URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS
Because most of the industry that developed in the towns and cities of the Yishuv was light and involved only small tradesmen, the levels of pollu-tion generated were marginal by present standards. It is wrong, however, to assume that the Yishuv was so busy “creating a state” that it had no awareness at all about environmental issues. Urban environmental con-cerns certainly existed, but they fell into a generic “quality of life,” or nui-sance, category. In retrospect, this approach made sense, for pollution did not yet pose a serious risk to public health.
The mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, addressed the key environmen-tal problems of the city in his 1934 pamphlet, Tel Aviv and Its Life Styles. In this remarkably sanctimonious harangue, printed and widely distrib-uted by the municipal government, Dizengoff exhorted his city's residents to mend their antisocial behavior. The text is not expressed in the nomen-clature of today's environmental rhetoric, yet the mayor of Tel Aviv today, Ron Huldai (who has carefully groomed his own image as a Green mayor), would certainly feel comfortable with the message.
There are those who see Israel's litter problem as a recent phenomenon, caused by such factors as the introduction of plastic packaging, the paucity of trash cans (owing to security concerns), or even the arrival of non-European immigrants. But litter was just the first misdemeanor on the first Jewish city's environmental rap sheet:
The city has one hundred sixty workers who clean the streets. But even if we add more to them, will they be able to clean up a city with 100,000 people that pollute nonstop? In contrast, it would greatly influence cleanliness in the city if every resident understood that it is forbidden to litter the streets with fruit peels and paper, intended for the special waste bins and cans. It is prohibited to pour polluted water into public spaces, and it is prohibited to leave building materials on the sidewalks. … It's the obligation of every civilized person to keep himself and his environment clean.[147]
Dizengoff went on to denounce the chronic noise pollution, habitual smoking of cigarettes in public venues (despite signs forbidding it), and the lack of respect for trees and flowers in public parks, as well as chronic tar-diness and immodest dress by the younger generation. Presciently he also dedicates several paragraphs to the environmental hazards of transporta-tion. His claim, however, that Tel Aviv traffic is twelve and a half times greater than that in other international cities with a similar population does not reference any supporting data.[148]
It is interesting to note other environmental issues that might have been on a Tel Aviv mayor's agenda but were not. The wells of the city, for instance, had already begun to show signs of increasing salinity, as seawater rushed in to fill the vacuum caused by overpumping. Not long after the creation of the State they were closed, owing to high chlorine levels.[149] Similarly, the fine sand, or “zifzif,” on the beaches was rapidly disappearing, mined to supply concrete for the construction of the many new buildings. When legislation would finally be introduced banning the mining of beach sands, very little of the generous natural deposits was left. Natural-resource constraints, however, were not part of the Yishuv's environmental consciousness.
The urban environmental perspective received massive reinforce-ments during the course of the 1930s from the Fifth Aliyah. Dirt, dis-order, and a lack of general hygiene were a particular affront to the German-Jewish refugees, known locally as “Yekkes,” who fled Nazi anti-Semitism. It would take many years, however, for these values to resonate with the more senior members of the Yishuv, who mocked the newcomers' accents, promptness, orderliness, and passion for classical music. As with almost every immigrant group, it took years for the Yekkes to feel as if they belonged.
Shimon “Sigfried” Kanovich is a good representative of the environ-mental orientation of the Yekkes, of the fastest-growing community in Palestine during the 1930s. A pediatrician and psychologist of some renown, Kanovich moved to Israel from Berlin in 1933. There he got in-volved in Tel Aviv politics, helped found the Progressive Party, and even-tually served in the Knesset. But his outsider status prevented him from bringing sanitation and civility to his adopted city. He shared his alien-ation with his diary: “We were neither here nor there.”[150] Three decades later, in 1961, he was able to draft and push through the first air and noise pollution statute as a member of Israel's Knesset. For years it was dis-missed as a foolish parliamentary exercise and even spawned a pejorative expression: a “Kanovich Law” (a well-meaning, but unenforceable statute). Kanovich died five months after the legislation's passage, in the
It was the urban environment that produced the few political figures in Israel who adopted environmentalism as a cause. The most famous, Josef Tamir, earned a reputation as an environmental maverick in the Knesset during the 1970s.[151] When asked what brought him to the issue, he recalls his early childhood memories of the forests and rushing rivers of the Ukraine. Then there were his many class trips around Palestine, such as a particularly memorable visit to the Dead Sea in 1925. Tamir, however, was a city dweller. During the 1940s he served as Director General of the Petah Tikva rural area local council. His efforts to maintain the town's rustic character brought the political nature of environmental issues home to him, forty years before anyone thought of Green parties.