Nir Amitay never imagined that a New Year’s Day outing for a beer on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv would end in bloodshed.

Two people were killed and seven were injured in 2016 when an Arab-Israeli, Nashat Milhem, opened fire on the Simta pub where Amitay sat with a friend. Security forces spent a week hunting Milhem before killing him in a shootout. Amitay, then a career soldier in a covert unit, was unarmed and recalls chasing the terrorist with a beer glass in his hand.

“I was one of the only ones the terrorist missed,” Amitay says. “Bullets flew on either side of my head; I felt like I was looking at death. The attack was on a Friday. On Sunday, I was back in the army.”

Four years later, while serving in a senior IDF position, Amitay, now 40, married and a father of two, felt “pains in his heart,” yet doctors found nothing physically wrong. He realized the trauma of the attack was surfacing. He read a text that urged people to let their hearts lead them to the right path, and he took it as a sign. A member of Kibbutz Lahav, located about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) north of Beersheba, he left the army after 17 years, inspired by his childhood memories of farming and his experience working with an at-risk youth.

In 2021, he and a group of friends established the first of what would become a nonprofit network of therapeutic farms called the Rimon Farms Association. To date, these farms have served 10,000 people across 25 programs ranging in length from a single day to two years.

“Today we know that [conventional] therapy isn’t enough,” Amitay says,  explaining that the farms use nature and agricultural work, including livestock herding, as tools to reconnect people to life and positive thinking.

“Everyone needs roots and wants to feel connected,” he says. “The agricultural work enables people to reconnect spiritually, while the physical labor helps them unload trauma. Seeing a plant grow gives us hope that we can flourish, too.”

Amitay emphasizes a three-pronged approach: “We want participants to feel significant — whether they’ve planted, farmed, or worked in the carpentry shop. We want them to feel a sense of belonging to a community. And we want them to commit: to their families, to therapy, to apologizing after an outburst, and to choosing life.”

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© The Times of Israel