A killer pathogen that has established itself in southern Italy is now “very likely” to spread, posing a major risk to European olive trees, according to an assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa). Xylella fastidiosa, also known as olive leaf scorch, has taken hold in the Apulia region at the southernmost tip of Italy, where several thousand hectares of olive plantations are now affected. The bacterium kills infected plants by preventing water movement in trees, causing leaves to turn yellow and brown before falling off, their branches following soon after.Its “establishment and spread in the EU is very likely,” the scientists’ report says. “The consequences are considered to be major because yield losses and other damage would be high and require costly control measures.” The disease’s impact comes on top of a particularly bad year for Spanish and Italian olive growers in 2014 due to pests and the weather, with harvests in Italy down 40-50%. Spain and Italy account for 70% of Europe’s olive output, leading to warnings that olive oil prices will rise.
Don't blame Israel for this or for poisoning wells or lacing chewing gum.Neither does this one:
In Turkey, the highest administrative court annulled last month a government decision to expropriate an area in a western Turkish village, Yırca in the province of Manisa, where over 6,000 olive trees were felled to make way for the construction of a coal power plant
In my opinion, these items also have little to do with Israel or Israelis living nearby and in fact, I am doubtful they took place at all:
1. Israeli settlers have cut down over 170 olive trees in a village to the south of Nablus, the third such attack in the occupied West Bank over the past three days…The trees were reportedly of the "Roman" variety, a term used in Arabic to describe olive trees with huge trunks that are known to be hundreds of years old. This recent act of settler vandalism comes only two days after colonial Israeli settlers carried out two different operations, near Hebron, in which they destroyed some 345 olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers.
2. Over the weekend, Palestinians in the south Hebron Hills discovered that some 40 olive trees had been felled, presumably an act of vandalism by local settlers.
3. A number of extremist Israeli settlers uprooted, Friday, dozens of olive trees in Palestinian orchards in Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank. Coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Yatta, Rateb Jabour, said the extremists came from the Yair illegal colony, and invaded orchards in Shu’ab al-Batm area before uprooting more than 45 olive trees.
Have you any idea how much man power and hours are required for this?The numbers can be mindboggling:
Jewish settlers have uprooted more than 5,000 olive tree saplings in agricultural lands east of the town of Turmusayya in the central West Bank north of Ramallah, locals said Thursday.
Mindboggling? Stupendous:
The numbers are staggering: “Israel has uprooted more than 800,000 olive trees in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967.”
And there’s this:
Israel needs Islamic extremism, for two reasons – one ideological and one substantive. One cannot over-emphasize: Israel is existentially dependent on Islamic extremism.Ideologically, Israel’s grotesque violent perpetuation of the Occupation has to be masked by the manufactured universal evil of Islamic extremism. (As we speak, settlers, with military cover, have destroyed yet hundreds more olive trees while the world is focused on Paris.)
I suggest to you that there is an organized campaign that exaggerates and even fabricates incidents connected to olive trees. In any case, don't blame the Jews for a raise in olive oil prices but take this into consideration:
A dreadful 12 months for olives in several major producing countries has led to 2014 being labelled the “black year” for the industry and to the doubling of the bulk cost of olive oil in some areas.Unusual weather and a proliferation of insects and bacterial blight have devastated the harvest in several countries…Farmers in Italy have suffered so badly from pests and adverse weather that many are reporting harvests 40% to 50% down on 2013. Unusually large flocks of starlings have been reported as further destroying the fruits in parts of southern Italy, leading to calls for a cull.…In Greece, the olive output has been more stable, but the other smaller producing countries cannot pick up the strain: Morocco and Tunisia have also suffered bad weather, while Syria, which claims to be the birthplace of the olive tree and which has 74 million trees, has been affected by the civil war.The International Olive Council (IOC) says production will hit its lowest level in 15 years and admits there will be an upswing in prices; its latest figures show the price from the producers had risen by 121% in the last month of 2014 compared with December 2013, with supply down by almost a third.
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