I don't understand why they came to kill us.
Among those murdered or kidnapped on October 7th, more than 50 were citizens of Thailand. They are critical to Israeli agriculture, and many have decided to remain in or return to Israel amid the war.
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Ubon Namsan arrived in Israel about a year ago to work on a kibbutz just a few miles from the Gaza border, where he planted and harvested a variety of fruits.
He was earning the equivalent of approximately $1,300 per month — more than five times the annual salary back home in Thailand.
Then came the Palestinian terror attacks on October 7th.
Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and everyday armed Gazans killed some 1,200 people in Israel that day and took 240 hostages into Gaza. Among those murdered or kidnapped were more than 50 citizens of Thailand — 34 killed and 24 abducted, plus another 19 Thais injured in the attacks.1
“By far the largest group of non-Israelis affected by the Hamas-led attack on October 7th were migrant workers from Thailand,” wrote Israeli anthropologist Matan Kaminer.2
Despite the barrage of rockets he witnessed in the early hours of the morning that day, 27-year-old Namsan said that initially he was not overly worried. Although things had been quiet along the Gaza border for a few months leading up to October 7th, he had seen incoming rockets before and assumed it was just going to be another relatively mild, short-lived dust-up between Israel and Gaza.
Then came thousands of terrorists on foot and in vehicles, breaching the security barrier and plowing into as many Israeli towns and communities as they could.
“Agriculture wasn’t collateral damage; it was a target, a deliberate target,” said the head of agriculture at one of these communities, kibbutz Nahal Oz.3
Israeli farms, which are at the heart of Israel’s national identity, have for decades driven Israel’s economic policies and shaped its impressive image as a nation that “made the desert bloom.”
Thus, Palestinian terrorists did not just destroy whatever they could find on October 7th. They came with hammers and deliberately targeted key taps to flood orchards. They did not just kill Jews and Israelis. They sought out, massacred, and abducted foreign workers to undermine a vital source of labor for the agricultural sector.
“Israeli agriculture is in the biggest crisis since the establishment of the state in 1948,” said Yuval Lipkin, deputy executive director of Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture.4
Agricultural estates along Israel’s southern and northern borders play a role not only in the country’s celebrated agriculture sector, but also in its defense. The border farms are considered crucial to Israeli security. Residents of farming communities along the border with Gaza, though devastated in the October 7th attacks, helped keep the terrorists from penetrating deeper into Israel and descending upon more populated urban areas.
“Our farmers are our heroes on the border,” said Lipkin. “We need those farmers.”
The Jewish state needs farmers, but Israeli farmers need employees to do tedious, exhausting, cost-efficient work.
Bobby Suraput is the leader of the Thai farm workers at kibbutz Nahal Oz. On October 7th, he and his friends were attacked twice by terrorists and looters who raided the kibbutz. One of them was killed. Bobby and his friends returned to Thailand, and after two and a half months they bought plane tickets at their own expense so they could come back to work on the kibbutz.
Suraput is the only one in the group who speaks English, seasoned with the right words in Hebrew. He drinks “mud coffee” like the kibbutz veterans. The hat on his head starts with a large visor that shields his face and ends with a piece of cloth that slopes down to his back, like the hats of the French Foreign Legion.
“On October 7th, someone from a nearby community picked me up to work for him, additional work,” he recalled. “In the morning there were rockets. I have experienced enemy rockets here in Israel, but this time it felt different. Shooting started. I thought the shooting was ours, our army’s. Then we saw other people, in civilian clothes, walking around the kibbutz. I called the rabbi’s office. I couldn’t reach him. He was killed.”5
Palestinian terrorists tried to break into the safe room, in an apartment, where Suraput and others were sheltering. The terrorists broke everything that was in the home, and left. Then came the looters who stole everything they could find. Only at five in the afternoon did Israeli army personnel arrive, some 10 or 11 hours after the attacks began.
Before October 7th, kibbutz Nahal Oz was one of the many that employed Palestinians from Gaza, who came in and out of Israel on a daily basis. It has been well-documented that many of these Palestinian workers helped Hamas plan the October 7th attacks.
“I don’t understand,” said Suraput. “Explain to me, why did they come to kill us? They (the Palestinian laborers) were our friends. We worked together. We took care of water for them. We gave them things.”
After the October 7th massacre, the Thai embassy in Israel did not order Thai nationals to return home, but suggested that they “take a break, a timeout,” so they went back to Thailand for two and a half months.
“The whole time I kept in contact with the members of the kibbutz by phone,” said Suraput. “In the end I bought a ticket, and I came back. The others also came back. From the airport I went straight to the kibbutz. Everyone hugged me. There were also those who cried.”
Israel’s ambassador to Thailand, Orna Sagiv, has vowed that Thai workers caught up in the October 7th attacks will receive the same treatment and protection as every person in Israel. At kibbutz Nahal Oz, the Thai residences were renovated. Boaz Ben-Sira, the manager of the farm, made sure to reinstall all the equipment that was destroyed. When the Thais returned from Thailand, Thai food awaited them.
The history of Thais working in Israel goes back decades. In the 1980s, Israeli tour guide and entrepreneur Uzi Vered entered a long-standing network of military and aid connections between Thailand and Israel in order to recruit Thais for “training” in Israel.
Vered capitalized on the Thai military government’s interest in its Cold War ally’s experience with “frontier settlement” to bring hundreds of Thai workers to Israel, with a particular influx following the First Intifada (Palestinian uprising) in 1987.
“The open gate for Palestinians closed,” said Adriana Kemp, a sociologist at Tel Aviv University. “What I call the ‘great replacement’ began in the nineties.”
In 2011, Israel and Thailand forged a bilateral agreement to ease entry for Thai farm workers, making them one of the largest groups of foreign laborers in the country. On the Israeli side, 13 government-appointed manpower agencies are responsible for worker recruitment and welfare, resulting in 30,000 Thais who were working across Israel prior to the October 7th attacks.
“There was a strategic decision that was made on the part of the Israeli state to replace Palestinian workers with migrant workers so they wouldn’t have this dependence,” said Matan Kaminer.6
Israeli farmers who hired Thai workers found them this be a more reliable labor force than Palestinians, who could be delayed at border checkpoints or barred from entering Israel. But now, said Adriana Kemp, “for the first time, Israeli agriculture can’t rely on a continuous stream of workers.”
More than 7,000 Thais have since chosen to go home — at least temporarily. At a tomato farm less than five kilometers (three miles) from Gaza, only five of the 35 Thai workers that Israeli farmers employed before the war are still on the job.
“Israel has to fight the war and bring back the hostages,” said one Israeli farmer. “Farms need to keep working to feed our people.”
October 7th was the sixth day of Thai 37-year-old Wichian Temthong’s employment on an Israeli avocado farm, when Palestinian terrorists stormed into the community with a hail of gun shots and grenades, killing seven other Thais and taking him hostage. He was marched into Gaza, his hands tied by wire, and spent the next seven weeks in captivity until his release in late November, alongside 22 other Thais.
Temthong is back in Thailand, at home with his family and a close-knit rural community that helps him through the sleepless nights. But he is already contemplating a return to Israel to complete his employment contract, an aspiration that goes far beyond the subsistence economy in his Thai village.
“They let me take a six-month break until I’m mentally recovered,” said Temthong. “By then if they stop fighting, I will request to return to work. I only worked for six days, I haven’t earned anything yet. Without me, things would be really hard around here. My wife only earns 10,000 baht ($280) per month, my mom doesn’t have any income, and I’ve got two kids. I have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I want to go back.”7
“Thai farmhands in Israel face a grim choice: work in a war zone or go home to poverty.” NPR.
“In Israel, Thai Migrant Workers Are Caught in Other People’s War.” Jacobin.
“Hamas tried to destroy Israeli agriculture, and failed.” Future of Jewish.
“Hard Hit by Loss of Thai and Palestinian Workers, Israeli Farmers Call for Volunteers.” The New York Times.
“השיבה מתאילנד אל נחל עוז.” Ynet News.
“How Thai workers became integral to Israel’s economy.” Nikkei.
“Poverty Pushes Freed Thai Hostages to Consider Return to Israel.” VOA.
This is such an important story to tell. We tend to think (and rightfully so) of the effect of Oct 7th on Israelis, and Jews in general, but what happened then, affected non-Jews as well and was an affront to the entire world - a world that needs to wake up.
where was the army