Former Moroccan Politician Links Bee Decline to Israel Relations, Sparks Controversy

In a video broadcast on the RT channel, El Mokrie Abouzaid El Idrissi claims that the disappearance of bees in Morocco, recently mentioned by the National Office of Sanitary Safety of Food Products (ONSSA), is due to the normalization of relations with Israel. He adds that Egypt has experienced the same phenomenon after restoring its diplomatic relations with the Hebrew state, blaming Israeli pesticides.

Without scientific, tangible or irrefutable evidence, El Idrissi rejects the arguments put forward by ONSSA, which explained that this phenomenon is caused by several factors related, among other things, to the weakness of rainfall, the decrease in the quantity and quality of food available for bees, or the health of the hives and the prevention methods followed.

To read: Morocco’s Bee Population Decline Linked to Environmental Factors, Not Disease

According to several scientific studies, this phenomenon dates back to the 1970s, long before the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty on March 26, 1979 in Washington. In 2008 and 2009, the bee mortality rate in France was 30%. In 2007, several bee species disappeared in the United States, reducing the colony population by 60 to 90%. The same phenomenon has also been observed in China and several European countries.

"On all continents, and more and more often, the honey producers are dying in too large proportions at the end of the winter. In Europe, many beekeepers have had to close up shop. In the United States, we are talking about a ’colony collapse disorder’," explained Bernard Vaissière, a research scientist at INARE, in an interview with the newspaper Le Monde on October 14, 2007.