The climate is changing, reshaping our landscape, our economy, and our way of life, creating new risks and intensifying old ones. We must plan for this change, strengthen our emergency and rescue services, and stop wasting resources on West Bank settlements and on blind vengeance in Gaza
Nir Hasson. December 12, 2025
Hark! hark! already we can hear the voice
Of growing Ocean’s gloomy swell;
The winds, too, plume their piercing wings;
The clouds have nearly filled their springs;
The fountains of the great deep shall be broken,
And heaven set wide her windows;
(“Heaven and Earth”)
Lord Byron wrote these lines 203 years before Israel’s social media and studios filled with similar warnings about the eponymous storm. For several days, forecasters warned of a historic, world-changing storm, and then Byron hit the country’s shores. As promised, it brought extraordinary quantities of rain along the coast, flooding, flash floods, and blocked roads in a great many places.
On Friday morning, a man in East Jerusalem died of hypothermia, and Palestinians report that two infants died of cold in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours. There were also incidents of “near-disaster”: A tree branch that fell on two girls, a woman lightly injured when a tree fell on her car, and dozens of people rescued from their cars and flooded buildings.’
But a wind of disappointment began to blow on social media in the afternoon along with the ridicule of forecasters. “Once, we simply called this winter,” was a common response.
Some comments are in order. First, like the rest of the debates, Israel’s weather has moved to social media and into the hands of self-proclaimed forecasters who have learned that there is a direct connection between the intensity of warnings and the number of likes and shares.
One of them showed the dark side of the force on Channel 14 on Thursday, when he promised, to the joy of those present in the studio, that by Friday there wouldn’t be “a single tent left standing in Gaza,” before quickly adding, “I won’t complain if there won’t be any people left, either.”
Second, the fact that Byron did not leave a large number of casualties or significant property damage is a matter of luck. If the tree branch in Rishon Letzion had fallen at a slightly different angle or if the firemen were delayed in rescuing the drivers, we’d be talking about the “Byron disaster.”
Third, and most important, the Israeli dialogue is not just shallow; most of all, it’s bipolar. Either we’re in an “existential threat” – a survival emergency, “The Syrians are at the fence” – or all is well, “Once, we simply called this winter.”
That’s not just true about the climate. For years, commentators and experts warned against the status quo with the Palestinians, but the warnings were perceived as “hysteria,” “unnecessary seeds of panic,” or, worst of all, leftist. Of course. There is a high wall, Hamas is deterred, the IDF spotters are looking out, the commanders are listening to what they have to say, and the politicians are acting responsibly.
And then, as it all fell apart, Israel entered survival mode, losing all the brakes, laws, norms and moral principles in the process.
In this bipolarity, it is not possible to have a logical debate and a reasonable, forward-looking risk management policy. The climate is changing, it’s changing our landscape, the economy and way of life. It is posing new risks and elevating old ones. It’s necessary to plan for change – reduce emissions, design flood zones, reinforce the rescue services and stop wasting resources on West Bank settlements and blind vengeance in Gaza.
On the other hand, not every rain from now on is an unprecedented tempest that will change everything we know. Such a storm may well arrive in the future, causing a terrible disaster that will open our eyes and put us on a different footing. But, more likely, the deterioration will happen gradually from year to year.
It is already happening. Summer was one prolonged heatwave; we’ve stopped going outdoors during it, staying in air-conditioned spaces; farmers are struggling with droughts, heatwaves and storms; infrastructures are falling apart and deteriorating; fires are changing the landscape; and mold and invasive species are spreading.
The problem with the climate is that it is changing both too fast and very slowly. It’s very fast, because, at least in the past tens of thousands of years, Earth’s climate hasn’t changed at this rate within a few decades, and on such a scale over the entire planet, and at such strength: an average temperature increase of 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), shrinking glaciers, storms, fires, droughts and heatwaves.
But in terms of a human’s lifespan, the change is quite slow. Summer is hotter, winter has less rain, but more storms; spring and autumn have disappeared, but every year there is still rain and days with average weather for the season, and it’s very human to hold onto those days to persuade ourselves that everything is fine – that “We once just called it winter.” That it can still be fixed.
But the truth is that it can’t really be fixed. The UN issued a report this week, which stated that Earth is already in “uncharted territory” and the rate of change is unprecedented and unpredictable. The best that can be hoped for is that the damage won’t be catastrophic, that the economic and social systems will survive the crisis and that our descendants will see the day when the Earth’s climate stabilizes.
For that to happen, a mature, science-based, responsible and humanistic dialogue is needed that will consider the good of people – even if they live in Gaza – of animals and of ecologies.
Byron’s final lines after warning of the approaching storm are these:
while mankind
View, unacknowledged, each tremendous token—
Still, as they were from the beginning, blind.
We hear the sound they cannot hear,
The mustering thunders of the threatening sphere;
Yet a few hours their coming is delayed;