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On an Israeli Farm near Gaza, Rescuing a Crop
(Christian Science Monitor) Howard LaFranchi - Inside a 3-acre greenhouse less than 3 miles from the Israel-Gaza border, an army of volunteers snips red-ripe tomatoes from towering vines. The city dwellers-turned-farmworkers say the day's labor gives them a sense of solidarity with fellow Israelis in an area devastated by the brutal Hamas assault that killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7. 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. The thousands of migrant farmworkers who normally tended the fields, mostly from Thailand, had fled home. Some were killed or taken hostage by Hamas. In the greenhouse, Mati Fishbein, a real estate agent, said, "I was an officer in the army for 25 years. I was the guy who delivered the message that your son had been killed in battle. That same sense of service you get in the military, you're seeing it here. This is the power of the Israeli people. In times of war we are trying to help each other." Elizabeth Blum, a math teacher, said, "I was a peace activist. I really believed in it." But then the atrocities of Oct. 7 occurred. "Now I really don't believe peace is possible. I lost all trust in any person, any desire for peace on the other side. I'm done." Idan Alon, who works on the farm, says, "People have to feel secure. They can't do a good job with their farms or whatever work they do if they are worrying every day their family might come under attack." Unless they feel safe, Israelis won't come back to the kibbutzim and the farming towns in the area, and the foreign farmworkers - he had 20 on his farm - won't return to Israel.