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Due to a lack of cooperation from the Regional Council: The Museum of Historical Nature in the North may close

The Upper Galilee Regional Council has stopped paying its share of the management of the Beit Ussishkin Nature Museum and is demanding a property tax of tens of thousands of shekels - and the museum's management is threatening to "return the keys", 66 years after it opened.

The regional council, on the other hand, calls on state institutions to "take responsibility"

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• a museum

• Upper Galilee

Eli Ashkenazi

Saturday, October 23, 2021, 10:00 p.m.

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66 years after it began operating, the Ussishkin House Museum, one of the oldest nature museums in Israel, is in danger of closing.

"I was once asked by friends: is there anything else to do there? It seems that everything has already been collected, everything is already there, and what else can be added," wrote Elimelech Horowitz, the museum's founder, in 1964.

"In my humble opinion, the institution is at the beginning of the road, and if in two hundred years the questioner asks a question like this, I am assured that this will be the answer this season: indeed, there is more and there is much to do," he added in his remarks.

57 years after Horowitz's speech - and a heavy cloud stands over the museum.

The Upper Galilee Regional Council, which, together with the Society for the Protection of Nature, manages it, has stopped transferring its economic share in operating the place, amounting to NIS 50,000 a year.

Moreover, it began to demand that the museum pay a property tax of NIS 24,000 a year.

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Ussishkin House Museum (Photo: Eli Ashkenazi)

The demand for the payment of the property tax "increased the SAA," wrote Iris Hahn, director general of the Society for the Protection of Nature, to Giora Salz, head of the Upper Galilee Regional Council. "For the past six years, the council has not invested a single shekel in the maintenance of the building.

"

Hahn mentioned in the letter that there is an agreement between the Regional Council and the Society for the Protection of Nature that the council does not abide by and therefore, she explained,

Ussishkin House Museum (Photo: Official Website, Eitan Dotan)

The construction of the museum began in 1951, when Kibbutz Dan was surrounded by a Syrian border from three directions and faced security challenges, including severe encounters and theft of cattle from grazing. Elimelech Horowitz, one of the founders of the kibbutz established in 1939 in Operation Wall and Tower, was convinced that despite the situation, or perhaps precisely because of it, what the place needed was a museum of nature and knowledge of the land.

The catalyst for the establishment of the museum was the huge factory for drying Lake Hula, and the fear that with the drying up the memory of the animals and plants that will disappear from the dying lake will be erased. The museum has a unique and impressive zoological collection, part of which is displayed in dioramas (three-dimensional models) of sixty years and more, through which one can experience the landscape and richness of the dried-up Hula Lake.

Over the years, the interest that the Israeli public discovered during a visit to the museum decreased, as did other nature museums that suffered from this trend.

At Ussishkin's house they realized that he had to have a facelift and make some changes.

Seven years ago, Liat Langelben, who ran the museum, began the process of change, and was later replaced by Anat Nissim.

The line they have drawn comes from the perception that the house is no longer a "collection center", but first and foremost a museum that returns to its basic definitions, such as research and documentation of the patient drying project and human settlement in the area.

About a year ago, after a large financial investment and long-term work, a new permanent exhibition was inaugurated: "Settlement in the Galilee."

The exhibition is built as a historical sequence from the days of the ancient city of Yesh to the present day - the new settlement in the Hula Valley.

"State institutions are called to take responsibility"

The Upper Galilee Regional Council stated that

the Ussishkin House Museum, like other museums in the area (Museum of Ancient Man, Museum of Evil, etc.), is a place of historical, environmental and architectural importance and action must be taken to prevent its closure. For decades the council took responsibility. Or otherwise, on national projects that it is not supposed to or can not handle. Maintenance, cleaning and maintenance of 240 km of river banks and more.

These are very high annual costs (millions of shekels a year) for a regional council of about 20,000 residents, and negligible costs for the state.

We call on state institutions to take responsibility for the above important national projects, which are enjoyed every year by millions of people from all over the country. "

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