Israel Bans the Sale of Fur

On June 9, 2021, Israel's Minister of Environmental Protection, Gila Gamliel, signed regulations under the country's 1976 Wildlife Protection Law banning the import, manufacture, and sale of animal fur for the fashion industry. It made Israel the first country in the world to prohibit fur sales outright, rather than merely banning fur farms, which several European countries had already done. The regulations took effect six months later, in December 2021. Gamliel framed the ban as a moral line, not just an environmental one, arguing the industry's finished product could not be separated from how it was made. One exemption survived the drafting: permits for religious tradition, written to protect the shtreimel, the fur hat worn by many ultra-Orthodox Jewish men on Shabbat and holidays.