NATURAL ENEMIES
There is nothing like an external antagonist to unify a team. The Jewish National Fund played this role perfectly for the NRA staff. Problems began even before the Authority's inception. There was no love lost between
Yoffe also had no love for Yosef Weitz, still the central figure at the JNF during the 1960s. He resented the JNF's enormous budget and the way Weitz could waltz into the offices of his Second Aliyah cronies Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol and even Ben-Gurion and extract huge funds and concessions under the guise of Zionism.[112] (Of course Yoffe did the exact same thing with pals from his own generation.)
There were other areas of friction. NRA field staff complained about the JNF forests' impact on wildlife. Animals had to abandon the forests for lack of food and began to go down to the valleys and bother the farmers. Then they became the Authority's problem.[113] Aviva Rabinovich elevated the ac-rimony to a new level. Her professional expertise enabled her to explore the relationship between geology and botany, and her surveys found fascinating correlations between rock formations and plant types. Not surprisingly, the JNF's monocultures were an affront to her sense of ecological integrity.
Rabinovich's vituperative attacks on the JNF in any and all public forums often bordered on abuse. Her critique did not always fall on deaf ears, how-ever, and although she remains a particularly reviled figure for most JNF of-ficials, some admit that she influenced their thinking.[114] Indeed, during the 1980s, the JNF placed her on their research committee, and she became an active lecturer in their professional training sessions. Within her own or-ganization, some critics found her continued fixation on forestry (even after the JNF clearly changed their approach) out of line. More important, it led to neglect of other, more important topics, such as the military's redeploy-ment in the Negev during the 1980s after evacuating the Sinai.[115]
Generally the Nature Reserves Authority received good reviews. The truth of the matter was that if Yoffe's personal charm could not win over critics, then the sheer breadth of the NRA's achievements could. In 1971, during the peak of the Yoffe years, Israel's State Comptroller re-viewed the Authority's operations. He found plenty to criticize. Safety in the reserves was not addressed properly; jobs were never filled through a formal tender, but on the basis of an interview with Yoffe or his deputy; presigned checks were left in the hands of underlings who had no authority to make purchases; there were no personnel records