Ariel Bibas turns five this week. He is still held hostage in Gaza.

This is a story about what should be just an ordinary family in rural Israel, one of many who make their livelihood from agriculture, 300 dunam of clementines and 100 of assorted vegetables.

It was told to me a few weeks ago when were volunteering on this family's farm in moshav Yesha in the southern Otef (Gaza border region).

Three hundred dunams of clementine trees needed pruning and since the war they have almost no one to do the work except for volunteers who come from all over Israel and overseas to help. 

Just another Israeli farmer on a small southern moshav struggling to balance bureaucracy, the rising cost of living and a keen love of working the land.

His grandparents, along with the rest of the Egyptian Jewish community, had been forced to leave Egypt in the 1950s following the Nasserist revolution there. Together with other Egyptian Jews they founded this moshav in the north-west Negev, near Israel's border with Egypt. The farmer's grandfather built the village synagogue. 

He married a woman from a nearby village who came to join him on his moshav. As the years passed by he took over more of the tasks of running the family farm. 

Friday night October 6th 2023, the eve of the Simhat Torah holiday, a young couple and their little red headed boys from kibbutz Nir Oz went to enjoy a festive dinner with the wife's sister on nearby moshav Yesha.

It was a lovely, happy, family gathering that finished on the late side. The moshav hosts suggested that perhaps their guests should stay the night as the little ones were so tired out, but they decided to return home to their kibbutz.


Just a few hours later Israel's Gaza border region was invaded by Hamas and kibbutz Nir Oz was overrun by murderous terrorists.


Heavily armed Hamas gunmen swarmed in to Israel on motorbikes and pick-ups mounted with machine guns.

They rampaged through moshav Yesha. Trying to mount a defence of his home as part of the village civil defence volunteers the young farmer witnessed the wounding and kidnapping of his own farm manager who was grabbed by Hamas terrorists. Outnumbered and outgunned there was nothing he could do to save the man.

Meanwhile up the road the family from kibbutz Nir Oz were kidnapped.

The mother's parents were murdered in their home on the kibbutz.

The image of a terrified mother desperately clutching her two little sons wrapped in a blanket, surrounded by Hamas gunmen became one of the most iconic images of that terrible Saturday.

Three hundred days later the Bibas family, Shiri, Yarden, Kfir, remain hostages in Gaza. No one knows for sure if they are alive or dead.

Kfir has now spent more of his life as a captive in Gaza than free in his home.

Kfir’s first birthday was as a hostage of Hamas.

This week is Ariel’s fifth birthday and he is still a hostage.

Everyone in Israel "knows" the Bibas family as though they were their own flesh and blood.

Their photos smile at us from hostage posters all over the country, a sweet innocent baby and kindergartner with their doting mother and father.

In Israel they are everyone's children and everyone's sibling or cousin.

We yearn for them to come home alive just as if they were our own children, brother or sister.

I want to thank everyone who's dropped me a note to see how we are doing, I greatly appreciate the kind words and support. For much of the last ten months, starting with a few days after the October 7th Hamas invasion, I've been volunteering in local agriculture, and there are still so many farms in desperate need. I don't even know where to begin. The attack itself was as much against local food production as against people, there was massive damage to farms, dairies, farm equipment, greenhouses, logistics centres, orchards, fields, livestock, and of course the many agricultural workers who were murdered, injured, taken hostage and displaced. This in a region which is responsible for at least 20% of the country's agricultural output, including something like 60-70% of staple crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and more. I'm not a farmer by any stretch of the imagination (even my gardening skills are somewhat borderline) but when there is a crisis like this you do what you can and thankfully I'm reasonably strong and healthy so along with tens of thousands of other ordinary civilians (including vast numbers of pensioners) we started going out to volunteer on farms to ensure the country's food security. Much of the work is picking and packaging produce for local supermarkets and green grocers, as well as for donations to refugees and others in need. And that's been a lot of what I've been doing for the last ten months. If I'm not out working in agriculture I'm trying to help coordinate volunteers to help farms in need and when possible there is no end of meals to cook and hallah to bake for families who need help, emergency services, displaced and so on. A lot of the volunteering is through Leket, Israel's national food rescue organisation. It was started years ago by someone who noticed the food waste on farms and from restaurants and started organising distribution of this surplus to people facing food insecurity all over the country. The name "Leket" comes from the biblical injunction to leave the corners of the field for those in need to collect. "Leket" means to collate, to collect. The project is a modern way for farmers to continue this tradition. The focus isn't just feeding people, but providing healthy, nutritious food, not junk. Over time they developed connections with nearly 1000 farms across the country who donated produce towards the project, as well as leftovers from wedding halls, employee cafeterias and more. All closely monitored to ensure the food was both healthy and safely stored. In addition Leket also runs nutrition education programmes in several languages, along with free healthy cookery workshops. After the devastating October 7th attacks and with damage caused by continuing rocket attacks also to Israel's northern border, another important agricultural region, Leket started getting requests for help from the farmers who for so many years had been donating produce to the Leket project. Instead of the farmers supporting Leket it was now necessary for Leket to use its organisational infrastructure to help provide assistance to these farms so that they could survive the crisis and keep the country fed. Every day buses leave from cities and towns around the country taking thousands volunteers to help work on farms and pack produce both for sale in regular shops and for donation to those in need. I'm regularly volunteering on farms down by the Gaza border and have seen first hand the devastation to the region, heard so many horrific accounts from local people about what happened to them and their communities. We harvested oranges at kibbutz Re'im right across from the park where just a few months earlier the Nova music festival massacre took place, some of those fleeing the carnage ran to the orchards to hide among the orange trees. On another farm to this day you can still see holes in the roof of the sorting barn from when rockets and RPGs fired during the October 7th invasion. Every time you go by the village of Tekuma you pass the giant "car graveyard" of vehicles torched and shot up in Hamas ambushes along these roads. Everywhere there are memorials and posters of those murdered and kidnapped. Some local farmers are still displaced, travelling to their farms from wherever they are being temporarily hosted each day to replant and tend to their crops, unable to return to their homes still because of the devastation and the security situation. Some have started to return, repairing and restoring their villages. There are yet more volunteers working to renovate and repair homes and infrastructure. There is still occasional rocket fire to the region, just the other week we were harvesting lychees on a kibbutz just a few metres from the border and right by the road there were impact craters from missiles that had hit a few days earlier. Iron Dome anti-missile defence covers populated areas but doesn't have the capacity to protect open fields, roads and nature reserves. Some areas have prefab shelters near barns or sorting sheds, but for the most part agricultural areas are wide open with no shelter. Down in the Gaza border region there are sometimes seconds' warning before a rocket strike, sometimes there is no warning before the impact. If the "Colour Red" warning goes off you lie down on the ground, keep as low as you can, put your hands over your head and pray. The biggest emergency is in the north, in the Upper Galilee on the border with Lebanon, where dozens, sometimes hundreds, of rockets and attack drones continue to rain down every day, often from such close range that there is little or no warning. They are literally taking their lives in their hands bringing in the harvest and tending to livestock and fields. It's a very precarious and volatile situation. We don't know what will be in the next few hours or the next day or the next week. Rebuilding, replanting, sowing for the next seasons are expressions of hope and faith that tomorrow will come and that maybe it will be better.

Saving Israeli agriculture is very much a part of the existential war our country is facing right now

Talking to farmers from the Otef (Israel's Gaza border region) I've learnt so much about how the Hamas invasion on October 7th wasn't "just" about murdering and kidnapping Israelis, it was also an assault on Israel's ability to feed its people.

Hamas targeted agricultural equipment, greenhouses, dairies, livestock, orchards, fields, barns, agricultural sorting and logistics centres. The damage was so extensive that even now, ten months later, it is still being repaired, you can still see scorched trees and impact craters and holes.

On top of this the ferocity of the rocket and mortar far from Gaza in to Israel meant that for weeks or months farmers could not access their fields and orchards. Some trees are hardy enough to survive that, many field crops and plants simply withered and died, vast quantities of produce were lost, endangering Israeli food security.

For example, volunteering on a banana farm on Israel's Carmel Coast (near Haifa) I learnt that they need to be watered every day. In Israel recycled water is used because every drop is precious. They need to be weeded by hand because using chemical weed killers would kill the banana plants along with the weeds. Israel does not import or export bananas as a precaution against the Panama virus decimating bananas in many other countries.

The Carmel Coast has thankfully been mostly quiet and safe during this war, the reason they needed volunteers was due to labour shortages, but anything mechanised, like the irrigation system, was not affected.

Learning all about banana growing in Israel from this farmer who's been working with bananas for nearly 50 years I understood why when I'm down in the Otef region I've passed by so many groves and net houses with shriveled, collapsing banana plants - with the damage to irrigation infrastructure and then areas where for months the war meant no access to many agricultural areas, the plants simply couldn't survive.

You might say, well, it's just bananas, what's the big deal but you'd be missing the point that this is just one example of locally grown produce that was destroyed, massive quantities of fruits and vegetables that all Israelis (and some of our neighbours - among the humanitarian aid Israel sends to Gaza area fruits and vegetables grown in the Otef) rely on that did not get to market because of Hamas.

I could have written about shortages in locally grown tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce so many staples which at various times over the last ten months have had supply issues. Shortages drive up prices, which pushes more people in to food insecurity.

Farms who lose all their produce and infrastructure may go under, or may not have the funds to buy seed needed to plant for the next season, creating more shortages. Farming isn't just about the right now, it's about seeing the next season or seasons and knowing that you have to plant or prune or trellis now so that in a few months time you will have a crop. 

This is why volunteering in agriculture is so vital, especially now. Farmers in the Otef are struggling every day to rebuild, restore and replant.

Farmers in the Otef started doing this already during the first week of the war, even as hundreds of rockets continued to rain down, even as the army was still chasing down the last of the Hamas terrorists who had infiltrated Israel.

And you have to remember that these Otef farmers? Many of them had just lost many members of their communities, family, friends murdered or kidnapped by Hamas. Many had just spent hours and days locked into their shelters while terrorists marauded through their villages murdering, raping, pillaging and taking hostages.

These are people deeply traumatised by the brutal assault on their homes and communities on October 7, but who still went back to a war zone to keep our country fed. People with the incredible resilience to go back to places where Hamas committed unspeakable horrors. People who put their lives on the line so that the wheat would be sown and the greenhouses full of staple foods would be rebuilt and replanted.

The Hizballah bombardment of northern Israel is very much about creating a similar agricultural crisis in the vital farming areas close to the Lebanon border. Eighty thousand Israelis are displaced from the north, but many farmers chose to stay in their villages despite the daily rocket and drone barrages from Hizballah. These men and women literally take their lives in their hands each day to collect the eggs, tend to their orchards and harvest their fruit. Some of them have been killed or injured.

Even as I'm writing this there are incredibly brave men and women, volunteers from across Israeli society, many of them pensioners, who have gone up to farms near the Lebanon border, places where there is often no warning time for incoming missiles.

They are volunteers who are there to support the local farmers to bring in the summer harvests which are peaking now, some of which have already started to rot and drop from the trees because the war situation means the farmers have been unable to pick them on time.

The fact that ten months into this war you can still go to your supermarket or greengrocer in Israel and find them well stocked with a selection of fruits and vegetables is thanks both to these determined resilient farmers and to these intrepid volunteers who for these ten long months have been going to volatile frontline areas to help maintain Israel's food security.

Why is all this relevant to you?

There is a lot you can do to help without going up to a frontline farm. There are farms in many parts of the country which need help right now for all kinds of reasons. Farmers drafted to emergency reserve duty, labour shortages, problems importing vital equipment due to the Houthi blockade in the Red Sea. There are also many Otef region farms and logistics centres for Otef region farms in areas which are thankfully today quiet and secure, still trying to get their heads above water after the destruction and damage of October 7th. 

Even a few hours of volunteer time can make a difference, it's amazing how much can be done with a few extra hands to pick the tomatoes or weed the lemon trees.
If you live in Israel or if you are visiting from abroad take a few hours and lend a hand to a farmer.

You can join a free volunteer bus from organisations like Leket and Hashomer Hahadash, or you can drive out to a farm near central cities, some are even accessible on public transport.

Saving Israeli agriculture is very much a part of the existential war our country is facing right now.

Thursday afternoon bus stop

Late Thursday afternoon bus stop observations:

1)The bus I'm on pulls up to a stop that is so busy it has to wait to find a spot.

Beside us is an Egged bus disgorging mostly soldiers on to an already crowded double size bus shelter.
The soldiers and national service women mill around the open baggage compartment stuffed with a mountain of oversized backpacks and kitbags.

Around the buses, like a school of small cleaner fish, private cars dart in and out, collecting soldiers and civilian national service volunteers.

2) As our bus stands there waiting for a turn to pull up to the stop we see a 30ish soldier grab his massive kitbag and runs off to a waiting vehicle parked at the very edge of the long line of cars swarming around the bus.

A woman in a floaty floral dress jumps out and starts rushing towards the approaching soldier.

They embrace just as he reaches the tail lights, a fierce hug like life itself.

Suddenly she disengages, runs to the car (engine still running) and grabs a toddler out of the back seat, face shining, lighting up in a huge grin and enthusiastic shouts as his mother hands him over to his soldier father.

The three of them hug again, holding on tight for what seems like an eternity, the intense summer heat, the burning sun, the hurly burly of the cars and buses and toing and froing melting to a blur, the whole world shrinking down to this little family's reunion.

3) Those of us on the bus waiting to pull in are serendipitous observers in all this, as though watching a scene from a film playing out in real time right in front of us.

It feels almost indecent to be spectators at such an intimate family moment but neither can we tear our eyes away.

They are complete strangers but they are also our family and their joy is our joy.

At least that's how it seemed to me.

Standing near the driver as I prepare to disembark from the bus I have a ringside spot. The intensity of emotion washes over me, envelops me. The joy mixed with relief from the mother, the pure ecstatic happiness of the toddler, the all encompassing love that is obvious even though the father has his back to us.

I want to capture this moment forever, bottle it, preserve it for eternity.

4) Finally the previous bus pulls away and our bus pulls in.

As I climb down the bus steps I can see that the family are still embracing.

An elderly Hareidi lady is getting off the bus behind me and almost stumbles into me as I turn the wrong way, because I can't look away.

She and I had chatted a bit on the bus. We are both waiting for the same bus connection.

"Why are you looking the wrong way? The buses come from the other direction."

Standing behind me on the bus she hadn't seen a thing, focused on getting down the steep bus steps.

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Early morning bus stop observations #3243

Early morning bus stop observations #3243

1) Three strangers stand by the bus shelter watching the oncoming highway traffic:
A woman in a long dress and headscarf from a Hareidi town
A woman in a camisole and short shorts from an agricultural moshav
A modern Orthodox woman in a cap and denim skirt from a central Israeli city.

They notice one another standing at the bus stop, letting the regular Egged buses go by.

They glance at each other, join the dots.

"So are you also waiting for the Otef (Gaza border) volunteer bus?" one of them opens.

The others nod.

They smile, shake hands and introduce themselves. They embrace like old friends.

And a few minutes later, chatting away, they all get on the volunteer bus taking them to help the south.

2) A smartly dressed older woman with a savta (grandma) necklace.

She keeps looking anxiously at the passing buses.

Her phone rings. She informs the caller that she missed her bus by 3 minutes and now she's likely going to have to wait nearly an hour.

The conversation changes to something about the news.

"You know it isn't him."

"That's right, there's another Goldin, the one they retrieved isn't our Goldin, it's the other Goldin hostage, it's not Hadar."

"Yes, I know, I was hoping too."

3) A very young looking soldier with the faintest hint of stubble, a massive kitbag, a rifle that looks too big for him and very dirty boots.

He's talking on his phone:

"It's me sweetie, it's ME!!! Sweetie I'm on the way home!! Got lucky with a ride and I'm at the bus stop now. Two hours tops."

While waiting at a bus stop

Notes from waiting at a bus stop:

1. Lady with a huge gold "Imma" (mother) pendant who blesses each soldier as they get on a bus "Safe journey, Hashem watch over you and keep you safe, give you success in every mission"

2. A young Ethiopian-Israeli man who stopped at a memorial sticker of a fallen Ethiopian-Israeli soldier. Touched the picture of the soldier, caressed it, kissed it, said a quiet prayer.

3. So many memorial stickers and posters. Each bus shelter a cenotaph. So many faces. No one passes the shelter without stopping to pay their respects. Some study each one, some a cursory glance, but none is indifferent.

4. Group of agricultural volunteers in their blue Leket food rescue t-shirts, many of them pensioners, comparing farms they've worked on and trading stories while waiting for their volunteer transports.

5. Sunrise on a relatively cloudy summer morning.

6. The peel of early morning church bells.

7. Stream of private buses pulling up calling out the names of kibbutzim and moshavim in the Otef - destinations for today's agricultural volunteers.

From Georgia with love

Tuesday night in wartime Jerusalem. A crowd of local Jerusalemites, emigres from Georgia and other FSU countries, native Israelis and Ukrainian refugees, religious Jews in kippot and headscarves and secular Jerusalem hipsters and students, the uber cool set and the plain ordinary, all packed in to a standing room only small cave-like underground bar in the city centre to hear a performance by Trio Mandili, three young women who's sumptuous voices have brought Georgian folks songs to a wider international audience.

At a time when Israel is being increasingly isolated around the world, when the hate at the Eurovision song contest made the word Israel seem like a curse, visits from overseas performers feel like both a taste of a normal life and a warm embrace.

It was a magical evening that felt a little like travelling abroad to some farway country for a brief vacation from our painful reality. The eclectic crowd mirrored the eclectic decor of the place. Above the stage hung an upside down bicycle and novy god tree adorned with cats. Behind the bar was a vintage record player and a shelf stacked with records while to one side of the stage was a small bookcase packed with volumes in a variety of languages on subjects ranging from poetry to history and art.

Surrealist style original artwork alternated on the walls and shelves with random vintage objects and folk handcraft chatchkes while a tv screen over the bar played vintage east European cartoons.

In one corner hung Ukrainian and Israeli flags. Nearby was an old Jerusalem bus stop with the name of the club over the destination sign. In another curtains printed in east European folk patterns hanging under the eves on an old style village house, a small book filled room with an accordion on the chair just visible.

It was standing room only in the crowded little bar but the mood was enthusiastic and people smiled at their neighbours, even if there wasn't always a common language between them. The concerned soundman brought out a couple of stools for a pregnant women and an elderly couple, concerned that they at least shouldn't stand for the entire concert.

Trio Mandili gave a vibrant, vivacious performance, their rich harmonies and warm voices carrying the audience away from the painful here and now.

The lead singer offered bright English commentary and explanations of the Georgian language and culture laced with humour and a few Georgian folk dance moves. Their joy was infectious.

In November 2023 as Israelis were reeling from the trauma of the horrors of the October 7 Hamas invasion a small light in the darkness was this beautiful recording of the traditional Hebrew hymn "Adon Olam" to the popular tune of the late much beloved song writer, Uzi Hitman. It was recorded by a Georgian folk group, Trio Mandili, and it touched the hearts of every Israeli and Jew who saw the You Tube video, a surprise comforting hug from a strangers in distant country.

This week Trio Mandili came to Israel for a series of concerts in several Israeli cities to lift people's spirits and spread some love.

Tonight, the eve of Yom Yerushalayim, they performed in Jerusalem and we were delighted to be in the audience, truly a balm for spirit and soul.

After a lively set of folks tunes from around Georgia they concluded with their spirited cover of Adon Olam and then they invited the audience to join them in singing a moving acapella rendition of Hatikva, The Hope, Israel's national anthem. There was not a dry eye in the house.