Moshav Margaliot is located right on the border with Lebanon. From October 7, 2023 until recently, it was a closed military zone due to non-stop rocket attacks by the Hezbollah terror group. 

Residents of Margaliot and nearby communities were evacuated, abandoning their businesses, mostly in agriculture. 

One of those businesses is a kiwi orchard run by veteran farmer Hezi Mena, who has been supplying produce to supermarkets across Israel for years. 

“During the war, I was still trying to somehow reach the area to water it, until I realized that I was making a very big mistake because the threat was immediate; I was lucky not to have been shot,” he tells ISRAEL21c.

‘A complete mess’

Mena, 43, was finally able to return to his farm for the first time in over a year in early December 2024, after the US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect.

What he discovered was a “catastrophe” that almost made Mena give up on his agricultural dream. 

“It was a complete mess,” says Mena. “A third of the trees have dried up completely because I couldn’t get there to water them. And what somehow survived was overtaken by weeds that grew for over a year without being pruned, or was eaten by animals.”

Mena also found out the orchard was damaged by a mortar shell fired by Hezbollah. “I asked the army to scan the farm before we went in; they did, and found that it had suffered a direct hit,” he recalls.

Even before the start of the war, Mena employed only three workers. But they refused to come back to the war-ravaged moshav. 

“Now, I’m left with one worker. But there is a bigger problem: People don’t want to work in agriculture,” Mena adds. 

The New Guard to the rescue 

Hopeless, and not knowing what to do, Mena phoned HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard), a nonprofit that recruits volunteers to work on farms that require help.

In peacetime, their volunteer efforts focus mostly on security. But since the start of the war, the organization’s volunteers have been keeping afloat agricultural businesses across the country, especially in the south and the north. 

“We need HaShomer HaChadash to instill in people the spirit of agriculture. Thanks to them I didn’t just abandon the business,” explains Mena. 

Mena’s farm is considered small by agricultural standards. While “big farmers” are rehabilitating their businesses independently, small ones lack financial stability to recover without outside help, says Mena. 

In Israel’s north alone, HaShomer HaChadash has so far helped over 100 small-to-medium sized agricultural businesses damaged as a result of the war, including those who simply lacked working hands to harvest the produce. 

“They would send me groups upon groups of volunteers on buses. If they weren’t here to help me rehabilitate the area, I wouldn’t have taken care of it; I would have just left,” admits Mena. 

For the first three months following the ceasefire, dozens of volunteers from HaShomer HaChadash and from an agricultural school came several times a week and worked tirelessly, removing weeds and restoring the orchard.

Seven years to recovery 

“They were last here a week and a half ago and we planted kiwi seedlings that I managed to get my hands on,” says Mena. 

Kiwi seedlings take seven years to flower and up to nine years before they produce fruit. The trees that were damaged by the war were set to be the first harvest of Mena’s orchard, which began growing kiwi only a little over seven years ago. 

“I have invested so much time in them, and they died. What we planted recently, I need to grow them for the next seven years until they bear fruit,” he laments. 

Mena explains that the early stages of growing kiwi trees is “very, very, very tough” because they require “trellising, lots of water, manual work and overall investment.” 

Continuing the legacy 

Mena’s farm was started by his grandfather over 50 years ago, and has undergone several transformations, growing various produce over the years. 

He has been working on the farm since his teenage years and became the sole owner of it after his father passed away, shortly after the start of the recent war. 

“I’m an only child, so I’m responsible for the farm; there’s no one to continue running it besides me,” he adds. 

Mena and his family were evacuated to Rosh Pina at the start of the war, and he still has not come back to live in Margaliot despite his efforts to restore the business in the moshav. 

“My private home is destroyed, not from a direct hit but from damages caused by nature. I have to start over, and I haven’t started starting over yet,” Mena adds. 

He says that volunteers from HaShomer HaHadash are helping him handle the current situation, not only physically but mentally as well.

“These guys talk to me, support and help me; it’s emotional support, and it’s really, really moving. It’s kind of like a brotherhood; it really gives me a lot of strength.”

CEO and Founder of HaShomer HaChadash Yoel Zilberman called Mena’s story “a perfect example of our mission.” 

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