly — naturally generating social friction.[5]
This friction is familiar to conservationists everywhere. Wildlife rangers globally struggle to draw clean legal boundaries between traditional foraging and commercial over-harvesting. Regulatory overreach occurs, as do administrative blunders. Meanwhile, domestic cultivation of these plants remains completely legal. Yet activist-scholars erase this universal regulatory tension, turning standard enforcement dilemmas into evidence of settler-colonialism, designed to erase Indigenous culture.
The inflammatory language, speculation about Israeli intentions, selective citing of nature conservation methods, some authors’ clear confusion about the nativeness of certain species, ignoring of palaeoecological research, and omission of the importance of species and habitat conservation represent a textbook case of manipulation.
The same applies to documenting the environmental effects of the Gaza war. Articles consistently omit critical context, such as enemy tactics, strategic defensive dilemmas, and the legal obligations of the state to defend its citizens, thus establishing the accusation of ‘ecocide.’ By stripping the conflict’s environmental impacts (the destroyed trees, farmlands, and water infrastructure, or the pollution) of their geopolitical context, the literature misrepresents standard acts of wars as premeditated environmental crimes.[6]
This creates a flawed methodology where Israel’s actions are judged solely by their negative ecological effects, while Palestinian actions are exempted from empirical measurement, violating the basic tenets of objective scientific inquiry.
For example, by declaring the locally extinct but reintroduced Persian fallow deer (Dama mesopotamica) as an ‘agent of normalization’ or Syrian oregano and akkoub protection as ‘green dispossession,’ these authors make it impossible to discuss actual habitat carrying capacities, biodiversity indices, or ecological degradation objectively. Science is replaced entirely by ideology. As one author puts it, ‘Wildness, native-ness, and agro-climatic suitability are scientifically constituted within and not apart from colonial conquest.’ disregarding the fact that ideology-free ecological definitions for these concepts exist.
While activist-scholars aggressively leverage international humanitarian law to manufacture accusations of ecocide and environmental crime, they systematically disregard the legally binding international environmental treaties to which Israel is accountable. Israel’s actions to protect its vulnerable flora and fauna directly reflect statutory obligations codified under multilateral instruments such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). By ignoring these international legal mandates, critics deliberately reframe compliance with global conservation law into an act of state violence.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW MYTHOLOGY
Language is where the double standard is the most glaring. As the authors leave behind standardised methodology, they also abandon the dry vocabulary of biology and natural resource management in favour of a literary genre with a well-developed villain, an armed, alien oppressor, and a victimised protagonist, living in spiritual harmony with nature.
The papers[7] describe the Israeli state’s conservation efforts not as forestry or biodiversity conservation but as a destructive military machine. The reintroduction of locally extinct native species is reframed as a hostile act, in which the Persian fallow deer is deployed as an ‘agent of normalization,’ used by the state to advance a ‘colonial conservation project’. The reintroduced wild ass (Equus hemionus) becomes a weapon to target the ‘unique human-animal kinships’ that Bedouins are ‘nourishing’ with camels, thus attacking the ‘essence of Bedouin identity.’ The nativeness of these species is glossed over, while their ecological roles in the wider landscape, and the ecosystem services of healthy habitats, are never mentioned.[8]
It is not just wild mammals that are presented this way. Jewish organic farmers keep goats to ‘self-indigenize,’ their free-range chickens ‘accommodate the logic of territorial expansion,’ while earthworms — used to produce wormcast manure — ‘embody the placeless detachment from the specificities of local soil.’[9]
Reforestation, as mentioned above, is stripped of its objectively outstanding environmental value and clear health benefits, and described instead as the deployment of ‘oppressive pines’ designed for ‘dispossessive cleansing.’[10] But the papers go further. In another instance, the researchers argue, Israel deliberately planted pines to create — through ‘colonial pyrotechniques’ — ‘flammable landscapes’ to ‘use fire as a weapon of terror and dispossession.’ With the same breath, Palestinians’ arson attacks are either declared as ‘resistance’ and ‘political dissent,’ or dismissed entirely as ‘settler arson paranoia’.[11]
Emotionally loaded language saturates the texts. ‘Palestinians’ land-based pastoralism’ is juxtaposed with the ‘brutalization of the Jordan Valley by Israeli settler-shepherds.’[12] Palestinians have a ‘cosmological notion encompassing human and non-human rhythms’[13] while Israelis maintain an ‘eco-apartheid system,’ ‘perpetuating colonial violence,’ for ‘Western interests and profits,’ through ‘deliberately engineered annihilation.’[14]
In this antizionist world, no scientific activity can be neutral. Scientific research on plants is the ‘systematic manipulation of the plant life itself’ within ‘scientific practices of appropriation.’[15] Palestinian ‘struggle against monoculture’ is ‘a struggle against the homogenising forces of [Israeli/Jewish] ethnonationalism.’[16]
In this genre, scientifically established facts can be erased not by presenting facts and building a counterargument, but simply by adding the word so-called to an otherwise established concept: ‘so-called ecological climax,’[17] ‘so-called climate adaptation strategies.’[18]
UNACCOUNTED DRIVERS OF BIODIVERSITY LOSS
Saluki hunting and falconry are the epitome of the rich hunting heritage of the Arab culture. While these particular methods have become an elite sport, in low and middle income segments of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza another hunting method, trapping is widespread, targeting chukar partridges, goldfinches, quails, and peregrine falcons among others. This pressure on biodiversity is one of the many unexplored in the decolonialist literature.Omission functions as a primary mechanism of narrative framing. Systematically excluding specific local drivers, cultural practices, and internal governance dynamics allows researchers to flatten complex multi-agent ecosystems into binary political narratives. They omit local cultural and historical extraction practices like traditional and modern hunting and trapping, Palestinian governance failures, poaching, wildlife markets, municipal policies, shared infrastructural realities, and the collective ecological toll of neighbouring activities.
These absences are not merely incidental gaps in fieldwork; they constitute a structural blind spot that deprives Palestinian actors of environmental agency and overlooks critical, direct pressures on regional biodiversity.
An example of a direct pressure on biodiversity widely disregarded in the literature is bird poaching. Palestinians love keeping goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) – a protected bird – as pets for their beautiful colour and lovely tinkling-trilling song. It is the main driver of their illegal capture and smuggling, like in the picture, where a smuggler tried to hide 40 of them in his pants traveling from Jordan into Palestine. Poaching causes local population decline jeopardizing the species long-term survival and inflicting severe suffering on the birds.
THE RENAISSANCE OF THE ‘NOBLE SAVAGE’
From Tacitus through Rousseau to Thoreau, philosophers and thinkers have idealised pre-colonial tribes. They are described as morally pure, courageous humans existing in their original ‘state of nature.’ They are inherently peaceful, free from vanity; their harmonious simplicity is superior to the materialism of our industrial society.
A good example of this thinking is the myth circulating in environmental spaces that 80% of the world’s biodiversity is found in Indigenous Peoples’ territories. This misconception has been stubbornly persisting due to poor fact-checking and used regularly to argue that Indigenous Peoples are natural stewards of biodiversity.
The ‘noble savage’ concept is a strong pillar of environmental antizionism. Here, academic analysis frequently gives way to mythologising storytelling, invoking ‘indigenous women’s narrative’ and the ‘more-than-human ancestral knowledge shared by Palestinian women elders.’[19] Palestinians — frequently referred to as the ‘people of the Olive tree’ — inherited an ‘ancient legacy,’ live in ‘diverse agricultural communities,’[20] and have a ‘multi-optic vision of animal rights.’[21]
But regarding Indigenous natural resource management as inherently ecologically sustainable misrepresents history. Low carbon footprint or high biodiversity in pre-industrial times were primarily a function of low population density and limited technology, not an inherent, mystical knowledge that prevents ecological damage. Environmental sustainability is a management strategy: some ethnic groups or pre-state societies practised it for longer or shorter periods — and these strategies were sometimes underpinned by religion—and some did not.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES AS A TOOL FOR A GEOPOLITICAL AGENDA
The systemic nature of this phenomenon excludes accidental bias. This shift is engineered by self-described ‘activist-scholars’ who openly reject scientific neutrality to turn environmental sciences into a tool for reaching ideological and geopolitical goals. Apart from antizionism, these goals might include the abolition of capitalism and full physical restitution of ancestral lands to Indigenous populations globally, among many others. One scholar and environmental lawyer, who admittedly confuses vultures with eagles, calls the ‘global fight to save the planet’s biodiversity’ a ‘cosmopolitan story’ achieved via the ‘scientification’ of species reintroduction ‘sparked by the Zionist imaginary of making the landscape biblical – namely, Jewish – again’.[22]
Another author, in his book that equates the war in Gaza with the destruction of the Earth, fantasises about how he would join the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (if he were a woman), two designated terrorist organisations that have carried out numerous civilian attacks — including high-profile aircraft hijackings, bombings, and hostage massacres.[23]
Some of these authors reject attempts of depoliticisation altogether. When their Jewish interview subjects express an apolitical stance, openness or friendliness towards Palestinians, these researchers openly dismiss or reject these attitudes in their articles. [24]
BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS
Modern conservation is a tightrope walk, balancing the need to maintain and restore not simply habitats but also their functions as well as ecosystem services, while constantly clashing with human ethics, livelihoods, and traditions.
Wildlife management without apex predators, reintroducing keystone species, preventing overgrazing, fencing off critically endangered habitats, regulating turism or enabling subsistence foraging are all such walks.
Technology and climate change mitigation introduce their own paradoxes. The green transition sparks fierce conflicts: solar farms displace ecologically vital grasslands because renewable energy yields higher financial returns than hay. At the same time, poorly placed wind turbines disrupt avian and bat migration corridors.
Underpinning each of these dilemmas is the unresolved issue of human equity. Ecosystem services — from clean water to flood, drought and microclimate regulation — are fundamentally democratic. They provide vital lifelines that safeguard public health, nutrition, and economic resilience for all people equally. The living biosphere is humanity’s primary pharmacy and pantry: many essential pharmaceuticals are derived from or inspired by natural compounds. Wild genetic diversity supplies the traits needed to breed crop varieties capable of withstanding emerging pests and climate extremes. Intact ecosystems regulate zoonotic spillovers and antimicrobial dynamics. Human health is inseparable from animal and environmental health.[25]
Against this physical reality, the polemics surrounding conservation reveal striking structural parallels across seemingly opposing ideological camps. Right-wing and populist narratives frequently caricature biodiversity protection as a ‘luxury belief’ held by disconnected, affluent urban elites who supposedly value animal welfare over human well-being and working-class prosperity.
In a parallel dynamic, the radical anti-imperialist and antizionist rhetoric dismisses mainstream conservation initiatives as instruments of green colonialism, dispossession, or bourgeois environmental management that camouflage territorial control and systemic oppression.
Despite their divergent vocabularies, both critiques converge on a common strategy: delegitimising modern environmental science. But when pollinator populations collapse, topsoil erodes, or wild reservoirs for drug discovery disappear, it is not an identity problem: it is a direct blow to human health, agricultural livelihoods, and society’s material foundations.
About the author:
Zsuzsanna Ujj is a Hungarian biodiversity conservation and policy professional with 15+ years of experience across government and NGO sectors.
The article was first published by Fathom Journal in October 2026.
[1] For example in: Long, Joanna C 2009, ‘Rooting diaspora, reviving nation: Zionist landscapes of Palestine–Israel’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34: 61-77. Link
Kolinjivadi, Vijay, and Ashraf, Asmaa 2024. ‘Sustainability Fantasies/Genocidal Realities: Palestine against an Eco-Apartheid World’, Towards Palestinian Liberation: Global Perspectives (Daraja Press / Transnational Institute), [Accessed: 13 June 2026], Link.
Hayward, R. Anna et al. 2026, ‘Settler Colonialism, Ecocide, and the Climate Crisis in Occupied Palestine: Environmental Injustice, Health Inequities, and the Imperative for Public Health Social Work’, Social Work in Public Health 41(3), 266–278., Link.
Jaber, D. A. 2019, ‘Settler colonialism and ecocide: case study of Al-Khader, Palestine’, Settler Colonial Studies, 9(1), 135–154, Link.
Dinc, P. and Türk, N. 2026. ‘Roots of destruction: exploring the genocide-ecocide nexus through the destruction of olive trees in occupied Palestine and Rojava’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 30(3), 576–600, Link.
[2] Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898–1976), a Soviet agronomist hostile to established genetics, leveraged his standing in the Communist Party to enforce ideological doctrine over biological science.
[3] For example in Hassouna, S. 2024, ‘Cultivating biodiverse futures at the (postcolonial) botanical garden’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 49, e12639, Link
[4] For example in: Braverman, Irus 2009, Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel/Palestine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Link; Sasa, Ghada 2017, ‘Israel: Greenwashing colonialism and apartheid’, MA thesis, York University, YorkSpace Institutional Repository, Link.
[5] Braverman, Irus (2024). ‘Green Gold: The Akkoub’s Settler Ecologies’, Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture 19 LA+ 38 , Link
[6] For example in: Molavi, Shourideh C. 2024, Green Apartheid: Environmental Justice in Gaza through a Postcolonial Lens, Pluto Press, Link; Malm, Andreas 2024, The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth, Verso Books, Link
[7] For example in: Gutkowski, Natalia 2024. Struggling for Time: Environmental Governance and Agrarian Resistance in Israel Palestine, Stanford: Stanford University Press, Link; Salih, Ruba, and Olaf Corry (2021). ‘Displacing the Anthropocene: Colonisation, extinction and the unruliness of nature in Palestine’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 5 (1), 381–400, Link
[8] Braverman, Irus 2021, ‘Wild Legalities: Animals and Settler Colonialism in Palestine/Israel’, 44 PoLAR 7, Link
[9] Grosglik, Rafi et al. 2021. ‘Soil, territory, land: The spatial politics of settler organic farming in the West Bank, Israel/Palestine’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 39 (5), 906–924, Link
[10] Sasa, Ghada 2023. ‘Oppressive pines: Uprooting Israeli green colonialism and implanting Palestinian A’wna’, Politics, 43(2), 219-235., Link
[11] Nieuwenhuis, Marijn and Joronen, Mikko (2025). ‘Colonial pyrotechniques in Palestine: Arboricide and fiery dispossessions’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 9(1), Link
[12] Shqair, Manal 2022, ‘Israeli Shepherd Settlements – Ecological Colonialism in the Jordan Valley’, Environmental Science, Political Science, History, Link
[13] Salih, Ruba and Corry, Olaf 2021. ‘Displacing the Anthropocene: Colonisation, extinction and the unruliness of nature in Palestine’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Volume, 5(1), 381-400., Link
[14] Vijay Kolinjivadi, Asmaa Ashraf 2024. ‘Sustainability Fantasies/Genocidal Realities: Palestine against an Eco-Apartheid World’, Transnational Institute, Link, [Accessed 13 June 2026]
[15] Tesdell, Omar 2017, ‘Wild wheat to productive drylands: Global scientific practice and the agroecological remaking of Palestine’, Geoforum, Volume 78, Pages 43-51, Link
[16] Hassouna, Silvia 2024, ‘Cultivating biodiverse futures at the (postcolonial) botanical garden’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 49, e12639, Link
[17] Salih, Ruba and Corry, Olaf 2021, ‘Displacing the Anthropocene: Colonisation, extinction and the unruliness of nature in Palestine’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Volume, 5(1), 381-400., Link
[18] Szöllősi, Fanni 2025, ‘Slow Violence: Water governance as Settler-Colonial Control in Palestine’, MA thesis, Central European University, Link
[19] Alqaisiya, Walaa 2023, ‘The decolonial wor(l)ds of Indigenous women’, Social & Cultural Geography, Volume 25 (7), 1025–1043, Link
[20] Hassouna, Silvia 2024, Cultivating biodiverse futures at the (postcolonial) botanical garden, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 49, e12639, Link
[21] ‘Alloun, Esther 2017, ‘‘That’s the beauty of it, it’s very simple!’ Animal rights and settler colonialism in Palestine–Israel’, Settler Colonial Studies, 8(4), 559–574., Link
[22] The full quote is ‘It is precisely the scientification of the project—its making into a cosmopolitan story that focuses on the global fight to save the planet’s biodiversity—that serves to justify and normalize what is arguably a highly political decision to breed and release a certain type of deer into this landscape, made by a quirky military general and sparked by the Zionist imaginary of making the landscape biblical—namely, Jewish—again.’ Braverman, Irus 2021, Wild Legalities: Animals and Settler Colonialism in Palestine/Israel, 44 PoLAR 7, Link.
[23] Malm, Andreas 2024, The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth, Verso Books, Link
[24] For example in:
Grosglik, Rafi et al. 2021. ‘Soil, territory, land: The spatial politics of settler organic farming in the West Bank, Israel/Palestine’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 39 (5), 906–924., Link;
‘Yoram, and many other settler farmers like him, reproduce a depoliticized discourse of “quality,” a narrative that targets urban and secular clientele’, ‘In addition to the secular liberal market in metropolitan centers in Israel, the framing of their operations in neutral terms of quality enables them to target the global market.’, ’Finally, Matanyah Freund and Yoram, who are primarily interested in economic success and quality production, see no problem with employing Palestinian workers in their organic farms (and in a peculiar manner, describe their relationship with their Palestinian neighbors and workers as a form of “co-existence”).’
Braverman, Irus 2021, Wild Legalities: Animals and Settler Colonialism in Palestine/Israel, 44 PoLAR 7, Link.
‘In fact, this is how various INPA officials I spoke with, some of whom adamantly oppose the occupation, have justified their work in the occupied West Bank. Loyal only to the wild birds and gazelles, they do not follow the dictates of mundane political entities and boundaries. Their only flag, they repeatedly told me, is nature.’ ‘Although Israel’s nature conservation regime—its “wild legalities,” in the descriptive sense of this term—perceives itself as justified for its good faith efforts to protect and save wildlife, this nature regime ends up reinforcing the violence that is at the root of this region’s ecological peril.’
