Qwon and her husband, Tay, a Thai couple who tend avocado groves in a small western Galilee farming cooperative, mingled with their Israeli neighbors at a Shavuot celebration in May, marking the Jewish harvest festival near the fields they help cultivate.

A week earlier, four Israeli civilians were wounded, one critically, in a Hezbollah drone attack only 13 kilometers (eight miles) away. Yet, Qwon told The Times of Israel, using her telephone to translate, “I am not afraid because I have confidence in Israeli civilian protection.”

Even after October 8, 2023, when the Iranian-backed terror group began firing almost daily rockets and drones at northern Israel, Qwon and the other nine Thai workers on the cooperative have continued to care for the 1,000 dunams (250 acres) of avocados alongside their Israeli counterparts, often under fire.

Violence has been reduced since a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, mediated by the Trump administration, was implemented on June 19 — though farmers and workers in the north remain exposed.

Despite the danger, Qwon and Tay have stayed in Israel. They are among the tens of thousands of Thai workers who have become essential to Israeli agriculture, helping tend the fields that provide much of the country’s produce.

For over two and a half years, they have also borne some of the heaviest costs of war.

Forty-six Thai citizens were killed in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages.

Of those hostages, 31 were from Thailand. Twenty-eight were eventually released. Three died in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

In northern Israel, five Thai farm workers were killed in Hezbollah rocket fire.

Yet looking around at the crowd of Israelis celebrating the holiday, Qwon was visibly upbeat. “I like Israelis,” she said. “Even though I’m a laborer, the people here have never shown any prejudice toward me.”

Thai workers make up the largest group of foreign workers currently in Israel.

They officially began arriving in the country in significant numbers in 1993, when the Israeli government offered temporary work visas in an effort to reduce Israel’s dependence on Palestinian agricultural laborers for security reasons after the first intifada, which began in 1987.

According to the Knesset Foreign Workers Committee, there were more than 195,000 legally employed foreign workers in Israel as of April 2025, alongside over 33,000 undocumented workers.

At the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, with dozens of their compatriots held captive in........

© The Times of Israel