Locusts have descended on Israel this week, just in time for Passover. As millions of Jews commemorate the story of the children of Israel’s exodus from Egypt, including the 10 plagues that afflicted Pharaoh and his people, millions of the crunchy buggers are creeping all over Israel’s southern deserts.
This is nothing like the eighth plague of biblical times, in which locusts covered “the whole face of the earth” in a kind of collective punishment for the Egyptians whose leader refused to let his Hebrew slaves go free.
But this year is the first time since 2005 that modern-day Israel has had to combat locusts, which can swarm so thickly that drivers can’t see beyond their windshield. Potato farmers bemoaned the detrimental effect of a previous wave of the grasshopper-like insects several weeks ago. The Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, which was on “locust alert,” has responded quickly to the latest wave with pesticides.
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