The truth about Israel’s water usage

Parting With the Truth: A Response to National Geographic

by Uri Goldflam, CIC

I have fond memories of National Geographic magazine. As a child I would wait with growing anticipation for the arrival of the beige envelope containing the yellow magazine. I loved to lose myself in the pages of wonderful stories and amazing photos.

It is because I hold NG to be of superb quality that I was so shocked by an article in the April 2010 issue called Parting the Waters. The inaccuracies and downright lies in the article are many, and even more disturbing is the Goebbels-like choice of pictures in the adjoining photo gallery. A truly astonishing editorial choice.

Lets start:

Upstream, at the Sea of Galilee, the river’s fresh waters are diverted via Israel’s National Water Carrier to the cities and farms of Israel, while dams built by Jordan and Syria claim a share of the river’s tributaries, mostly for agriculture. So today the lower Jordan is practically devoid of clean water, bearing instead a toxic brew of saline water and liquid waste that ranges from raw sewage to agricultural runoff, fed into the river’s vein like some murky infusion of tainted blood.

Israel takes all the water from the Jordan river leaving Jordan and Syria with scraps. Right? Wrong. (But what a great literary description.)

Israel’s national Water Carrier draws water from the Sea of Galilee itself (not from the river) from within Israel’s pre-1967 borders at the Sapir site. It was completed in 1964, so you can’t really blame the occupation on this one. It uses on average 500 million cubic meters of water per year.

Jordan draws the water from the Yarmouk – 470 million cubic metres, the second largest river in the region and the Jordan River’s fourth tributary. Jordan also receives 50 million cubic metres of water annually from Israel from the sea of Galille as part of the peace treaty signed in 1994.

Do these numbers paint a different picture? A view from the Jordanian side of the Jordan river valley will show a flourishing breadbasket, 100 kilometres long and three kilometres wide. You’ll see the latest agricultural technologies, irrigation systems (technology transferred from Israel to Jordan, beginning in the 1970s) and cooperation between neighboring countries, including Israeli farmers tending to their orchards on Jordanian sovereign territory. But why report the good news.
CONTINUE

May 14, 2010 | 20 Comments »

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20 Comments / 20 Comments

  1. @ ayn reagan:

    These are the same guys who ram fishing boats?

    Burn new homes suburban developments?

    What kind of rocks do they usually crawl out from under?

  2. @ ayn reagan:

    As a Levin listener, you have doubtlessly heard him mention that environmentalists are socialists.

    These are the nuts who ram fishing boats?

    Burn homes in new develpements?

    All for the wrong causes.

  3. The environmental movement aligns itself with the left wing.

    It is anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-Semitic.

    The Greens used to be the Reds.

    When communism went out of style, they changed uniform colors.

    As a Levin listener, you have doubtlessly heard him mention that environmentalists are socialists.

  4. So now National Geographic has become politicized and jumped on the anti-Zionist bandwagon.

    Not “now”.

    Always:

    National Geographic, published by the world’s largest non-profit scientific and educational organization, the National Geographic Society, is a monthly magazine with a circulation of roughly 7.8 million.

    MAY 27, 2009 National Geographic: Blaming Israel for Christian Decline

    DECEMBER 7, 2007 National Geographic Distorts Situation in Bethlehem

    OCTOBER 3, 2007 A New National Geographic Documentary With An Old Skew

    OCTOBER 3, 2003 National Geographic Slave to Bias

    FEBRUARY 11, 2003 National Geographic “Stands By” Its Errors

    OCTOBER 15, 2002 EYE ON THE MEDIA: National Geographic Loses Its Compass

    NOVEMBER 7, 1996 Anti-Israel Bias Taints National Geographic

  5. Ironically enough, Tex, those coins are made with the metal extracted from the teeth of captured Nazi war criminals.

  6. @ RandyTexas:

    Already too late the families of the workforce in the Israel coins corp and Treasury as well as Bank of Israel probably got most of them.

    Good investment though but not because if the Golg, but becase of the numismatic potential in the future. I doubt you will see any on the open

    market for quite some time!

  7. @ ayn reagan:

    Because doing so has resulted in the Jews being universally loved.

    Ayn what planet do you live on? The kind of love they are getting I don’t any part of.

    I am in favor of reclaiming the territory and saying screw you, you don’t have to love me but by damn you will respect me.

    By the way, I never asked, are there many Jewish people living in S.Calif. as there are in Miami?

  8. PROGRESS IN WINNING THE SENATE
    By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann
    05.12.2010

    Behind the scenes, the chances of a GOP takeover of the US Senate increased in the past two weeks with key developments in pivotal states.

    Already, Republican candidates are ahead in eight states now represented by Democrats: Delaware, North Dakota, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, Arkansas and Nevada. And, in California, Senator Barbara Boxer is polling in the low 40s just barely ahead of her Republican challengers.

    But nine seats won’t give us control since Biden would break the tie for the Democrats. We need ten.

    Enter Washington State where a large field of Republican candidates have failed to dent the lead of three term incumbent Senator Patty Murray. But now it appears that Dino Rossi, the former Republican candidate for Governor, is likely to get into the race…

  9. Uncle why are leaders so willing to give up territory?

    Because doing so has resulted in the Jews being universally loved.

  10. @ yamit82:

    Israel needs the Sinai back for more than a few good reasons

    Uncle why are leaders so willing to give up territory? The Holy Land real estate belongs to the Jewish people and only G-d can give it away.

    In time the land will return to the rightful owners.

  11. Begin was stupid, even MAD to give away the Sinai. Better to fight the Egyptians for a hundred years than to give the Sinai up.

    The Sinai and the Negev are the same desert. National boundaries and names do not change the geography and topography.

    Goral forest in Negev.

    Here

    Here

    yamit82 Said:

    Begin was stupid, even MAD to give away the Sinai. Better to fight the Egyptians for a hundred years than to give the Sinai up.

    @ yamit82:
    @ yamit82:
    yamit82 Said:

    Once when I worked in the Sinai I remember that our Israeli hyrologists discovered an immense underground lake of potable water. It was said at the time to be sufficient to supply20 million people and their agriculture for between 1-2 hundred years.
    I found this recent reference to that discovery here and it is still relevant but in the hands of the stupid Arabs is a waste.
    Israeli ecologists could help stop global warming
    Israeli delegation to UN climate conference to stress benefits of using underground saltwater.
    Israel needs the Sinai back for more than a few good reasons, this is one of them.
    Begin was stupid, even MAD to give away the Sinai. Better to fight the Egyptians for a hundred years than to give the Sinai up.

  12. Once when I worked in the Sinai I remember that our Israeli hyrologists discovered an immense underground lake of potable water. It was said at the time to be sufficient to supply20 million people and their agriculture for between 1-2 hundred years.

    I found this recent reference to that discovery here and it is still relevant but in the hands of the stupid Arabs is a waste.

    Israeli ecologists could help stop global warming
    Israeli delegation to UN climate conference to stress benefits of using underground saltwater.

    Israel needs the Sinai back for more than a few good reasons, this is one of them.

    Begin was stupid, even MAD to give away the Sinai. Better to fight the Egyptians for a hundred years than to give the Sinai up.