On farm near Gaza, volunteers rescue a crop, talk of Israel’s future – Beragampengetahuan

The brutal Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 sent thousands of migrant farmworkers, mostly from Thailand, fleeing back home. Farms near the Gaza Strip that normally grow 75% of Israel’s vegetables and nearly a quarter of its fruit were abandoned, their harvests threatening to rot.

But civil society groups have come to the rescue, organizing volunteers to harvest fruit and vegetables, milk cows, and plant winter crops.

On a recent autumn morning, some three dozen such volunteers, mostly city dwellers and professionals, were picking tomatoes on a cooperative farm just 3 miles from the Israel-Gaza border, within earshot of the war.

They said they were doing it as a way of making themselves useful in a crisis, and of showing solidarity with farmers whose businesses were suffering. And as they worked, they talked – about the present, and the future.

A number of the volunteers were liberals, with hopes of a lasting peace with their Palestinian neighbors. Those hopes have taken a severe blow. But the temporary workforce is looking ahead nonetheless.

One volunteer had done a previous day of labor, planting broccoli for a winter harvest. “Picking tomatoes is about now, and that’s good,” he said. “But planting broccoli, that’s about the future.”

Inside the sand-colored, 3-acre greenhouse less than 3 miles from the Israel-Gaza border, within earshot of the war, an army of volunteers snips garlands of red-ripe tomatoes from towering vines, placing them in bright pink plastic crates.

As they peruse the crop for blemishes and fill their crates, the city dwellers-turned-farmworkers say the day’s labor gives them the sense that they are doing something to show solidarity with fellow Israelis in an area devastated by the brutal Hamas assault that killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7.

“I found myself at home on Fridays and worrying – worrying about my children, worrying about what’s happening with the war – so I decided, much better to do something useful,” says Osnat Ben Soussan, a Jerusalem tech industry worker wearing a big smile and shorts as she gets down to her third stint as a farmworker.

With all three of her children and a son-in-law fighting in the war, she spent a lot of beragampengetahuan following events.

Then public service spots started appearing on TV seeking volunteers for farmwork. “I thought, there it is; that’s something I can do,” she says.

The three dozen tech workers, teachers, engineers, and others picking tomatoes “are here to help me save my crops,” says Idan Alon, who works on the cooperative farm. “But maybe also they are here, after what happened, to help us keep agriculture going in this part of Israel.”

“I need to do this”

Within days of the Hamas rampage, a region that furnishes 75% of Israel’s domestically produced vegetables, 20% of its fresh fruit, and nearly 10% of its milk was deteriorating into a wasteland. Thousands of acres of crops ready for harvest risked rotting; dairy cows went without milking; chickens succumbed to heat and lack of water.