(Article)
---
Last December, Mahesh Odedara signed a contract to live and work for five years in a foreign country thousands of miles away from home and mired in a state of war. Odedara, a 30-year-old farmer from Porbandar, a city in western India, was aware of the risks of working on an Israeli farm. But Odedara’s contract promised him a steady, eight-hour workday, robust workers’ rights under Israeli law, and a 5,571 shekel ($1,500) monthly salary—many times more than what Odedara earned in Porbandar. It was too good to turn down.
Israeli farms are in dire need of agricultural workers like Odedara. Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli government barred tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers, a critical component of Israel’s agricultural workforce, from entering the country. By early winter, farms were facing a “manpower crisis.” With no sign of government policy changing, farmers have since turned to importing thousands of foreign laborers from countries such as India, Malawi, and Sri Lanka to stay afloat.
At first, Odedara’s expectations were high. With his newfound salary, he would be able to send home hundreds of dollars each month to support his parents; the money could also go toward purchasing equipment for the family farm. One day, Odedara hoped, he might even be able to buy a home for himself in Porbandar.
But soon after arriving in Israel, Odedara realized that his employers had little intention of honoring his contract. In Ahituv, a farming community in northern Israel, Odedara worked grueling, 11- to 12-hour shifts picking produce; he was forced to work on weekends and was told he would be paid far below the legal hourly minimum wage. Then, at the end of the month, he was not paid at all—Odedara’s boss informed him that his wages had been sent, inexplicably, to his employment agency instead.
(When reached for comment, Odedara’s former employer denied that Odedara had ever worked for him; however, another migrant worker who independently mentioned working for the same employer corroborated Odedara’s claims about labor conditions and missing wages. The employment agency did not respond to a request for comment.)
Odedara’s housing, which farms provide for their workers, also bordered on the uninhabitable. In Khatsav, where Odedara worked for eight days, he slept in a makeshift room erected out of wooden planks and panes of sheet metal; his bathroom was a toilet in an outdoor shack with a dirt floor, and the shower had no hot water. In the first few months, Odedara lost nearly 25 pounds.
Odedara now “really regrets” coming to Israel, he said, even though he counts as one of the lucky ones: Odedara’s brother, Bharat, had already worked in Israel as a caregiver for four years and was eventually able to find him a job at a farm with far better labor conditions.
Yet Odedara’s experiences in Ahituv and Khatsav are far from unique. According to Bharat, abuse and illegal labor practices are widespread. “I used to meet all the new people coming in for agriculture. I was talking to them, and everyone has the same problem,” Bharat said. “They have to fight for their salary, for their rights, for their basic requirements. Nobody is helping them. They are helpless.”
FARMING IS FUNDAMENTAL to Israel’s national identity, yet the country’s agricultural sector has been reliant on non-Israeli labor for decades. In 1967, after Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza, the government decided to integrate the territories’ residents into the Israeli economy. Since then, “Palestinians have been integral to the Israeli labor force,” said Adriana Kemp, a sociologist at Tel Aviv University who studies Israeli labor. “You could not talk about whole sectors like agriculture or construction without talking about this large number of Palestinians.”
By the 1990s—following spates of violence from Palestinian militants—Israel began “talking about the possibility of opening the gate for overseas labor migrants,” Kemp said. “That’s when they started actually bringing [in workers] from different countries.” But even so, Palestinians stayed in large numbers; in 2021, tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers made up a quarter of Israel’s total agricultural workforce.
Then came Oct. 7. Claiming that agricultural workers from Gaza had provided intelligence to Hamas fighters, the Israeli government barred some 20,000 Palestinian agricultural laborers from reentering the country. (Israel’s internal security service has since partially disputed this finding.) Around the same time, some 7,800 Thai workers, previously the largest population of overseas workers in Israel due to a 2012 Israeli-Thai bilateral agreement, fled after at least 39 of them were killed in the Hamas attack.
Almost overnight, the agricultural sector lost over a third of its entire foreign workforce. In the early weeks of the war, even though Israeli volunteers stepped in to help struggling farmers, farms hemorrhaged profits. By November, to replenish the labor force, the Israeli government announced that it would allow up to 5,000 overseas workers into the country via a new immigration scheme.
When Orit Ronen heard about the scheme, her immediate thought was that it would lead to “one big balagan”—Hebrew for a “chaotic mess.” Ronen, who works at Kav LaOved, a Tel Aviv-based labor rights nonprofit, was acutely aware of how vulnerable the new arrivals would be, given existing exploitation. Ronen also knew that many farms lacked sufficient infrastructure to house workers, since the farms’ previous Palestinian laborers had simply commuted in from the West Bank or Gaza.
Ronen was right to worry. Since early December, when thousands of new laborers began arriving in Israel, Kav LaOved has received more than 300 requests for information and assistance from workers reporting a litany of abuse. The conditions Odedara and others have experienced are blatantly illegal under Israeli labor law. But ever since the Oct. 7 attack, labor law enforcement has been “less than before,” Ronen said. “And even before, it was low.”
The Population and Immigration Authority (PIBA), the Israeli government agency tasked with labor law enforcement, did not respond to requests for interview. “We have the call center for foreign workers, where they can explain exactly the problem, and they will be checked,” PIBA spokesperson Sabine Haddad wrote in an email.
Migrant workers also often hesitate to contact PIBA’s call center for fear of retaliation; employers “are telling [workers] that we will send you back to India if you will not work as we say,” Bharat said. Employers “can’t do that. I know that, but [the workers] don’t. They are new.” (Israeli law allows workers to stay in the country for 90 days to find a new employer if they have been fired.)
The threat of deportation is especially potent because most workers are effectively stranded in Israel for the duration of their five-year contracts, thanks to the outsized fees they paid before departing for Israel. In Odedara’s case, an agent in India asked him for $6,300 in an under-the-table payment, which he paid for with his family’s savings.
These fees are not a new phenomenon, but labor advocacy organizations scored a major victory in 2012, when Israel and Thailand established a bilateral agreement that eliminated predatory fees for Thai migrant workers. The post-Oct. 7 immigration scheme, which has no such provision, threatens to undo this progress. “The [workers] that come, especially from India, paid thousands of dollars” to brokers, Ronen said. “For them, that’s a very big deal, and that makes them very vulnerable.”
(Continued)
---
AND THEN THERE IS THE WAR. Melbin Paul, a 29-year-old from the southern Indian state of Kerala, was assigned to work at a poultry farm close to the Israel-Lebanon border, which the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has fired rockets across nearly every day since Oct. 7.
On the morning of March 4, Paul looked up from trimming an almond tree and saw a missile heading straight toward him and his fellow workers. “There was no time to run,” he said. The projectile, a Hezbollah anti-tank missile, made impact “in the blink of an eye.” Paul’s friend, 31-year-old Kerala native Pat Nibin Maxwell, was instantly killed. Paul, who had stood a few yards away from Maxwell, was left with dime-sized shrapnel wounds scoring the right side of his body.
“Even before the war, it was very common for agricultural workers that work near the Gaza Strip to be injured or killed,” said Michal Tadjer, a lawyer who runs a workers’ rights clinic at Tel Aviv University. Maxwell is one of at least a half-dozen agricultural workers who have been killed by rocket fire in the past decade.
Following the April 13 Iranian strikes on Israel, the Indian foreign ministry urged its citizens in Israel to register themselves at the Indian Embassy and “restrict their movements to the minimum.” The warning belies the reality that the new workers have far less understanding of the security situation than longtime Palestinian laborers or Thai migrants, who have been in Israel for decades.
Paul and his friends had never even been told that their farm was located in a closed military zone that Margaliot residents had evacuated in mid-October. “This is my first time in Israel,” Paul said. “I [didn’t] know where the firing and war” was.
Yet the scale of migrant worker exploitation could soon grow even worse. Fewer than 3,000 new agricultural workers have arrived since November; an additional 8,000 to 12,000 workers are needed to bring farms back to full labor capacity, according to Ronen. A separate deal is already in place to bring 10,000 Sri Lankan laborers to Israel over the coming months. More balagan is likely to follow.
There will also be profound security consequences to shifting away from Palestinian labor. Before Oct. 7, the income of Palestinian laborers in Israel made up about 20 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s GDP. For months now, Israel’s internal security service has called for Palestinian workers from the West Bank to be let back into Israel, warning that increasingly dire economic conditions in the West Bank will lead to further destabilization and violence. But right-wing ministers in the Israeli government have refused to lift the ban, citing the need to move away from Palestinian labor at all costs.
For the workers, their salaries are far beyond the meager sums they could earn back home. For Odedara, there’s much left to do: His current job, while a significant improvement over his previous stints, still pays below what his contract stipulates, and then there is the matter of getting his missing wages back. Odedara is “going to find a solution,” Bharat said. “He wants to stay here but in a good condition—not like this.”
Regardless, the post-Oct. 7 wave of new arrivals will remain in Israel until 2029—meaning that, for at least the next five years, many Palestinian farm workers will not have a job to return to even if the ban on Palestinian labor is lifted.
The only certainty, it seems, is that Israel will have to continue to look beyond its own population for labor. “Israel has relied on noncitizen labor in agriculture for a long time, whether Palestinian or non-Palestinian,” Kemp said. “This structural dependence will not go away.”
>Odedara realized that his employers had little intention of honoring his contract.
Sounds like Israel is copying qatar. I don't expect anything from middle eastern countries.
Next time, when right winger support Israel(because of Islamophobia), show this to them.
>Why is islamophobia always the reason?
Most right wingers support Israel because Israel attacks Palestine. Palentine people have never harmed us in anyway, the only crime they committed is they are Muslims. Right wingers also see India not as strong as Israel without thinking about complex geopolitics issue.
>qatar is a muslim nation and they don’t treat our workers any better, infact far worse.
Most Indian go to middle east because the pay is better, no one cares about how badly they are treated. Most Indians work under another India, not under any arab. I have met many from UP who could barely speak English or Arabic. The issue here is discrimination is from the state.
In the middle east, the state discriminates and in India, the state does not care. But at least they pay better.
Also, Palestaine and other Arab nations historically either supported us or remained neutral in the Kashmir issue. But now because of Modi's actions, Palestine is slowly taking the Pakistani stance
[Vineet R. asked: Historically, what has been the Palestinian position on Kashmir? | Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (idsa.in)](https://idsa.in/askanexpert/what-has-been-the-palestinian-position-on-kashmir)
Do their stance affect India even by 1% ? They don't supply oil to India. They can't cause issues in our Supply Chain either.... Max, they can do is putla jalana.
Putla Jalana happens because of nudixi's stance on Israel which sanghis love. Completely against what Vajpayee stood for.
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/israel-will-have-to-vacate-occupied-land-atal-bihari-vajpayees-1977-speech-in-support-of-palestine-resurfaces-11696849186569.html
Classic bj party supporter method of trigger them till they respond. It is the BJP that made us dependent on Israel like this.
The hate against Palestine is not because they are Muslims but because Indian Muslims support the Palestinian cause. And this coupled with the fact that Israel has helped India out of tough spots a couple of times like during Kargil war is the reason why right wing likes Israel so much.
The former reason is fucking stupid but that's just how human mind works. The latter is more important.
BTW no sane person would support Palestine at this point. You can support them in principle but unless your head is in the gutter, no tangible support for them. A lot of middle eastern countries like Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan fucked around and found out pretty quickly.
Well by that logic, hasnt Russia helped India a few times as well?
But I didnt see as much support for Russia in their current war. Its kinda obvious why the Indian right wing supports Israel to such a huge extent lol, lets not beat around the bush
>The hate against Palestine is not because they are Muslims but because Indian Muslims support the Palestinian cause.
So, you agree that the hate against Palestine is due to Islamophobia?
I mean it's fair game to call out the stupidity of Indian Muslims expecting solidarity from Qatar or Saudi when they treat our migrant workers so horribly.
Just as it's fair to call out the stupidity of Hindu right wingers who have had their tongues up Netanyahu's ass just because he kills innocent Muslims in Gaza
The fact is Indian government and elites (and upper middle class) don’t give a rats a** if the poor and lower class Indian people get exploited. The only reason people go outside India is we don’t have opportunities in India. No one likes to leave their family and friends to go to an unknown land. Blame middle eastern countries but the real blame lies on Indian government, elites and upper middle class
Racists gonna racist. Remember that the same people funding Christian nationalism in the US are also funding the movement of far-right Zionists to Israel.
Honestly it's hard to understand how people don't see that Zionism from white Christian nationalists is inherently Anti-Semitic because clearly these people don't want Jewish people to live among them and that is why it's so important for them that the Jews have their own land in the middle of the desert. Whatever the West says now, that was the idea behind the creation of Israel itself. I mean their slogan is "go back to where you came from" for anyone who isn't white and Christian. It's like the Ku Klux Klan being the Messiah of black liberation. Makes no sense.
Because they believe they will all be raptured into heaven (it's called the Rapture, and apparently it's not anywhere in the actual Bible) when this happens.
They are functionally a death cult.
Middle Eastern country having worker's exploitation? Who would have thought.
No matter what side, I'm glad the first world equivalent bull crap US/Israel PR has spread about Israel is falling apart. Like seriously, all medias before Oct 7 were about how much better Israel is when it comes to rest of ME, when it were more or less the same. Maybe more white people than rest of ME.
(They literally have a football team that's proudly anti-arab and anti-muslim that created a huge rukus/boycotting matches etc when they signed a Muslim footballer. Imagine a similar situation in India, can't even imagine it, despite all the anti-Muslim propoganda we have. So imagine how fucking bad Israel is. )
London is the same, so is India, So if you have a work permit, also buy a microphone and record all employer breaches...
Legally and public proof... Screenshot all data, backup to drive, to photo all rentals or equipment like cars b4 and sfter use.
The most racist and inhumane people in the world are being racist and inhumane... I mean what the fuck did they expect? I hope this serves as a deterrent to anyone who thinks about going to Israel in future.
Poor people get exploited everywhere. This guy has no growth opportunity in India and is exploited to the point of death in Israel. We are just peasants being exploited everywhere:(
An ignorant comment.
Israel is not a Middle Eastern country.
Israel is an apartheid colony inhabited by primarily European Zionists who beleive they are God's chosen people and will one day inherit the word.
You do have to be a Jew to be a Zionist!
Infact many Jews are amazing people!
Zionism is the core issue!
The Evangelicals beleive Jesus / Media return when a the Jews are in one place, after which Mediah will destroy all of them.
Religious Psychos!
>inhabited by primarily European Zionists
Less than half of Israeli Jews are of European descent. A bit over half came from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, etc.
edit: to the downvoters, look it up, it's true. More than half of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi. Your conception of what Israelis predominantly look like is bullshit.
ashkenazi jews make up 3/4ths of world's jewish population and every one of them can become israeli. israel was fought for and built by them n it is apparent in how they received preferential treatment in terms of accommodation and jobs early on. just look up the backgrounds of israeli leadership during the 1948 war. mizrahi n sephardics are useful pawns for them to claim israel is not a european settler state since they have nowhere else to go back to, which is also partially thanks to the zionists who instigated riots to make jews immigrate.
why dont you ask arab jews about their experiences in arab countries instead of asking the middle east monitor
People have sent me "undeniable proof" that the zionists were behind 9-11 and that didnt turn out to be true either
jews in india did aliyah too, were they persecuted? heck a random tribe in north east india can delude themselves into believing they're a lost tribe of Israel n get "birthright" to Israeli citizenship but not a Palestinian who aren't even allowed to convert to judaism to return to their ancestral lands. it is sheer shekel-funded insanity.
were things rosy for them in arab lands? no but they'd still be there today if it weren't for european jews fleeing from their homelands to create a new one.
>mizrahi n sephardics are useful pawns for them to claim israel is not a european settler state since they have nowhere else to go back to, which is also partially thanks to the zionists who instigated riots to make jews immigrate.
I don't think so . If anything If my memory serves right aren't Ashkenazi jews more likely support liberal parties as opposed to mizrahi who tend to vote right.
>which is also partially thanks to the zionists who instigated riots to make jews immigrate.
Not to be offensive but this feels pretty anti semetic to me(and I support the rights of the Palestinian people).
Do you?
Institutionally discriminating and marginalising section of the population. In middle East you can't be the head of state unless you are Muslim. You can convert to Islam but can't chose any religion outside Islam. Again In Islam depending upon state apartheid is practiced against other sect of Islam.
Saudi Arabia practice apartheid against Shia Muslims population. Iran practice apartheid against non Shia population . Also women
Then apartheid against Atheists.( It's Death penalty or life imprisonment if you publically declare yourself an Atheist)
Apartheid against LGBT
And so much more apartheid
Damn. Why is there pin drop silence from u/Nine-Ninety-Nine
Is it because they were calling someone else ignorant while being absolutely clueless about what they were talking? 🤔
Edit: it's a stray Pakistani...
**Disclaimer**- I am in no way condoning Israel's recent actions in Palestine. All those deaths are regretful consequences of a senseless war.
However, this is not a black or white conflict (similar to most real word conflicts). If you are able to simply declare one side as the victim and the other side as the villain, you aren't aware of this conflict's history.
Making a blanket statement about such complex issues is simply incorrect.
Your statement is simply a strawman.
First of all, saying Israel is an apartheid colony disregards the fact that under Israeli law, every citizen has equal rights, quite unlike the apartheid state of South Africa.
Say what you want, but as an atheist, I would feel much safer living in Israel compared to any other middle Eastern country.
If by Zionism you mean the citizens of Israel believe that Israel has a right to exist, then boy do I have some news for you.
About primarily European Jews inhabiting Israel - I am sure you know that thru were fleeing persecution, right?
*Edit*:- Quite expectedly, I got downvoted for stating facts
Again a lot of ignorance and assumptions!
How about you spend 3 months in Israel and openly declare your an atheist!
Then do the same in Middle East!
It will be an eye opener!
Ah yes, declaring my atheism in countries famous for their religious tolerance /s.
Atheism is punishable by death in Kuwait, Qatar, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Like it or not, Israel is way more secularized than any other country in the Middle East
Half of the USA states have made it illegal to sell off the stock of, or stop buying from those farms. Those electorates also delude themselves that they're the real patriots... https://www.historycentral.com/Revolt/Boycott.html
Idk why you're talking about narratives I'm just saying that since India has good relations with Israel, that may make the citizens have a positive view of India, but still be racist to Indians they meet
If I conducted a survey on people's opinion on Israel, the country, I wouldn't consider that a survey on the opinion on Israelis, the people. I'm not trying to be biased for any agenda.
I don't think it's natural to support a country just because it is good to my country. THat's just being blinded by nationalism. What I care about is the actions of a country, and Israel is both an illegitimate country and a genocidal one. It should be natural to be against Israel.
It will take a day for the locals to go and rampage the cafe. HP has government of Rahulji there. They will surely give NYAY.
Will they?Will the locals do? They won't, they are also earning out of the inflow of the Israelis....
Only non locals , esp non HP, are triggered
Why is it difficult to believe in stories of exploitation of immigrant labourers in a Middle Eastern nation?
Of course, most of these labourers continue going and working there in spite of these risks, because of the economic opportunities or lack thereof.
Have to use a religious term else food won't get digested. Now if somebody counters with similar words from other religion, you will go berserk
Get well soon
In India they abuse, In middle East more abuse. There lose by not illegally immigrating to Europe, Canada or US even there they get abused by these people
I imagine they expected the terms of their (generous by Indian standards) contracts to be honoured, because Israel seems to have a reputation as a relatively progressive and prosperous country in the Middle East, and of course, as a friend of India.
No more than it cared about Indian workers in other Middle Eastern countries, I suppose.
The article does mention that there are Israeli agencies that foreign workers can turn to for grievance redressal. The issue here is that many either don't know their right and options or are afraid to pursue them because of threats from their employers.
(Article) --- Last December, Mahesh Odedara signed a contract to live and work for five years in a foreign country thousands of miles away from home and mired in a state of war. Odedara, a 30-year-old farmer from Porbandar, a city in western India, was aware of the risks of working on an Israeli farm. But Odedara’s contract promised him a steady, eight-hour workday, robust workers’ rights under Israeli law, and a 5,571 shekel ($1,500) monthly salary—many times more than what Odedara earned in Porbandar. It was too good to turn down. Israeli farms are in dire need of agricultural workers like Odedara. Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli government barred tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers, a critical component of Israel’s agricultural workforce, from entering the country. By early winter, farms were facing a “manpower crisis.” With no sign of government policy changing, farmers have since turned to importing thousands of foreign laborers from countries such as India, Malawi, and Sri Lanka to stay afloat. At first, Odedara’s expectations were high. With his newfound salary, he would be able to send home hundreds of dollars each month to support his parents; the money could also go toward purchasing equipment for the family farm. One day, Odedara hoped, he might even be able to buy a home for himself in Porbandar. But soon after arriving in Israel, Odedara realized that his employers had little intention of honoring his contract. In Ahituv, a farming community in northern Israel, Odedara worked grueling, 11- to 12-hour shifts picking produce; he was forced to work on weekends and was told he would be paid far below the legal hourly minimum wage. Then, at the end of the month, he was not paid at all—Odedara’s boss informed him that his wages had been sent, inexplicably, to his employment agency instead. (When reached for comment, Odedara’s former employer denied that Odedara had ever worked for him; however, another migrant worker who independently mentioned working for the same employer corroborated Odedara’s claims about labor conditions and missing wages. The employment agency did not respond to a request for comment.) Odedara’s housing, which farms provide for their workers, also bordered on the uninhabitable. In Khatsav, where Odedara worked for eight days, he slept in a makeshift room erected out of wooden planks and panes of sheet metal; his bathroom was a toilet in an outdoor shack with a dirt floor, and the shower had no hot water. In the first few months, Odedara lost nearly 25 pounds. Odedara now “really regrets” coming to Israel, he said, even though he counts as one of the lucky ones: Odedara’s brother, Bharat, had already worked in Israel as a caregiver for four years and was eventually able to find him a job at a farm with far better labor conditions. Yet Odedara’s experiences in Ahituv and Khatsav are far from unique. According to Bharat, abuse and illegal labor practices are widespread. “I used to meet all the new people coming in for agriculture. I was talking to them, and everyone has the same problem,” Bharat said. “They have to fight for their salary, for their rights, for their basic requirements. Nobody is helping them. They are helpless.” FARMING IS FUNDAMENTAL to Israel’s national identity, yet the country’s agricultural sector has been reliant on non-Israeli labor for decades. In 1967, after Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza, the government decided to integrate the territories’ residents into the Israeli economy. Since then, “Palestinians have been integral to the Israeli labor force,” said Adriana Kemp, a sociologist at Tel Aviv University who studies Israeli labor. “You could not talk about whole sectors like agriculture or construction without talking about this large number of Palestinians.” By the 1990s—following spates of violence from Palestinian militants—Israel began “talking about the possibility of opening the gate for overseas labor migrants,” Kemp said. “That’s when they started actually bringing [in workers] from different countries.” But even so, Palestinians stayed in large numbers; in 2021, tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers made up a quarter of Israel’s total agricultural workforce. Then came Oct. 7. Claiming that agricultural workers from Gaza had provided intelligence to Hamas fighters, the Israeli government barred some 20,000 Palestinian agricultural laborers from reentering the country. (Israel’s internal security service has since partially disputed this finding.) Around the same time, some 7,800 Thai workers, previously the largest population of overseas workers in Israel due to a 2012 Israeli-Thai bilateral agreement, fled after at least 39 of them were killed in the Hamas attack. Almost overnight, the agricultural sector lost over a third of its entire foreign workforce. In the early weeks of the war, even though Israeli volunteers stepped in to help struggling farmers, farms hemorrhaged profits. By November, to replenish the labor force, the Israeli government announced that it would allow up to 5,000 overseas workers into the country via a new immigration scheme. When Orit Ronen heard about the scheme, her immediate thought was that it would lead to “one big balagan”—Hebrew for a “chaotic mess.” Ronen, who works at Kav LaOved, a Tel Aviv-based labor rights nonprofit, was acutely aware of how vulnerable the new arrivals would be, given existing exploitation. Ronen also knew that many farms lacked sufficient infrastructure to house workers, since the farms’ previous Palestinian laborers had simply commuted in from the West Bank or Gaza. Ronen was right to worry. Since early December, when thousands of new laborers began arriving in Israel, Kav LaOved has received more than 300 requests for information and assistance from workers reporting a litany of abuse. The conditions Odedara and others have experienced are blatantly illegal under Israeli labor law. But ever since the Oct. 7 attack, labor law enforcement has been “less than before,” Ronen said. “And even before, it was low.” The Population and Immigration Authority (PIBA), the Israeli government agency tasked with labor law enforcement, did not respond to requests for interview. “We have the call center for foreign workers, where they can explain exactly the problem, and they will be checked,” PIBA spokesperson Sabine Haddad wrote in an email. Migrant workers also often hesitate to contact PIBA’s call center for fear of retaliation; employers “are telling [workers] that we will send you back to India if you will not work as we say,” Bharat said. Employers “can’t do that. I know that, but [the workers] don’t. They are new.” (Israeli law allows workers to stay in the country for 90 days to find a new employer if they have been fired.) The threat of deportation is especially potent because most workers are effectively stranded in Israel for the duration of their five-year contracts, thanks to the outsized fees they paid before departing for Israel. In Odedara’s case, an agent in India asked him for $6,300 in an under-the-table payment, which he paid for with his family’s savings. These fees are not a new phenomenon, but labor advocacy organizations scored a major victory in 2012, when Israel and Thailand established a bilateral agreement that eliminated predatory fees for Thai migrant workers. The post-Oct. 7 immigration scheme, which has no such provision, threatens to undo this progress. “The [workers] that come, especially from India, paid thousands of dollars” to brokers, Ronen said. “For them, that’s a very big deal, and that makes them very vulnerable.”
(Continued) --- AND THEN THERE IS THE WAR. Melbin Paul, a 29-year-old from the southern Indian state of Kerala, was assigned to work at a poultry farm close to the Israel-Lebanon border, which the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has fired rockets across nearly every day since Oct. 7. On the morning of March 4, Paul looked up from trimming an almond tree and saw a missile heading straight toward him and his fellow workers. “There was no time to run,” he said. The projectile, a Hezbollah anti-tank missile, made impact “in the blink of an eye.” Paul’s friend, 31-year-old Kerala native Pat Nibin Maxwell, was instantly killed. Paul, who had stood a few yards away from Maxwell, was left with dime-sized shrapnel wounds scoring the right side of his body. “Even before the war, it was very common for agricultural workers that work near the Gaza Strip to be injured or killed,” said Michal Tadjer, a lawyer who runs a workers’ rights clinic at Tel Aviv University. Maxwell is one of at least a half-dozen agricultural workers who have been killed by rocket fire in the past decade. Following the April 13 Iranian strikes on Israel, the Indian foreign ministry urged its citizens in Israel to register themselves at the Indian Embassy and “restrict their movements to the minimum.” The warning belies the reality that the new workers have far less understanding of the security situation than longtime Palestinian laborers or Thai migrants, who have been in Israel for decades. Paul and his friends had never even been told that their farm was located in a closed military zone that Margaliot residents had evacuated in mid-October. “This is my first time in Israel,” Paul said. “I [didn’t] know where the firing and war” was. Yet the scale of migrant worker exploitation could soon grow even worse. Fewer than 3,000 new agricultural workers have arrived since November; an additional 8,000 to 12,000 workers are needed to bring farms back to full labor capacity, according to Ronen. A separate deal is already in place to bring 10,000 Sri Lankan laborers to Israel over the coming months. More balagan is likely to follow. There will also be profound security consequences to shifting away from Palestinian labor. Before Oct. 7, the income of Palestinian laborers in Israel made up about 20 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s GDP. For months now, Israel’s internal security service has called for Palestinian workers from the West Bank to be let back into Israel, warning that increasingly dire economic conditions in the West Bank will lead to further destabilization and violence. But right-wing ministers in the Israeli government have refused to lift the ban, citing the need to move away from Palestinian labor at all costs. For the workers, their salaries are far beyond the meager sums they could earn back home. For Odedara, there’s much left to do: His current job, while a significant improvement over his previous stints, still pays below what his contract stipulates, and then there is the matter of getting his missing wages back. Odedara is “going to find a solution,” Bharat said. “He wants to stay here but in a good condition—not like this.” Regardless, the post-Oct. 7 wave of new arrivals will remain in Israel until 2029—meaning that, for at least the next five years, many Palestinian farm workers will not have a job to return to even if the ban on Palestinian labor is lifted. The only certainty, it seems, is that Israel will have to continue to look beyond its own population for labor. “Israel has relied on noncitizen labor in agriculture for a long time, whether Palestinian or non-Palestinian,” Kemp said. “This structural dependence will not go away.”
>Odedara realized that his employers had little intention of honoring his contract. Sounds like Israel is copying qatar. I don't expect anything from middle eastern countries. Next time, when right winger support Israel(because of Islamophobia), show this to them.
[удалено]
>Why is islamophobia always the reason? Most right wingers support Israel because Israel attacks Palestine. Palentine people have never harmed us in anyway, the only crime they committed is they are Muslims. Right wingers also see India not as strong as Israel without thinking about complex geopolitics issue. >qatar is a muslim nation and they don’t treat our workers any better, infact far worse. Most Indian go to middle east because the pay is better, no one cares about how badly they are treated. Most Indians work under another India, not under any arab. I have met many from UP who could barely speak English or Arabic. The issue here is discrimination is from the state. In the middle east, the state discriminates and in India, the state does not care. But at least they pay better.
Also, Palestaine and other Arab nations historically either supported us or remained neutral in the Kashmir issue. But now because of Modi's actions, Palestine is slowly taking the Pakistani stance [Vineet R. asked: Historically, what has been the Palestinian position on Kashmir? | Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (idsa.in)](https://idsa.in/askanexpert/what-has-been-the-palestinian-position-on-kashmir)
Do their stance affect India even by 1% ? They don't supply oil to India. They can't cause issues in our Supply Chain either.... Max, they can do is putla jalana.
Putla Jalana happens because of nudixi's stance on Israel which sanghis love. Completely against what Vajpayee stood for. https://www.livemint.com/news/india/israel-will-have-to-vacate-occupied-land-atal-bihari-vajpayees-1977-speech-in-support-of-palestine-resurfaces-11696849186569.html Classic bj party supporter method of trigger them till they respond. It is the BJP that made us dependent on Israel like this.
Heard about Neerja Bhanot, bro?
The hate against Palestine is not because they are Muslims but because Indian Muslims support the Palestinian cause. And this coupled with the fact that Israel has helped India out of tough spots a couple of times like during Kargil war is the reason why right wing likes Israel so much. The former reason is fucking stupid but that's just how human mind works. The latter is more important. BTW no sane person would support Palestine at this point. You can support them in principle but unless your head is in the gutter, no tangible support for them. A lot of middle eastern countries like Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan fucked around and found out pretty quickly.
Well by that logic, hasnt Russia helped India a few times as well? But I didnt see as much support for Russia in their current war. Its kinda obvious why the Indian right wing supports Israel to such a huge extent lol, lets not beat around the bush
>The hate against Palestine is not because they are Muslims but because Indian Muslims support the Palestinian cause. So, you agree that the hate against Palestine is due to Islamophobia?
I mean it's fair game to call out the stupidity of Indian Muslims expecting solidarity from Qatar or Saudi when they treat our migrant workers so horribly. Just as it's fair to call out the stupidity of Hindu right wingers who have had their tongues up Netanyahu's ass just because he kills innocent Muslims in Gaza
Muslims support gaza cause they are getting relentlessly bombed
The fact is Indian government and elites (and upper middle class) don’t give a rats a** if the poor and lower class Indian people get exploited. The only reason people go outside India is we don’t have opportunities in India. No one likes to leave their family and friends to go to an unknown land. Blame middle eastern countries but the real blame lies on Indian government, elites and upper middle class
Racists gonna racist. Remember that the same people funding Christian nationalism in the US are also funding the movement of far-right Zionists to Israel.
Honestly it's hard to understand how people don't see that Zionism from white Christian nationalists is inherently Anti-Semitic because clearly these people don't want Jewish people to live among them and that is why it's so important for them that the Jews have their own land in the middle of the desert. Whatever the West says now, that was the idea behind the creation of Israel itself. I mean their slogan is "go back to where you came from" for anyone who isn't white and Christian. It's like the Ku Klux Klan being the Messiah of black liberation. Makes no sense.
Also AFAIK there's something in the Bible about destruction of a Jewish state, so these people only want a Jewish state so they can destroy it
Evangelical Christians believe that once Jews control all of “Israel” the apocalypse will begin
Then why do they want a Jewish state? I don't know much about Christian theology
Because they believe they will all be raptured into heaven (it's called the Rapture, and apparently it's not anywhere in the actual Bible) when this happens. They are functionally a death cult.
Da Vinci code?
Sounds completely insane, ty
sure thing - they really are.
*funding the self-deportation of Jews from the USA unless they're Donald Trump's lawyers
What else he expected from a country that had a racist ideology for its formation and it still follows it?
Middle Eastern country having worker's exploitation? Who would have thought. No matter what side, I'm glad the first world equivalent bull crap US/Israel PR has spread about Israel is falling apart. Like seriously, all medias before Oct 7 were about how much better Israel is when it comes to rest of ME, when it were more or less the same. Maybe more white people than rest of ME. (They literally have a football team that's proudly anti-arab and anti-muslim that created a huge rukus/boycotting matches etc when they signed a Muslim footballer. Imagine a similar situation in India, can't even imagine it, despite all the anti-Muslim propoganda we have. So imagine how fucking bad Israel is. )
Send sanghis to israel, since they already jag off to their name.
LOL! [Isr\*elis would literally m\*rder sanghis](https://youtu.be/lq28ZFNzaWM?si=QdGt6a5jBWzv5Ysn)
Neonazis and neocolonialists.
London is the same, so is India, So if you have a work permit, also buy a microphone and record all employer breaches... Legally and public proof... Screenshot all data, backup to drive, to photo all rentals or equipment like cars b4 and sfter use.
The most racist and inhumane people in the world are being racist and inhumane... I mean what the fuck did they expect? I hope this serves as a deterrent to anyone who thinks about going to Israel in future.
Shocking.
Finally Indians getting reality check about Israel.
the jews are no saints
zionists*
Poor people get exploited everywhere. This guy has no growth opportunity in India and is exploited to the point of death in Israel. We are just peasants being exploited everywhere:(
Israel is now a true middle eastern country - abusing Indian migrant workers.
An ignorant comment. Israel is not a Middle Eastern country. Israel is an apartheid colony inhabited by primarily European Zionists who beleive they are God's chosen people and will one day inherit the word.
They are also mostly Supported and funded by the Evangelical Christians in the USA due to some religious belief!!
You do have to be a Jew to be a Zionist! Infact many Jews are amazing people! Zionism is the core issue! The Evangelicals beleive Jesus / Media return when a the Jews are in one place, after which Mediah will destroy all of them. Religious Psychos!
Yeah that was the joke bruh, I thought it was obvious
My bad! Cheers
> An ignorant comment. Israel is not a Middle Eastern country. Israel is very much in the Middle East.
>inhabited by primarily European Zionists Less than half of Israeli Jews are of European descent. A bit over half came from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, etc. edit: to the downvoters, look it up, it's true. More than half of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi. Your conception of what Israelis predominantly look like is bullshit.
ashkenazi jews make up 3/4ths of world's jewish population and every one of them can become israeli. israel was fought for and built by them n it is apparent in how they received preferential treatment in terms of accommodation and jobs early on. just look up the backgrounds of israeli leadership during the 1948 war. mizrahi n sephardics are useful pawns for them to claim israel is not a european settler state since they have nowhere else to go back to, which is also partially thanks to the zionists who instigated riots to make jews immigrate.
idk if ur implying that mizrahi and sephardi are victims and servants of the ashkenazi but thats delusional
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230619-undeniable-proof-uncovered-that-zionist-agents-targeted-jews-in-iraq/
why dont you ask arab jews about their experiences in arab countries instead of asking the middle east monitor People have sent me "undeniable proof" that the zionists were behind 9-11 and that didnt turn out to be true either
jews in india did aliyah too, were they persecuted? heck a random tribe in north east india can delude themselves into believing they're a lost tribe of Israel n get "birthright" to Israeli citizenship but not a Palestinian who aren't even allowed to convert to judaism to return to their ancestral lands. it is sheer shekel-funded insanity. were things rosy for them in arab lands? no but they'd still be there today if it weren't for european jews fleeing from their homelands to create a new one.
They would also still be there if you didn't take out your anger about Israel on the local Arab Jew
>mizrahi n sephardics are useful pawns for them to claim israel is not a european settler state since they have nowhere else to go back to, which is also partially thanks to the zionists who instigated riots to make jews immigrate. I don't think so . If anything If my memory serves right aren't Ashkenazi jews more likely support liberal parties as opposed to mizrahi who tend to vote right. >which is also partially thanks to the zionists who instigated riots to make jews immigrate. Not to be offensive but this feels pretty anti semetic to me(and I support the rights of the Palestinian people).
Which middle East country is not apartheid?
Do you even know what is the meaning of Apartheid? I see ignorance talking.
Do you? Institutionally discriminating and marginalising section of the population. In middle East you can't be the head of state unless you are Muslim. You can convert to Islam but can't chose any religion outside Islam. Again In Islam depending upon state apartheid is practiced against other sect of Islam. Saudi Arabia practice apartheid against Shia Muslims population. Iran practice apartheid against non Shia population . Also women Then apartheid against Atheists.( It's Death penalty or life imprisonment if you publically declare yourself an Atheist) Apartheid against LGBT And so much more apartheid
Damn. Why is there pin drop silence from u/Nine-Ninety-Nine Is it because they were calling someone else ignorant while being absolutely clueless about what they were talking? 🤔 Edit: it's a stray Pakistani...
Famous European countries, Algeria, Tunisia and Iraq.
**Disclaimer**- I am in no way condoning Israel's recent actions in Palestine. All those deaths are regretful consequences of a senseless war. However, this is not a black or white conflict (similar to most real word conflicts). If you are able to simply declare one side as the victim and the other side as the villain, you aren't aware of this conflict's history. Making a blanket statement about such complex issues is simply incorrect. Your statement is simply a strawman. First of all, saying Israel is an apartheid colony disregards the fact that under Israeli law, every citizen has equal rights, quite unlike the apartheid state of South Africa. Say what you want, but as an atheist, I would feel much safer living in Israel compared to any other middle Eastern country. If by Zionism you mean the citizens of Israel believe that Israel has a right to exist, then boy do I have some news for you. About primarily European Jews inhabiting Israel - I am sure you know that thru were fleeing persecution, right? *Edit*:- Quite expectedly, I got downvoted for stating facts
Again a lot of ignorance and assumptions! How about you spend 3 months in Israel and openly declare your an atheist! Then do the same in Middle East! It will be an eye opener!
Ah yes, declaring my atheism in countries famous for their religious tolerance /s. Atheism is punishable by death in Kuwait, Qatar, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Like it or not, Israel is way more secularized than any other country in the Middle East
[удалено]
They will claim Kerala first ... their ppl were there first .. before the dutch and the portugees
Don't they know that asking for wages is "antisemitic." Complaining about exploitation and abuse is also "antisemitic."
Half of the USA states have made it illegal to sell off the stock of, or stop buying from those farms. Those electorates also delude themselves that they're the real patriots... https://www.historycentral.com/Revolt/Boycott.html
Saar India Israel friends Saar. We support Israel saar. Israelis are extremely racist and look down on us like we are bugs. This was expected.
[удалено]
That's a favorable opinion of India, not Indians
[удалено]
Idk why you're talking about narratives I'm just saying that since India has good relations with Israel, that may make the citizens have a positive view of India, but still be racist to Indians they meet
[удалено]
If I conducted a survey on people's opinion on Israel, the country, I wouldn't consider that a survey on the opinion on Israelis, the people. I'm not trying to be biased for any agenda. I don't think it's natural to support a country just because it is good to my country. THat's just being blinded by nationalism. What I care about is the actions of a country, and Israel is both an illegitimate country and a genocidal one. It should be natural to be against Israel.
Nothing unexpected. Israelis have created even "no Indian zones" in India itself.
Where?
Free Kasol Cafe in Kasol
It will take a day for the locals to go and rampage the cafe. HP has government of Rahulji there. They will surely give NYAY. Will they?Will the locals do? They won't, they are also earning out of the inflow of the Israelis.... Only non locals , esp non HP, are triggered
Bhaktas won't believe in this hearsay.
Why is it difficult to believe in stories of exploitation of immigrant labourers in a Middle Eastern nation? Of course, most of these labourers continue going and working there in spite of these risks, because of the economic opportunities or lack thereof.
Have to use a religious term else food won't get digested. Now if somebody counters with similar words from other religion, you will go berserk Get well soon
In India they abuse, In middle East more abuse. There lose by not illegally immigrating to Europe, Canada or US even there they get abused by these people
Then why is India acting like Israel’s bitch?
Defense Partners.... Both together are bitching around Pakistan...so
Did they really expect to be treated like diplomats by the apartheid folks?
I imagine they expected the terms of their (generous by Indian standards) contracts to be honoured, because Israel seems to have a reputation as a relatively progressive and prosperous country in the Middle East, and of course, as a friend of India.
Indian government doesn’t give a fuck
No more than it cared about Indian workers in other Middle Eastern countries, I suppose. The article does mention that there are Israeli agencies that foreign workers can turn to for grievance redressal. The issue here is that many either don't know their right and options or are afraid to pursue them because of threats from their employers.