Many Israeli farms were left abandoned because of the Hamas attack
The Hamas Attack Left Many Israeli Farms Left — Some Worry for a Future?” She Explains: “It’s a Challenge for Israel,” Ilina Menache says
“All the sides can learn something from this situation,” she says. It will take time to rebuild trust and find a solution. “We have no other choice, you know?”
She says Israel had no choice but to try to end Hamas in Gaza, where more than 20,000 have died since the start of the conflict.
Ilina Menache is 60 years old and she is going for low-hanging avocados as a volunteer. Burrowing into a thicket of branches, her voice wavers with emotion as she talks about the future.
Flynn says trees that are weighed down with fruit will be less productive next year, which could cause prices in Europe to go up.
He says that some of the avocados can be picked in a month or two. “But some of them that we should have picked two months ago, we’ll have to give up on them.”
Source: The Hamas attack left many Israeli farms abandoned — some worry forever
The Hamas attack left many Israeli farms abandoned — some worry forever: Paul Flynn’s story of his Cambodian brogue
Before the war, he oversaw about 40 laborers from Thailand. The day Hamas attacked was a Saturday and Flynn was at home. The Thai farm hands, however, were working. The workers panicked and ran to the safe room on the farm grounds. An Israeli tank was able to chase off the militants after they spent the next day there.
Four decades ago Paul Flynn came to Israel and still has his native brogue. When Israel moved from inside of Gaza to allow self-government in the area, he was the supervisor at the seven villages of Israelis that were relocated there.
A howitzer occasionally fires into Gaza, close to the dairy farm. A sandy road splits neat rows of avocado and orange trees, pregnant with ripe fruit.
Unlike Leff, Willemse isn’t Jewish. He just saw a need and decided to spend a few weeks in Israel before starting a new job back home. There were terrible things that happened. He wanted to help a little bit.
Source: The Hamas attack left many Israeli farms abandoned — some worry forever
A traumatized man in a troubled world? Gabriel Leff’s experience at the dairy farm in Nir Oz, Israel
As the cows are herded into the milking parlour, Nathaniel Willemse,21, taps their hind legs to make them fit above the stations. He is a student in the Netherlands. He was once employed on a dairy farm, which made the work here all that much better for him.
Leff thinks Israel is a good place to live for Jews in a troubled world. “Everywhere we seem to call home, at some point in time, we’ve been uprooted from,” he says. “When antisemitism rises, as it is currently, we always have somewhere to go. Israel has been that for the past 75 years.
Leff wears a kippah, the traditional Jewish head covering, and sports faded blue jeans, a sleeveless t-shirt and the tall work boots required for traipsing through cow manure.
The decision to help comes from a sense of duty. Gabriel Leff, a 23-year-old from Cocoa Beach, Fla., certainly sees it that way. He arrived in Israel two months ago and volunteered in various places around the country because of the events of October 7. He’s a fairly new arrival at the dairy farm.
“For the people who lived here, it’s a trauma,” Itzhaki explains. Imagine asking a person who escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camps to live there. It’s hard.”
Shmulik Itzhaki is a volunteer from central Israel. His day job in satellite communications is seemingly the polar opposite of dairy farming. He says he’s happy to pitch in for as long as he can, but given the horrors the community experienced, he doesn’t think the survivors will ever call it home again.
Eleven weeks since the start of the war, things on this side of the Gaza border are slowly getting better — although no one can yet imagine anything resembling normalcy.
At a dairy farm a few miles from the Gaza border, a sound of Israeli air strikes can be heard as hundreds of cows are herded into milk stations.
Of the 400 residents of Nir Oz, Hebrew for “courageous meadow,” about 38 were killed by Hamas and another 75 seized as hostages, according to Israeli media. It was one of the hardest hit kibbutzim. Some members of these communities have already said they have no intention of coming back.
Stern is one of about a dozen volunteers from Israel and around the world who have been rotating into this farm close to Nir Oz, a communal farm community in Israel known as a kibbutz. She is helping fill a void caused by the workers that are no longer here.
Aline Stern, a retired nurse from northern Israel who has been volunteering at the farm for the past few weeks, has learned to identify the implements of modern warfare. She pointed out an Israeli drone that was flying over. Later, she explained that the Hellfire missiles were fired from the Apache helicopter. Familiar as it all is, “you never get used to it,” she says.
Since Hamas fighters swept through this area on Oct. 7, killing or kidnapping a total of 1,200 people, Israel says, the bombing has become commonplace — even more so since Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city located nearly due west of here, has become a focus of the conflict.
The resolution passed by the UN Security Council did not call for a cease-fire but called for aid to be delivered to Palestinians and held hostage. It was not clear when the deliveries of food, medical supply and other aid would increase. Two crossing on the border with Israel allow trucks to enter. The head of the World Health Organization said on Sunday that the United Nations wants a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. The Iran-backed Houthis say their attacks are aimed at Israel-linked ships in an effort to stop the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
“The war exacts a very heavy price from us, but we have no choice but to continue fighting,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. In a nationally televised speech, Israeli President Isaac Herzog appealed for the country to remain united. “This moment is a test. He said that they would not break nor blink. There has been widespread anger against his government, which many criticize for failing to protect civilians on Oct. 7 and promoting policies that allowed Hamas to gain strength over the years. Netanyahu has avoided accepting responsibility for the military and policy failures. Amos Harel, military affairs commentator, wrote “Over time, the public will find it hard to ignore the heavy price paid, as well as the suspicion that the aims that were loudly heralded are still far from being attained and that Hamas is showing no signs of capitulating in the near future The Israeli military said it had destroyed Hamas’ underground headquarters and that it would take months to eliminate the tunnel network and kill off top commanders. Efforts toward negotiations continued. Ziyad al-Nakhalah is the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The militant group, which also took part in the Oct. 7 attack, said it was prepared to consider releasing hostages only after fighting ends. Haniyeh travelled to Cairo for talks a few days earlier.
More than 20,400 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. International aid groups say that the situation across the strip is dire and that millions of people take shelter in makeshift camps in the south in the winter.
Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Groups: A Plan to End the Gaza War as Seen by the Prime Minister Mohammed Naharonov
The Associated Press and other news reports stated that Egyptian officials have presented a plan to end the war in Gaza.
After an Israeli airstrike hit a refugee camp in Gaza, killing more than 100 people, no parties have agreed to move forward with the plan.
According to Israeli and Egyptian news reports, the plan calls for a weeklong cease-fire. Hamas would release about 40 Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for about 120 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
A third phase would include a swap of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. A new governing body of Palestinians would be put in place to oversee the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank. That leadership would oversee the reconstruction of Gaza and possible future elections to create a unified Palestinian government.
The Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups were involved in the October 7th deadly attack in southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people. The two groups are open to a pause in fighting, release of hostages in exchange for prisoners, and increasing the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, according to the report.
The Prime Minister visited Israeli troops in Gaza earlier Monday and told the members of his party that the war is not close to being over. The Israeli military said that 17 soldiers were killed in Gaza this past weekend, bringing the total number of Israeli soldiers who have died in the war to 156.
Trucks full of water, food and other humanitarian supplies continue to trickle in across in Rafah and Kerem Shalom, but Palestinian officials say it’s still not enough.
