5 shares Israeli soldiers clean tar off the Palmachim beach following an offshore oil spill which hit most of the Israeli coastline. February 22, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90) The Environmental Protection Ministry on Thursday pushed back against accusations of a tardy response to the oil spill disaster that has seen almost all of Israel’s Mediterranean beaches closed down because of tar pollution. Reports of the pollution emerged last Thursday when a dead 17-meter baby fin whale washed up on Israel’s southern coast, along with other wildlife. Asked why it took so long for Israeli authorities to get a grip on what had happened, the Environmental Protection Ministry’s director of the National Unit for the Protection of the Marine Environment, Rani Amir, said, “We had no early warning and no one in the Mediterranean knew about it.”