Devorah Brous

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Devorah Brous is the founder of the environmental justice organization BUSTAN,[1] focused on Bedouin communities in the Negev Desert of Israel. She moved to Israel in 1993 from New Jersey, where she was brought up in a Reconstructionist religious household,[2] with a strongly Zionist ideological outlook. She began to engage in peace work several years after her arrival, running Jordan-Israel peace caravans. Later she turned towards direct-action, running work camps with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. [3]

Brous started BUSTAN as a grassroots direct action network of volunteers in 1999. BUSTAN is most well-known for organizing hundreds of volunteers to construct and run a sustainable health clinic in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Wadi el-Na'am in 2003, in order to raise international awareness of the environmental and land rights concerns of Bedouin citizens of Israel.[4] Brous and her organization have been one of the most effective advocates for Bedouin concerns internationally, bringing hundreds of citizens and dozens of journalists on tours through hard-to-access regions of the desert [5] (including, most recently NPR) [6]. In 2005, Brous launched the pilot for the Children's Power Project, an initiative to bring solar power to sick children in unrecognized Bedouin villages. [7] In 2007, after 8 years of running BUSTAN, Brous transferred directorship to current Director Ra'ed Al-Mikawi and left Israel. Today the Children's Power Project as well as its Green Center in Beer Sheva are BUSTAN's main foci today.

Upon leaving the organization,[8] she commented: "I happen to agree with the criticism that Israel should not be singled out as the only country perpetrating egregious human rights violations, but where I’m coming from is that Israel should be held to a standard, irregardless of the human rights violations committed in other countries in this region." [9] A nationally recognized speaker within religious Jewish and environmental justice communities in the United States, Brous is now centered on the U.S. West Coast, where she continues to lecture on Negev concerns today.

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