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Urban Israelis are flocking to the Gaza border to tend farms left suddenly without workers
TEL AVIV (JTA) — By now, the dramatic rescue of Amir Tibon’s family from Kibbutz Nahal Oz by his 62-year old father, retired IDF General Noam Tibon, has become one of the most widely shared stories of Oct. 7.
Lesser known but also heroic is the tale of another of Tibon’s family members, Dudik Laniyado, who put on his army uniform and sped into the line of fire to tend to the cows that were abandoned that day.
Laniyado, who is Noam Tibon’s brother-in-law, is a dairy farmer at Kibbutz Kalya near the Dead Sea. Amid the news of the massacre, he heard from Tibon’s rescue mission that the cows of Nahal Oz and other farms near the Gaza border were at risk.
“Dairy cows can live without being milked for one or two days,” said Laniyado, but then they begin to dry out, a process that cannot be reversed. Going longer without being milked can cause injury and death.
When he arrived at the closed military area on Oct. 9, he found that Hamas terrorists had destroyed the milking area and the equipment used to feed the cows. Under fire from nearby gun battles, he opened all the gates on the farm and let the baby calves out of their cages, letting them move around for the first time in days and eat food that he gathered from a local agricultural center.
“We got to a place that is a war zone,” he said. “There is enormous destruction to all the farms near the border area.”
Laniyado was an early arrival to what has become a new passion for Israelis, one they say is nearly as vital to southern Israel’s future as the country’s war on Hamas in Gaza: tending the farms, animals and fields that have been left fallow by the massive disruption of Oct. 7 and its aftermath.
האיש הזה הוא גיבור. דודיק לניאדו. נשוי לדודה שלי, יעל תיבון. דודיק הוא רפתן וגר בקיבוץ קלי”ה בים המלח. הוא שמע שהפרות בעוטף נשארו בלי מי שיאכיל אותן. עלה על מדים ונסע להאכיל את הפרות בנחל עוז ומקומות נוספים. הציל אותן ואת העתיד של הקיבוצים. מעשה אדיר של אומץ, חסד ואהבה תחת אש. pic.twitter.com/yPLqeOJMDv
— Amir Tibon (@amirtibon) October 9, 2023
Thousands of Israelis have signed up to work the fields and pens, joining regional Whatsapp groups that place local farmers and volunteers where they are most needed. Slots fill within minutes as volunteers trek from their urban homes to pick crops whose regular workers are dead, departed or unable to enter the country.
Popup farmers markets in city centers are packed with customers seeking to spend their money to help growers whose work they know has been upended. Help is even coming from overseas: Birthright Israel has even called upon its 850,000 alumni around the world to fly to Israel for volunteer opportunities that include picking fruit and vegetables.
Like the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have joined the military reserves, the volunteers are stepping in for a depleted workforce — and hoping that the region has a future after the guns stop blazing.
“What happened on [Oct. 7] was a kind of local Holocaust. Its effect could be a holocaust on the economy here,” said Dudi Alon, who is the deputy head of the Gaza border’s Eshkol Regional Council. He is among the few farmers and security staff remaining at his home of Moshav Yated, just east of the Kerem Shalom border crossing into Gaza.
“There are people who think we are all soldiers now and anyone who comes to help here is like a fighter,” he added. “On the other hand, there are those who think it is a moral problem if you risk the lives of volunteers and farmers to work fields under fire.”
Israeli volunteers hold mangoes during the harvest at a farm in Moshav Sde Nitzan, in southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip, Oct. 25, 2023. (Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images)
Surveying his region, Alon believes Hamas aimed to destroy southern Israel’s agriculture along with its population. Gaza-area farms, he said, produce 70% of Israel’s tomatoes and 30% of its potatoes in addition to other vegetables and dairy products, and rely on a legion of foreign workers.
Before Oct. 7, he said, the Eshkol Regional Council had 4,000 workers from Thailand who were experienced at farm work. Dozens of Thai workers were murdered on Oct. 7, and dozens more are hostages in Gaza. Most of the rest flew home to their country, leaving fewer than 1,000 now, a loss Alon calls “a death knell to agriculture here.” (Guest workers from Gaza also contributed to the workforce.) Farms’ planting cycles can last up to eight months, making it harder for them to restart production if they’ve been abandoned.
“Hamas intentionally kidnapped and murdered foreign workers in order to frighten the foreign workers to ruin the economy here and they succeeded,” said Alon. “Many incredible volunteers are coming to help and support us, [but] at the end of the day there is work that is physically difficult and requires special skills that cannot rely on volunteers.”
Many of the area’s residents have been evacuated by the government to safer regions of the country, but a few have remained. Evie Atiya, who lives in Moshav Pri Gan and is still there, recounted that “10 terrorists entered on bikes and started to shoot at houses” on Oct. 7, killing four residents and trapping the entire village in their shelters for 48 hours before they were evacuated by the army.
Shortly after leaving his shelter “terrified,” Ataya learned that the Thai embassy had evacuated more than half of all the farm workers in the area and that only seven of his farm’s 24 workers remained.
A worker milking cows at a cowshed in the Golan Heights in Israel’s north, Oct. 26, 2023. (Michael Giladi/Flash90)
“Everything has collapsed,” he said. And while the government has long provided financial assistance to the area’s farmers, the perceived insufficient response from the finance and agriculture ministries — matching the long hours residents waited in shelters before the army’s arrival — is symbolic of many Israelis’ widespread disillusionment with the country’s leadership following Oct. 7.
“It seems like they weren’t ready for this,” he said, adding that it feels like “they are trying to help but that they are lost.”
Eitan Aharon, secretary of Moshav Mivtahim in the Eshkol Regional council, recently told the Israeli publication Zman Israel, “I am afraid farmers will commit suicide” before help arrives.
On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended his government’s record on financial assistance to impacted communities. At a cabinet meeting, he announced that the government had budgeted nearly $3.4 billion in supplementary funds to help evacuees and local governments in the south and north in November and December.
“I want to sharpen the point on the financial sum we are going to bring for the benefit of Israel’s citizens,” he said. “We have already spent many billions to help the evacuees, to help the families of the kidnapped and missing, to help the authorities in the north and south, the reservists, businesses. But we are going to bring much more.”
Some government efforts are already being felt: On Thursday, the Ministry of Agriculture plans to convert Jerusalem’s Cinema City mall into a market for farmers from the south and north.
Maaya Arfi works at HaShomer HaChadash, an Israeli organization helping connect Israelis to the land through agriculture. It was one of the first groups to raise the alarm about the labor need and continues to organize efforts to assist Israeli farmers.
A local farmer stands in a field in southern Israel. (Eliyahu Freedman)
“In the next two weeks we can already be at 4,000 volunteers a day,” Arfi said of her organization’s initiative, which matches Israelis with farmers in need via a hotline and phone application.
While the precise number of volunteers is unknown, a new poll of Israelis by Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev found that more than 40% of respondents had volunteered in some form in the third week of the war.
Some volunteers have come from other Israeli farming communities. Sara Goldsmith, a 57-year old tour guide from Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, said volunteering to help farmers in the south was keeping her mind off her canceled business.
“October, November and December are peak season for tourism in Israel, and overnight I lost all my groups that I was supposed to be having,” she said. “It’s a very difficult time for all the tour guides across Israel and many are doing what I’m doing: helping out wherever we can. We don’t know when our income is coming in but we have hands and the will to volunteer.”
On Monday, she traveled with a group of approximately 20 members of Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu — ranging in age from 15 to 80 — to help at Kibbutz Saad, which Sde Eliyahu had “adopted” following the outbreak of the war. Saad, which like Sde Eliyahu is a religious kibbutz, was fortunate to have its gate closed on Oct. 7 for Shabbat and was largely spared the worst of Hamas’ attack. It instead endured its own kind of trauma, becoming a makeshift morgue, refuge and clinic for the victims of the massacre, especially those who escaped from the Nova music festival at the nearby community of Re’im.
At the kibbutz, Goldsmith helped pick cucumbers grown for their seeds, rather than for eating. Goldsmith’s children have also enlisted in the war effort: Her daughter is serving in the military reserves and her son flew back from his home overseas to work full-time on a farm on the Gaza border.
“We are in a helpless situation,” she said. “So when you do something you feel a little less helpless.”
Another volunteer named Yael, who declined to share her last name out of privacy concerns, traveled from Tel Aviv to Moshav Yesha near Gaza last Saturday with a few friends and work colleagues from a Tel Aviv hospital to harvest tomatoes, passing military checkpoints and torched cars along the way. Working in the fields, she said, was particularly unnerving where there is “no safety gear and there are no shelters in the farms” to protect them from barrages of Hamas rockets, which largely target the south.
Her fear wasn’t misplaced. During her shift, Yael heard “really big booms quite close” coming from Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. And at one point, she recalled, she looked around and “I just suddenly see people on the ground, and stood there frozen waiting for it to end.”
When her shift ended a few hours later, the farm owner showed her a crater from a rocket launched by Hamas that had just struck another part of the greenhouse, causing damage only to the tomato plants.
Those dangers have led some people to flee the south. But Atiya says that no matter what happens, he is determined to stay and work the land.
“Somebody needs to be here and make food from this land and this is what I do. It’s not a choice if I am going back there,” he said. “This is my land, this is my house, everything that I know.”
Laniyado agrees that the government is flailing but said that conversations with the young soldiers in the area left him optimistic. According to some accounts, soldiers have tended greenhouses that were abandoned on Oct. 7.
“I joked with them and talked with them,” Laniyado said. “I believe with complete faith that we will win the war, that we will re-establish the villages, the agriculture will return to what it was and we will learn a lesson and unite around the fact that we are all Jews and that we have no choice. We are dependent on each other.”
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US Sens. Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham Unveil New Resolution Demanding Iran ‘Dismantle’ Nuclear Program
US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson
US Republican Sens. Tom Cotton (AK) and Lindsey Graham (SC) on Thursday unveiled a new resolution demanding Iran completely “dismantle” its nuclear program.
The resolution was introduced as the Trump administration continued to engage in talks with Iran to negotiate a deal to curb the latter’s nuclear activity, which Western countries believe is ultimately geared to build nuclear weapons. Iran has claimed its nuclear program is for civilian energy purposes.
“Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon; that’s off the table,” Graham said during a press conference on Thursday.
The resolution calls on the White House to pursue the “complete dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, cautioning that Tehran would use a nuclear warhead to “carry out one of the most extreme religious ideas on the planet” — a reference to the Islamist ideology of Iran’s rulers.
The senators called on their colleagues in Congress to support the resolution.
Graham warned that if Iran, a predominately Shi’ite country under its current theocratic system, ever acquired a nuclear weapon, then the Sunni Arab countries of the Middle East would then attempt to obtain one themselves, sparking “a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.” Graham also cautioned that Iran would use a nuclear weapon as an “insurance policy” and a tool to destroy its enemies, including Israel. The senator demanded that Iran completely scrap its nuclear program, arguing that anything short of “complete dismantlement” would be “non-negotiable.”
“The ayatollah [Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei,] and his henchmen are virtual religious Nazis,” Graham said. “They openly talk about destroying the state of Israel. They write it on the side of their missiles, and I believe them.”
Graham claimed that Iran has likely enriched enough uranium to produce at least six nuclear weapons.
The South Carolina senator predicted that Iran would also use nuclear bombs to “take over” Muslim holy sites and push the United States out of the Middle East.
“A nuclear Iran makes for a far more dangerous world,” Cotton said.
Cotton argued that Iran would use the security provided by a nuclear weapon to aggressively advance its terrorism campaigns throughout the globe. The senator cited several terror attacks tied to Iran, including the assassination attempt against US President Donald Trump last year. Cotton also cited Iran’s continued operation of proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis — all internationally designated terrorist organizations backed by Tehran.
The Arkansas senator added that an Iranian nuclear weapon would present “an existential threat to our good friend Israel,” which Iran’s leaders regularly threaten to destroy.
Israel has been among the most vocal proponents of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arguing that the US should pursue a “Libyan option” to eliminate the possibility of Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapon by overseeing the destruction of Iran’s nuclear installations and the dismantling of equipment.
Both Graham and Cotton stated that they would be supportive of Iran obtaining a true civilian nuclear energy program. However, the senators argued that allowing Iran to enrich uranium or maintain centrifuges itself would inevitably lead to Tehran building a nuclear weapon.
As the US continues to negotiate a potential nuclear deal with Iran, the Trump administration has drawn criticism from some traditional allies who fear the White House could make too many concessions to Tehran. Critics have argued that elements of Trump’s negotiations with Iran mirror parts of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the 2015 deal which placed temporary restrictions on ‘nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of major international sanctions.
The 2015 deal, which the Obama administration negotiated with Iran and other world powers, allowed Iran to enrich significant quantities of uranium to low levels of purity and stockpile them. It did not directly address the regime’s ballistic missile program but included an eight-year restriction on Iranian nuclear-capable ballistic missile activities. Trump withdrew the US from the accord during his first presidential term in 2018, arguing it was too weak and would undermine American interests.
The White House has also received scrutiny from other Republicans in Congress. In a comment posted on X/Twitter, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), for example, lamented, “Anyone urging Trump to enter into another Obama Iran deal is giving the president terrible advice.” Urging the White House to reverse course, Cruz added that Trump “is entirely correct when he says Iran will NEVER be allowed to have nukes. His team should be 100% unified behind that.”
Trump has threatened military strikes, additional sanctions, and tariffs if an agreement is not reached to curb Iran’s nuclear activities. However, when asked by a reporter on Wednesday whether his administration would allow Iran to maintain an enrichment program as long as it doesn’t enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, Trump said his team had not decided. “We haven’t made that decision yet,” Trump said in the White House. “We will, but we haven’t made that decision.”
Western countries believe Iran’s nuclear program is ultimately meant to build nuclear weapons. However, Iran has claimed that its program is for civilian energy purposes.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, reported last year that Iran had greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to close to weapons grade at some of its nuclear facilities.
The UK, France, and Germany said in a statement at the time that there is no “credible civilian justification” for Iran’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
The post US Sens. Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham Unveil New Resolution Demanding Iran ‘Dismantle’ Nuclear Program first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Prevost Surprises as First US Pope, Takes Name Leo XIV
Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, Cardinal Robert Prevost of the United States appears on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican, May 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane
Cardinal Robert Prevost, a long-time missionary in Latin America, was elected as the surprise choice to be the new leader of the Catholic Church on Thursday, becoming the first US pope and taking the name Leo XIV.
Pope Leo appeared on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica after white smoke billowed from a chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, signifying the 133 cardinal electors had chosen him as a successor to Francis, who died last month.
“Peace be with you all,” he told the cheering crowd, speaking in fluent Italian. He also spoke in Spanish during his brief address but did not say anything in English.
Prevost, 69 and originally from Chicago, has spent most of his career as a missionary in Peru and has dual Peruvian nationality. He became a cardinal only in 2023. He has given few media interviews and is known to have a shy personality.
President Donald Trump swiftly congratulated him on becoming the first US pope. “What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!”
However, the new pope has a history of criticizing Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s policies, according to posts on the X account of Robert Prevost.
Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic who has followed the papacy closely, suggested the tenor of the Trump presidency might have influenced the cardinals to choose a pope from the US, who could directly rebut the president.
“The international upheaval of the rhetoric of the Trump presidency, paradoxically, made possible the impossible,” said Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University in the US.
“Trump has broken many taboos, the conclave now has done the same — in a very different key.”
PRAISE FROM PERU
The appointment was welcomed by the Peruvian president Dina Boluarte.
“His closeness to those most in need left an indelible mark on the hearts of Peru,” her office said in a post on X.
Prevost becomes the 267th Catholic pope following the death of Francis, who was the first from Latin America and who ruled for 12 years.
Francis had widely sought to open the staid institution up to the modern world, enacting a range of reforms and allowing debate on divisive issues such as women’s ordination and better inclusion of LGBT Catholics.
Leo thanked Francis in his speech and repeated his predecessor’s call for a Church that is engaged with the modern world and “is always looking for peace, charity and being close to people, especially those who are suffering.”
He had not been seen as a frontrunner and there was a brief moment of uncertainty when his name was announced to the packed St. Peter’s Square, before people started to clap and cheer.
Unlike Francis, who spurned much of the trappings of the papacy from the day he was elected in 2013, Prevost wore a traditional red papal garment over his white cassock as he first appeared as Leo XIV.
SNAP, a US-based advocacy group for victims of clerical sex abuse, expressed “grave concern” about his election, renewing accusations that Prevost failed to take action against suspected predatory priests in the past in Chicago and in Peru.
“You can end the abuse crisis — the only question is, will you?” it said in a statement addressed to the new pope.
In an interview with the Vatican News website in 2023, Prevost said the Church must be transparent and honest in dealing with abuse allegations.
CHICAGO CELEBRATES
A crowd of clergy and staff members at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union erupted in a joyful cheer as Pope Leo walked out onto the Vatican balcony, some four decades after he graduated from the South Side school.
It was an “explosion of excitement and cheers that went up in the room … many of us were just simply incredulous and just couldn’t even find words to express our delight, our pride,” said Sister Barbara Reid, president of the theology school.
Pope Leo graduated from the school in 1982 with a master’s degree. Reid called Leo intellectually brilliant, saying he has an extraordinarily compassionate heart.
“It’s an unusual blend that makes him a leader who can think critically, but listens to the cries of the poorest, and always has in mind those who are most needy,” she said.
THE NAME LEO
The last pope to take the name Leo led the Church from 1878-1903. Leo XIII was known for his devoted focus to social justice issues, and is often credited with laying the foundation for modern Catholic social teaching.
Prevost has attracted interest from his peers because of his quiet style and support for Francis, especially his commitment to social justice issues.
Prevost served as a bishop in Chiclayo, in northwestern Peru, from 2015 to 2023.
Francis brought him to Rome that year to head the Vatican office in charge of choosing which priests should serve as Catholic bishops across the globe, meaning he has had a hand in selecting many of the world’s bishops.
The post Prevost Surprises as First US Pope, Takes Name Leo XIV first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Warns of ‘Severe Consequences’ for Houthis, Vows to Defend Itself After US Cuts Deal With Terror Group
Smoke rises in the sky following US-led airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 25, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Adel Al Khader
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Thursday warned that the Houthis would “suffer severe consequences” if the Yemeni terrorist group continued to attack Israel, emphasizing the Jewish state’s capability to defend itself following US President Donald Trump’s unexpected deal with the Iran-backed rebel militia.
“Israel must be capable of defending itself against any threat or enemy,” Katz wrote in a post on X. “This has been the case throughout many challenges in the past and will remain true in the future.”
“I also warn the Iranian leaders who finance, arm, and operate the Houthi terrorist organization: the balance of power has shifted, and the Axis of Evil has collapsed,” the top Israeli defense official added. “What we did to Hezbollah in Beirut, to Hamas in Gaza, to Assad in Damascus, and to the Houthis in Yemen, we will also do to you in Tehran.”
Katz continued, “We will not allow anyone to harm Israel; and those who do will suffer severe consequences.”
On Sunday, the Houthis, an internationally designated terrorist group, declared they would impose a “comprehensive” aerial blockade on Israel, targeting the country’s airports in retaliation for the Israeli military’s expanded operations in Gaza.
Claiming solidarity with Palestinians in the war-torn enclave, the Iran-backed group took responsibility for a missile strike near Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, marking the latest in a series of attacks.
While Israel’s missile defense systems have intercepted most strikes from Yemen, Sunday’s missile was the first in a series launched since March to bypass the country’s defense capabilities, following a drone strike on Tel Aviv last year.
Alongside Hezbollah and Hamas, Houthi rebels are a key part of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and the United States.
On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate against the Yemeni terrorist group, reaffirming that the Jewish state will defend itself against any threat.
“Israel will defend itself by itself,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on social media. “If others join us — our American friends — all the better. If they don’t, we will still defend ourselves on our own.”
In response to the Houthis’ latest attack, Israeli forces launched major strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah and the international airport in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, both facilities crucial to the Iran-backed terrorist group’s ability to operate.
The strikes came as Houthi officials revealed that their agreement with Washington to cease targeting US maritime activity in the Red Sea did not include any commitment to stop attacking Israel or ships linked to the Jewish state.
لقطات جديدة للغارات الجوية الإسرائيلية التي أصابت مطار صنعاء الدولي في اليمن. pic.twitter.com/DlzAqg5xES
— الأحداث العالمية (@NewsNow4USA) May 6, 2025
Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, the Houthis — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — have targeted over 100 merchant vessels in the Red Sea with missiles and drones, causing a massive disruption of global trade.
During an Oval Office appearance on Tuesday, Trump announced that the US would halt airstrikes on the Yemeni terrorist group after it agreed to stop attacking American ships — an agreement that ended weeks of escalating tensions with the Iran-backed group and, according to US and Israeli officials, was made without prior notice to Jerusalem.
Since launching its current operation in Yemen, known as Operation Rough Rider, on March 15, the US military says it has struck over 1,000 targets, killing hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous group leaders.
After Trump announced the deal with the Iran-backed terrorist group, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei praised “the end of the US aggression” on Yemen and thanked Oman for its efforts in mediating the ceasefire agreement.
The post Israel Warns of ‘Severe Consequences’ for Houthis, Vows to Defend Itself After US Cuts Deal With Terror Group first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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