A Village In Israel

By Bonnym

I grew up in a small village in Israel at a time when the predominant image of 'the new Jew' was a photograph of a beautiful girl picking oranges. It was an image every little Israeli girl could identify with. There was a shared cultural vision of healthy, proud farmers working the land, re-conquering it by doing so.

I am not sure if it is possible to sort out my personal childhood fantasies and dreams from the collective Israeli psyche of the time. Walking barefoot in a ploughed field or picking oranges in a grove were the dreams of my childhood. I wanted to be the girl in that photograph.

Those early childhood fantasies and dreams are imprinted in me; they probably played an important role in my family's decision to move back to a small village in Israel in 1994.

My village was never a big village, nor was it particularly successful or well-known. It was a place where simple people worked their land, tending citrus groves and running poultry farms. The most exotic plantation grew avocados, and a palm tree nursery was something of an attraction.

The village was established by a group of Greek immigrants in 1937 in what was then known as British-controlled Palestine. Those pioneers had raised enough money in their homeland to buy the land where they would build their new homes.

When we first moved here, one could still hear some Greek in the street, The local store sold original Greek delicacies and from time to time we were invited to sit on a neighbor's porch and share some ouzo at the end of a working day.

In the last few years, my village has changed dramatically. Very few people work in agriculture now; they can no longer support their families growing oranges and chickens. As a result, they must find their income outside the village and rent out their land or sell their little family farms altogether. One by one the citrus groves are being uprooted. The land that was once so green, and in wintertime was spotted with yellow and orange fruits as far as the eye could see, is now being sold to the highest bidder. Designed villas and cottages are taking over the lush and fertile fields.

Some of the land is still used for agriculture, but no longer for the family farms. Now it is the agriculture of luxuries.

Let me take you down, 'cause we're going to strawberry fields; nothing is real...
That was somebody else's fantasy, yet here everything is real...as much as growing strawberries in the middle east can be. Those sweet, red berries grow on beds and beds of injustice and broken dreams, and they are now the main agricultural produce of my village. However, the strawberries are not harvested by the healthy, proud Israeli farmers of my childhood dreams; that work simply does not pay enough.

Instead there exists a huge work force of Thai men and Palestinian women. I call them the transparent beings; people ignore them, their situation and their hardships. Theirs is a world of illegal housing, terrible living conditions, long back-breaking days of labor, and very little money in return.

It is hard eating sweet strawberries thinking about the bitter circumstances that made them.

My village is no longer a small village. New houses have been built, many in lavish architectural styles. The old dream of working the land and picking oranges has been replaced by a new dream of luxury homes and swimming pools.

The families who came from Greece to work the land are almost as transparent as the workers (legal & illegal) picking the strawberries. One can hear my village's name over and over in radio jingles advertising new villas and housing developments. In the fields, you can hear Arabic and Thai. The local store sells original food from Thailand. And from time to time I am invited to have some mint tea with the hard-working Palestinian women at the end of their long day in the bitter fields where the sweet strawberries grow.

Editorial note: The Utata editorial staff have decided to omit the name of the village in question in order to safeguard the illegal workers referred to in this article.