Pick Peppers, Patrol for Palestinians: The ‘New Guardians’ of Israeli Agriculture
On farms across Israel, volunteers pick strawberries, plant zucchinis, and harvest cucumbers. American college students pose with peppers and pineapples while wearing T-shirts branded with the logo of Hashomer Hachadash, an Israeli nonprofit organization. They have become “the best ambassadors Israel could ask for,” Avi Cohen-Scali, director general of the Diaspora Affairs Ministry, recently said. “It’s moving and heartwarming.”
Hashomer Hachadash (“The New Guardian”) is the most prominent of Israel’s volunteer-based “agricultural” organizations. For over a decade and a half, its wide-ranging youth programs — from farming to horseback riding — have helped it grow into one of the biggest nonprofits in the country, with a budget exceeding $33 million and allegedly more than 120,000 annual volunteers.
Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, the organization has stepped even further into the spotlight. The Hamas-led attack of October 7 triggered a mass exodus of foreign workers from Israel, and so Hashomer Hachadash encouraged volunteers to come and save “Israel’s agriculture from ashes.” Thousands from around the country — and the world — heeded the call and rushed to assist Israeli farmers.
But the romantic farming scenes belie an agenda that goes beyond fruit picking, and is in practice often about patrolling land to cement Jewish-Israeli control — on both sides of the Green Line. It isn’t the only organization doing this: last month, the United States announced sanctions against Hashomer Yosh, another Israeli NGO that sends volunteers to farming outposts in the occupied West Bank and facilitates the violent theft of Palestinian land.
Hashomer Hachadash is less open than Hashomer Yosh about its political agenda, and has a far more mainstream reputation. And despite the similar name, the two organizations appear to have no formal ties with one another. But Hashomer Hachadash’s ambitions, activists argue, are no less insidious than those of Hashomer Yosh.
A volunteer with Hashomer Hachadash participates in a Flag March in Lod, December 5, 2021. (Oren Ziv)
“It’s always surprising to note how legitimate this organization is among mainstream communities,” said Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, co-executive director of The Abraham Initiative, a nonprofit promoting Jewish-Arab partnership. In reality, Hashomer Hachadash has always been “based on extreme national values, and wants to make sure Arabs stay away from open spaces.”
This has become more evident since the war began, and the group has been aided in its mission by the Israeli government. The Settlement and National Missions Ministry, headed by Orit Strook, a far-right leader who has denied the existence of the Palestinian people, recently transferred approximately NIS 50 million (nearly $13.5 million) to Hashomer Hachadash.
The grant aims to increase the group’s “presence in open areas” — including in the West Bank — and to strengthen “community resilience in the settlement area.” As part of the deal, Hashomer Hachadash has committed to performing 15,000 guarding shifts. There was no tender because the ministry determined that the organization was the “sole supplier” in the field.
“They’ve received all the money from the government since October 7 [for this kind of work],” said Hagit Ofran, director of the Settlement Watch project at Peace Now, an advocacy group. “All of a sudden everything was going through Hashomer Hachadash.”
Hagit Ofran, Peace Now (Jstreet CC BY NC SA 2.0)
Hashomer Hachadash has also further expanded the scope of its policing efforts, and not just on farms. In November, it established “The People’s Guard” to train ultra-Orthodox communities in defense techniques and assist with procuring weapons licenses for guards. The Israeli police signed off on the project.
When +972 approached the organization requesting more information about its activities in the occupied West Bank and links to the Israeli government, a lawyer sent a statement describing Hashomer Hachadash as “an educational, Zionist, non-partisan, volunteer organization that helps farmers from all over the country regardless of religion, race, or gender in the fight against agricultural crime.” The lawyer also threatened to sue us if we published this article.
‘Showing presence’
The ideological roots of Hashomer Hachadash can be traced back to the original Hashomer movement that was set up in the early twentieth century to patrol Jewish settlements in Palestine. Its pioneer, Alexander Zaïd, a Zionist immigrant from Russia, remains the symbol on Hashomer Hachadash’s T-shirts.
Yoel Zilberman, the founder of Hashomer Hachadash, likes to tell the story of how it all began. In 2007, his father announced he was going to sell the family’s ranch in the lower Galilee because of constant theft on their property by Bedouins, which, he says, the police failed to stop. The young Zilberman, who was serving in the Israeli navy at the time, couldn’t let this pass. He returned home and set up camp, with an Israeli flag, a pile of books, and a tent. Along with some friends from the military, he began patrolling his father’s land to fend off “encroachers.”
From the outset, the organization’s actions went beyond guarding farmland. It sought to use agriculture to bolster Jewish presence on rural land, displacing Palestinians in the process. The mission was to “to create a mental and strategic shift in Israeli society, reforge the weakened link to the land and the ground, and increase the importance of holding lands in the open territories in the Negev and Galilee” — regions in southern and northern Israel respectively that are home to large Palestinian communities — by establishing observation posts near grazing land.
A monument to Alexander Zaïd near Bet She’arim National Park, Israel. (Ilan Guy/Wikimedia Commons)
In March 2008, Hashomer Hachadash held its founding conference in the Galilee. It was scheduled to coincide with and obstruct Land Day events, when Palestinian citizens of Israel commemorate the 1976 killing of six unarmed protestors who were demonstrating against Israel’s confiscation of nearly 5,000 acres of Palestinian land.
Several weeks later, the group organized a protest against a Nakba Day commemoration, also in the Galilee, which quickly turned violent and resulted in the arrest of 31 Palestinian attendees. Not long after that, Mondoweiss reported that members of the organization had illegally entered land belonging to a Palestinian family in the West Bank.
In 2011, +972 reported that the Israeli military was so impressed with Hashomer Hachadash that it permitted dozens of recruits to defer their army service for a year to volunteer with the group. The pre-military program included lessons on horseback riding, cattle herding, and theories on “minorities in Israel, security, and law enforcement.” Ram Shmueli, former head of intelligence at the Israeli Air Force, then became chairman of the organization. (For this story, the Israeli army told +972 they have no connection with Hashomer Hachadash.)
“Hashomer Hachadash is continuing the militaristic tradition that has long existed in Israeli culture, which you can also find in other youth movements, but on a different scale,” said Dr. Nir Gazit, head of the department of behavioral sciences at Ruppin Academic Center, who has researched and written several papers on the organization.
During those early years, the organization was rapidly expanding: its network of annual volunteers grew from 3,700 in 2013 to 21,450 in 2015. That year, it laid out a plan to further establish 100 observation posts in the Negev and Galilee over the following five years, with “two to four guardsmen patrolling the land [at night] in a manner that openly shows their presence.” It also established four “affiliated agricultural schools,” which have the highest military enlistment rates in the country.
Hashomer Hachadash receives Israel’s Presidential Award for Volunteerism, June 19, 2024. (Wikimedia Commons)
A government-sponsored militia
Alongside an exponential rise in volunteer recruitment, the next few years also saw Hashomer Hachadash entrench its relationship with the Israeli government. In 2017, it received a massive influx of state funding when the Religious Services Ministry’s Jewish Identity Administration — set up by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — expanded a project called “Zionism and Judaism.”
The money went toward some programs in schools and others involving Jewish youth from around the world, which were designed “to strengthen the link between the Jewish people, its heritage, and its land.” The funding also supported “guard duty and assistance to farmers and cattle ranchers.”
Bennett was on the organization’s board in 2010 and was photographed wearing the group’s T-shirt during his tenure as economics minister a few years later. In 2022, during his premiership, Bennett announced that he was aiming to establish a civilian armed force that could be based, in part, on Hashomer Hachadash. After the Israeli election at the end of that year, the new national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, presented a similar plan while looking into the possibility of recruiting volunteers from Hashomer Hachadash.
Even Israel’s national security adviser has said that the organization should be working alongside the country’s police forces. “The volunteering spirit of Hashomer Hachadash should join the organizational capabilities of the Border Police, the Israel Police, and all security authorities,” Tzachi Hangebi said at a conference last year. “This is the real equalizer.”
“The very idea that Hashomer Hachadash helped start — [that] civilians do policing — it’s very problematic,” said Ofran from Peace Now.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi at a press conference, September 28, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Meanwhile, Hashomer Hachadash appears to be expanding its presence in the West Bank. In 2022, Local Call reported that the organization was operating on privately-owned Palestinian land in East Jerusalem. Last year, according to the Hebrew publication Kenes Media, the group embarked on an “accelerated process” of establishing activities in all of the Jordan Valley’s settlements. Individuals wearing Hashomer Hachadash clothing have also been documented participating in settler violence and attempting to force Palestinians off their land.
“They are walking a fine line,” Gazit told +972. “The potential for violence is constantly there but they intentionally try to whitewash it, to keep it behind the scenes — not as part of their official practices.”
Since October 7, Israeli settlers have stepped up their efforts to displace dozens of Palestinian shepherding communities in the northern Jordan Valley, in collaboration with the security forces and the Jordan Valley Regional Council. While Hashomer Hachadash’s role in this remains opaque, the organization continues to hold all-expenses-paid volunteering days in the area.
“They’ve said before that they don’t work beyond the Green Line — but they do,” said Dror Etkes, founder of the Israeli organization Kerem Navot which monitors settlement activity in the West Bank. “I’ve seen them in the northern part of the Jordan Valley, which used to be a bit quieter [in terms of settler violence] compared to other parts of the West Bank. This is not the case anymore.”
Jewish settlers at a ceremony unveiling the cornerstone for a new neighborhood in the West Bank settlement of Moshav Gitit, Jordan Valley on January 2, 2014. (Uri Lenz/Flash90)
Zilberman, the organization’s founder, said earlier this year that as part of the effort to strengthen Israel’s grip in rural areas, he was preparing to plant a vineyard “right on the Syrian border fence, 100 meters from it.” He added: “I’m not afraid, on the contrary. This is precisely the time.”
Bankrolled by American billionaires
From the start, Hashomer Hachadash has been heavily supported by U.S. foundations. In 2010, over half of the group’s funding came from the late billionaire Irving Moskowitz and his wife Cherna, who heavily supported settler groups in East Jerusalem. Through their American foundation, the pair donated over NIS 1.4 million (nearly $380,000) to the organization from 2010 to 2013.
In more recent years, there have been at least half a dozen donations to Hashomer Hachadash from American foundations that were sent via the Jewish National Fund. In 2021 and 2022, Donors Trust — an infamous conservative American foundation — gave anonymous donations totaling $140,000 to the organization. Most strikingly, the late Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam, who have been among the biggest donors to Donald Trump as well as supporting numerous right-wing causes in Israel, gave over $6 million to Hashomer Hachadash between 2019 and 2022 through their California-based foundation.
After October 7, Hashomer Hachadash positioned itself as the savior of Israeli agriculture and received a dramatic uptick in funding from the Jewish diaspora. In February, Hashomer Hachadash announced it would provide emergency interest-free loans of up to NIS 100,000 for Israeli farmers in the areas near Gaza and the Lebanese border — funded by donations from Jews in the diaspora.
The Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella organization representing hundreds of Jewish communities, gave $300,000 “in response to the agricultural crisis currently unfolding because of the war.” In March, Boston-based Combined Jewish Philanthropies also gave an emergency grant of $250,000. And the Ruderman Family Foundation, a private philanthropic foundation in Boston, gave $100,000 for “The People’s Guard” project.
“You see the magnitude of this organization and the way it has very elegantly succeeded in penetrating wide sectors of Israeli society,” Gazit noted. “It has a lot of power, and very strong political backing. It’s very difficult not to ask — where is this going?”
Georgia Gee is an investigative journalist covering human rights issues, environmental abuse and surveillance. Her work has appeared in print, podcast and documentaries, including for The Intercept, Foreign Policy and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. She was previously the lead investigative researcher for Ronan Farrow at The New Yorker and HBO, and an editor for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
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