Gil Peled: knows how to get resultsOne thing Israelis aren't short on: Talk.  So it’s a reassuring sign of the times that whether it’s climate change, the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea, or the way urban pollution effects everyday quality of life, the environment—HaSviva—is becoming a much more common topic of conversation.

It hasn't always been that way. Gil Peled, an Israeli architect and green building consultant, explains, “Now everyone is aware of environmental problems, but when we had suicide bombers up the road it was the last thing on people’s minds."

Fortunately, converting talk into action is precisely what Peled’s Eco-Housing Pilot Project has been doing. Like so many people in the country, Peled lives in a stone-brick apartment block erected two generations ago when the national priority was ‘building the land’ rather than ‘saving the planet’. But what sets Peled’s building in central Jerusalem apart from the others nearby is that the residents have reduced their ecological footprint by over 30% since the project began in 2002.

The trademark stone floors and thin walls work well in the summer, letting heat escape, but that same lack of insulation becomes a burden during the icy Jerusalem winter. I’m not alone in huddling around an electricity-hungry portable heater from December to February. Not exactly what the Jewish Agency promised… And when it comes to recycling, if there’s a deposit box for newspapers or plastic bottles at the end of the street then you’re one of the lucky ones.

Jerusalem's Eco-Housing Pilot Project: shows that it's possible to turn talk into actionNu, so how is it possible to ‘green’ a 50 year-old building, not to mention stubborn stuck-in-their-ways Israelis? For Peled, the most important thing was to green people’s attitudes. “It’s easy to jump on technological solutions, but it’s really a matter of changing people’s behavior,” he says.

Now, with the full participation of the ten apartments in the building, they have succeeded in reducing their resource consumption via simple changes like recycling, using energy-efficient appliances, and harvesting rainwater from the roof to feed plants in the garden—itself a reclaimed patch of wasteland. “The place was very neglected and in disrepair and we’ve taken responsibility of our environment,” says Peled.

The Eco-Housing Project is the first—and remains the only—green apartment building in Israel. Peled notes that it’s much easier to design green housing when building from scratch, pointing to a number of independent projects in the Negev and Galilee doing just that. However, he argues that “detached housing is, by definition, un-ecological” because of the roads and infrastructure needed, not to mention the extra space required in a land-scare country.

The building, which over 20 people currently call home, has seen tenants come and go, but their enthusiasm hasn’t waned. “They didn’t come here because they were ‘green’, but when they arrived they understood that there is something special here,“ explains Peled with satisfaction.

Jerusalem of Green: Bustan Brody community garden Downtown Jerusalem is cluttered enough at any time of year, but rarely more so than this past week. Posters for cleaning services and chametz sales imploring people to burn, sell, or otherwise dispose of their leavened bread in preparation for Pesach were pasted on lampposts and notice-boards on every street. Jews are generally partial to consuming food rather than throwing it away, but this time of year is the exception to the rule.

Only a few minutes from my apartment is another exception to the rule: A place where Jerusalemites come each week to throw away their leftovers, no matter the season. Down at Bustan Brody, part of a city-wide network of community gardens, ecologically-minded Israelis bring their unwanted food to dump on the compost heap. The volunteer-run garden is a green oasis in the midst of five-story apartment buildings—an area which was once slated for development during Ehud Olmert’s stint as Jerusalem Mayor, in a bid to reduce the city’s budget deficit by selling off public plots of land for construction.

“We took responsibility for our own backyard, that’s a revolutionary concept,” says Abba Zavidov, one of the founders of the Bustan, which lies within easy walking distance from the Prime Minister’s official residence. “If we’re going to talk about sustainability then we need to prove it can be done. People bringing their kitchen waste to compost at the garden is a great way of showing how."

In Jerusalem, organic refuse like kitchen scraps and garden clippings make up around 40% of the city’s solid waste. If not recycled via composting, it typically ends up contributing to more of the brown landfill mountains like those straddling the road from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, which trick you into thinking that you’re still in the Judean Hills instead of speeding across the (once flat) coastal plain.

And God Said, "Are You Gonna Eat That?': compost in the holy land But it’s not just the Festival of Matzo that inspires a frenzy of food disposal: Figures published last week reveal that folks in my native Britain throw out one-third of all food they buy each year, including over four million apples. And they don’t even have Pesach as an excuse. Waste on such a huge scale has been partly fueled by cheap food culture and marketing ploys like ‘two-for-one’ offers, which encourage over-consumption.

I hope that Rabbis in Israel and the Diaspora will be using their sermons during the Jewish festival of freedom as an opportunity to reflect on the merits of environmental responsibility in a world where not everyone can take their food for granted. In any case, composting can offer a green solution to the stale matzo and indigestion-cookies due to be littering kitchens across Israel next week.

שלום עכשיו: organizing stickers for peace nowAnother week, another protest against Israelis on University campuses. In the last few years, Jewish students have become accustomed to campaigns against virtually anything Israeli–from avocados and computer chips to professors. But this time it’s an Israeli peace activist who found that she was unwelcome at the University of Texas’ Hillel House, where she was due to speak yesterday.

Hagit Ofran, from Peace Now, the left-of-center group which campaigns for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, is due to give a series of talks aimed at Jewish students entitled, "Israel at 60: Settlements, The U.S., The Peace Process, and the Last Chance for a Two State Solution." An alternative location at the University was eventually found after Texas Hillel pulled out, but the incident underlies tensions between Jewish students on US campuses.

One of the organizers had this to say: “Texas Hillel is supposed to be a space for Jewish students, however, and we will work with Hillel staff and involved students with whom we may differ politically to hold Texas Hillel to its stated commitment to pluralism… we care about and support Israel but do not feel represented by the current dominant mode of Israel advocacy, which we find to be counterproductive.”

Hagit Ofran: banned from hillel

Earlier this week, I chatted with Ofran in the back of a minibus as we made our way from Jerusalem to a Tel Aviv exhibition marking 30 years since the Peace Now movement was founded . Mild-mannered and articulate, she’s proof that you don’t have to see eye-to-eye with someone to hold a civilized discussion.

Last year the Zionist Organization of America tried to expel the Union of Progressive Zionists, who organized Ofran’s speaking tour, from the Israel on Campus Coalition following their links with another Israeli peace group, Breaking the Silence.

There is a heavy irony surrounding the decision of a Hillel House to bar a visiting Israeli, not to mention the efforts of far-left anti-Zionist groups who have been calling to exclude academics and other Israelis from campus life. It brings to mind the delights of Israeli Apartheid Week and the occasional noises made by a handful of my brethren in Britain—before I made aliya last summer—under the banner of ‘Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods’.

Regardless of what position one takes vis-à-vis Israeli politics, it’s a sad day when those who love Israel find themselves adopting the same defensive tactics as those who don't.