Sierra Club Reverses Decision to Cancel Trips to Israel

Sierra Club Reverses Decision to Cancel Trips to Israel
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Sierra Club Reverses Decision to Cancel Trips to Israel

Sierra Club Reverses Decision to Cancel Trips to Israel

The Sierra Club reversed its decision to cancel trips to Israel, saying it was "hastily" made and did not accord with the conservation group's mission.

"Recently, the Sierra Club hastily made a decision, without consulting a robust set of stakeholders, to postpone two planned outings to Israel," said the Club.

Earlier, the organization announced it was canceling environmental-tourism trips to Israel because of its actions against the Palestinians.

In a Tuesday statement, the Club confirmed new Israel trips would be announced later this year, saying earlier decision to cancel tours was made in ways that created "confusion, anger, and frustration."

The head of Sierra Club's National Outings, Mary Owens, confirmed in a previous mass email to hundreds of volunteers and members that trips were canceled saying the decision came after activists alleged the foundation was "greenwashing the conflict" and "providing legitimacy to the Israeli state, which is engaged in apartheid against the Palestinian people."

"Greenwashing" is a term used by anti-Israel activists that accuse the Jewish state of using environmental causes to disguise alleged human rights violations.

The Sierra Club Foundation, founded by John Muir in 1892, is a charitable foundation concerned with nature, with over 750,000 members and an annual budget for the current year of more than $97 million.

Its first trip to Israel began in 1960 to explore biodiversity, bird migrations, desert landscapes, and ancient monuments. Last year's trip was called "Natural and Historical Highlights of Israel," offered for two weeks in March for about $5,000 per person.

More than 250 upcoming trips are listed on Sierra Club's website, including more than 200 to sites in the US and others to places like Malaysia, Nepal, and Antarctica.

The email sent from Owens stated that the Club's decision was taken after a campaign an advocacy push from one "Jewish American activist" and a host of both progressive and anti-Zionist groups, including the pro-Palestinian Adalah Justice Project, the Indigenous rights group the NDN Collective, the Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Sunrise Movement and the Movement for Black Lives.

An employee confirmed he was aware of his organization's efforts but was not authorized to say more. A request for comment from JVP, the Jewish anti-Zionist group, went unanswered.

The decision sparked outrage in Israel, particularly against Jewish Voice for Peace, which has been working in the United States since 1996.



Families Hold Funerals for Air India Crash Victims

A family member (C) mourns the death of an Air India flight crash victim as he arrives to collect mortal remains outside a hospital mortuary in Ahmedabad on June 15, 2025. (AFP)
A family member (C) mourns the death of an Air India flight crash victim as he arrives to collect mortal remains outside a hospital mortuary in Ahmedabad on June 15, 2025. (AFP)
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Families Hold Funerals for Air India Crash Victims

A family member (C) mourns the death of an Air India flight crash victim as he arrives to collect mortal remains outside a hospital mortuary in Ahmedabad on June 15, 2025. (AFP)
A family member (C) mourns the death of an Air India flight crash victim as he arrives to collect mortal remains outside a hospital mortuary in Ahmedabad on June 15, 2025. (AFP)

Grieving families were due to hold funerals in India on Sunday for their relatives who were among at least 279 killed in one of the world's worst plane crashes in decades.

Health officials have begun handing over the first passenger bodies identified through DNA testing, delivering them in white coffins in the western city of Ahmedabad.

"My heart is very heavy, how do we give the bodies to the families?" said Tushar Leuva, an NGO worker who has been helping with the recovery efforts.

There was just one survivor out of 242 passengers and crew on board the Air India jet when it crashed Thursday into a residential area of Ahmedabad, killing at least 38 people on the ground.

"How will they react when they open the gate? But we'll have to do it," Leuva told AFP at the mortuary on Saturday.

One victim's relative who did not want to be named told AFP they had been instructed not to open the coffin when they receive it.

Witnesses reported seeing badly burnt bodies and scattered remains.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner erupted into a fireball when it went down moments after takeoff, smashing into buildings used by medical staff.

Mourning relatives have been providing DNA samples to be matched with passengers, with 31 identified as of Sunday morning.

"This is a meticulous and slow process, so it has to be done meticulously only," Rajnish Patel, a doctor at Ahmedabad's civil hospital, said late Saturday.

The majority of those injured on the ground have been discharged, he added, with one or two remaining in critical care.

- Girls orphaned by crash -

Indian authorities are yet to detail the cause of the disaster and have ordered inspections of Air India's Dreamliners.

Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said Saturday he hoped decoding the recovered black box, or flight data recorder, would "give an in-depth insight" into what went wrong.

Just one person miraculously escaped the wreckage, British citizen Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, whose brother was also on the flight.

Air India said there were 169 Indian passengers, 53 British, seven Portuguese and a Canadian on board the flight, as well as 12 crew members.

Among the passengers was a father of two young girls, Arjun Patoliya, who had travelled to India to scatter his wife's ashes following her death weeks earlier.

"I really hope that those girls will be looked after by all of us," said Anjana Patel, the mayor of London's Harrow borough where some of the victims lived.

"We don't have any words to describe how the families and friends must be feeling," she added.

While communities were in mourning, one woman recounted how she survived only by arriving late at the airport.

"The airline staff had already closed the check-in," said 28-year-old Bhoomi Chauhan.

"At that moment, I kept thinking that if only we had left a little earlier, we wouldn't have missed our flight," she told the Press Trust of India news agency.