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A boat trip aimed at saving the Dead Sea also explores the marvels revealed by its evaporation
DEAD SEA, Israel (JTA) — As the owner of the second boat to sail the Dead Sea in the past 75 years, Noam Bedein knows its salty waters better than almost anyone. But lately, his excursions have led him to discover sites neither he nor anyone else has ever seen.
A few days before World Water Day in late March, Bedein came upon a bubbling brook feeding into the sea, which he named the Jerusalem River. The stream, the animals surrounding it and the beach it flows through were submerged underwater as recently as the mid-2000s. Bedein and his partner, Ari Fruchter, believe they are the first people ever to set foot there.
It’s an experience Bedein keeps having, and for him, it’s a paradoxical one: His mission is to save the Dead Sea. But as it dries up, it reveals new wonders to him.
“Out of the devastation, life finds a way,” Bedein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during one of his boat’s first excursions.
Bedein is the latest activist to confront a problem that has bedeviled Israel — how to save this ecological marvel and tourist attraction that is being depleted by water scarcity, industry and climate change. Bedein’s approach with his and Fruchter’s nonprofit, the Dead Sea Revival Project, is to raise awareness about the disappearing Dead Sea by bringing people to see it for themselves.
Bedein’s immersive boat tours provide visitors “with an intimate encounter that fosters deep connection and understanding” about the Dead Sea, he told JTA.
The odds of saving the Dead Sea are steep. Bordered by Israel and the West Bank on the west and Jordan on the east, it is the deepest point on earth, has almost 10 times as much salinity as the ocean and is renowned for its therapeutic mud. In 2019, according to records from the Israeli Tourism Ministry, it was the country’s third-most visited site, after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, drawing a million tourists per year, reported Israeli business publication The Marker.
The Dead Sea is also an economic engine for Israel — something that, ironically, is a threat to the sea’s continued existence. A market research report published last year found that the Dead Sea mud cosmetics market is slated to be worth $2.6 billion by 2031. The chemical factories producing the cosmetics, which extract potash and bromine from the area, are found in both Israel and Jordan, and pump some 61.3 billion gallons of seawater per year in total as of 2018, according to NBC.
That extraction, plus a reduction in the inflow of water from the Jordan River, has led the Dead Sea to dry up in recent decades. A 2022 Israeli government report said that since 1980, the sea has lost some 40% of its volume and is retreating by more than three feet per year. According to Bedein, the Dead Sea’s water loss amounts to as much as 600 Olympic pools every day.
The southern basin of the Dead Sea, which is called Ein Bokek and is lined with hotels, has been disconnected from the northern part. Today, the “sea” at Ein Bokek is actually comprised of 12 foot-deep evaporation pools that are entirely artificial. According to Bedein, most tourists at the hotels are entirely unaware that they are not actually at the Dead Sea.
“However you look at it, there isn’t a magic pill to fix this, and that’s the reason nothing’s been done so far,” Nadav Lensky, head of the Dead Sea Observatory at the Geological Survey of Israel, told JTA. “Every solution that is put forward comes with problems of its own.”
The Dead Sea has lost 40% of its volume in recent decades. (Noam Bedein)
Hailing from the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, Bedein, 41, worked in Israel advocacy in the Gaza border town of Sderot before shifting his focus to the Dead Sea. He is an environmental photojournalist by training who has now trained his lens on this body of water, hoping to show people what it actually looks like — and the ecological damage that is caused — when a large saltwater lake disappears.
To do that, he convinced the Israeli government to allow him to sail a boat on the Dead Sea, a quest that involved more than a year of overcoming bureaucratic hurdles. It is only the second boat to take to the water since Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. The boat, which holds up to 13 passengers, makes up to three trips a day, three times a week, but as of September, its operations will be expanded to five days a week. In total, Bedein says he has hosted between 400 and 500 people on private excursions.
Bedein is acutely aware that the end goal of saving the Dead Sea is “way above my personal shoulders,” but, he said, that knowledge does not detract from his mission.
“The journey is fascinating and motivating for me,” he said.
The boat’s two-hour journey is filled with wonders. On a recent outing, the blinding white salt formations look like glaciers or penitentes, and clash with the backdrop of the Judean Desert’s brutal reddish rock. Graduated terraces hewn out of the cliff look manmade, but each three foot-high step represents another summer in which the waters of the Dead Sea have evaporated.
A salt cavern perched on a rock several meters above sea level elicits a gasp from Bedein. He has not been to the area in at least three years. Rifling through a wad of photographs, Bedein shows the passengers on the boat a photo of the same cavern from 2016, its mouth at sea level. He snaps a shot of the newly elevated cavern. The side-by-side images went on display as part of a timelapse photo exhibition marking this year’s Earth Day at the Cultural Center in Arad, a city 17 miles west of the Dead Sea.
“You can feel the density of the water lugging at the boat and the bitter, sticky spray on your face and lips,” said Naomi Verber, who was on board with her baby. “The salt rock formations are otherworldly, like seeing the transition between sea and land in suspended animation.”
(Bedein claimed that Verber’s child was “the first infant to sail the Dead Sea in at least 100 years.” Whether that is true is unclear. Orit Engelberg-Baram, an environmental historian who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Dead Sea, told JTA that a baby may well have sailed its waters during the evacuation of Kibbutz Beit HaArava, located in what is now the West Bank, during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.)
The receding waters of the Dead Sea have revealed new rock formations. (Noam Bedein)
Fruchter, meanwhile, is spearheading an effort to promote awareness about the ecological crisis of the Dead Sea by raising money to build the Dead Sea Museum of Art on a five-and-a-half-acre parcel of land in Arad. The museum, which hopes to attract half a million tourists a year once it is constructed, will combine exhibits on climate tech innovation and multimedia art installations in a carbon neutral building to both educate people about the sea and, in a grim but possible future, memorialize it.
While the industrial activity surrounding the sea often gets blamed for its depletion, Bedein says it isn’t the main culprit. He estimates that the chemical plants contribute to 30% of the problem, while the other 70% is due to the reduction of the source of the water in the Jordan River.
According to Lensky, 60 years ago, a billion cubic meters of water flowed from the Jordan River into the Dead Sea. Today, less than 10% of that amount reaches it, partly because of the construction of dams around the Yarmouk River — which flows between Israel, Jordan and Syria — and partly because Jordan, one of the driest countries in the world, cannot afford to both provide water to its population and regenerate the Dead Sea. Jordan, Syria and Israel all draw water from the Sea of Galilee basin that would otherwise be flowing into the Dead Sea.
The chemical plants, Bedein said, also draw attention to the Dead Sea, which he sees as a positive.
“It’s not about how much water is being pumped out of the Dead Sea, it’s about how much water is coming in,” he said. “It’s very reductive to blame the factories. If you close down all the factories tomorrow, there goes the entire industry in Ein Bokek, and you will have reduced awareness even more.”
The key to saving the Dead Sea, researchers say, is to bring freshwater back into it, or what Bedein terms as “restoring its historical flow.” According to Lensky, bringing freshwater back into the Dead Sea is easier said than done.
“We have no freshwater in the region and if we wanted to create some, it would come at a high price, environmentally and economically speaking,” he said.
Several projects – planned within the Israeli government and between countries – to mitigate the Dead Sea’s evaporation have been launched, including a proposed plan to construct a canal to replenish the Dead Sea with desalinated water from the Red Sea — called the Red-Dead Canal. That plan, like others, has attracted its fair share of controversy, in part because of the environmental risks it poses both to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Dead Sea itself.
Bedein is not optimistic about those initiatives. The last meeting of the Knesset committee on saving the Dead Sea, which Bedein attended, took place in 2017. The five rounds of elections Israel has held since 2019, he said, haven’t helped. “The government changes every year or two, this isn’t a priority and there’s simply no one to speak to,” he said.
In the meantime, Bedein will keep taking passengers out on his boat, and will keep marveling at the new features that come to light as the sea level dips lower.
“We have the opportunity to explore uncovered landscapes for the first time,” he said. “It’s inspiring.”
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The post A boat trip aimed at saving the Dead Sea also explores the marvels revealed by its evaporation appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.