Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

1 Million Locusts Swarm Into Israel

A swarm of 1 million locusts crossed into Israel from Egypt.

The locusts on Tuesday remained concentrated in areas of southern Israel near the border, but sightings were reported throughout the country, including Tel Aviv and the Carmel region of northern Israel.

Residents of the Ramat HaNegev Regional Council, where the first locusts were seen on Monday, have sealed their homes against the thousands of locusts in their area, according to reports.

Aerial and ground pesticides are expected to be sprayed late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. No more swarms are expected to cross the border due to a shift in the wind direction.

A black cloud of more than 30 million locusts – some estimates ranged as high as 120 million – swarmed over parts of Egypt beginning on Saturday, causing millions of dollars worth of damage, according to Egyptian Agricultural Minister Salah Abad Almoman.

The locust attack comes some three weeks before the start of Passover, which recalls a destructive plague of locusts that the Bible says was sent by God to free the Jewish slaves.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version