As the war with Gaza nears its tenth month and fighting with Lebanon continues to escalate, 70 factories on Israel’s borders are hard at work producing Israeli goods. The printing press on Kibbutz Be’eri, where over 130 people were killed by Hamas, returned to work just two weeks after the massacre, becoming an instant symbol of Israeli resilience. But Be’eri is just one of many stories, Ronit Harel, head of the Kibbutz Industry Association’s resilience unit, told Davar.
“The factories in Kibbutz Shamir, Dan, Rosh HaNikra and others situated along the northern border also operate on the front lines of the war,” she said. “Every day our people have to work under real danger.”
Harel started work on the resilience unit on October 8. When she made contact with the human resources division at the Kibbutz Industry Association, the union representing 283 kibbutz factories, she didn’t know if the people she was reaching out to had been hurt or even killed in the attack.
“Some of my close relatives were murdered,” she said. “Many of our workers were murdered.”
She quickly realized that the union needed to respond—both for the good of the workers and for the industry itself. Seventy percent of the kibbutz factories are located in Israel’s periphery, and the 32,000 workers at the factories represent 11% of Israel’s total industrial workers.
“If another industrial enterprise or business tries to exploit our workers to increase profits only for the shareholders, we have communities that stand behind the industry,” Harel said. She described kibbutz factories, such as the Be’eri printing press, the Tama ag-tech factory on Mishmar Ha’Emek, the Alchem medical products factory on Baram, and the Kfarit plastics factory on Kfar Aza as “businesses that sustain the kibbutz community.”
With that in mind, the union opened up a counseling hotline for factory workers in southern kibbutzim just one day after the attack. The hotline, which operates in five languages, is a joint project with the Zionist 2000 organization and the International Resilience Center in Sderot.
Three weeks after opening the hotline, Harel and International Resilience Center director Ayelet Shmuel held a meeting with factory CEOs. Harel recounted Shmuel explaining to the CEOs that trauma often sinks in after six months.
“We understood that we needed to create a project of resilience for the factories as soon as possible, because really, only within a month and a half all the factories were already back to work,” she said.
Harel sought to find a solution that would help everyone at the factories—managers and workers, kibbutz members and people from the city.
“There is no difference between the one whose neighbor was murdered in [the southern city of] Ofakim and the one who fought with his body to protect the kibbutz,” she said. “As a kibbutznik, I understand the value of community, and it was clear to us that our employees from [the cities of] Sderot, Netivot, Ashkelon, Ofakim, and the moshavim are all part of the kibbutz industry community.”
The Kibbutz Industry Association developed a partnership with Kav L’Noar, an emotional health organization based in Jerusalem that mostly serves the ultra-Orthodox community. Building a connection between ultra-Orthodox Jerusalemites, workers from Sderot, who are mostly religious and right wing, and workers from the kibbutzim, who are mostly secular and left wing, was no easy task.
“This partnership is part of the understanding that we cannot return to October 6, neither in terms of divisive political discourse nor in terms of the hostility between various demographics in Israeli society,” Harel said. “We must support one another. We must talk to each other. Dialogue is impactful.”
After holding meetings with factory management to define trauma and discuss tools to help employees cope, Kav L’Noar led a series of 10 meetings with workers from each factory.
“We haven’t invented anything new, we’ve just made adjustments to the models of building resilience and dealing with trauma for the industrial world,” Harel explained. “What is the role of the factory in the worker’s life? How do you see the workers and their needs? How do you let someone go when necessary? It’s not easy, but little by little you see that you manage to produce a language of resilience.”
She said that the factories have been an anchor for many workers whose lives changed so drastically on October 7. “It keeps them safe, stable, and the work gives them tools to cope,” she said.
These days, as tensions with Hezbollah and Iran build, Harel is also busy strengthening the resilience of factories on northern kibbutzim. “Even though the workers there did not experience a traumatic event such as October 7, it is an intense combat zone,” she said. “There are factories that are under fire on a daily basis, sometimes with ten sirens a day—yet they continue to work.”
The union has opened a group for human resource managers in northern factories to help them adapt to the emergency protocol.
Harel said that all the factories in northern kibbutzim are active, even those in areas that have been evacuated.
“Of course, it isn’t easy in the nonevacuated towns either,” she said. “Our people have returned to work, including many of the evacuees who arrive each day by shuttle. Some people have been evacuated further away, and many have said they may not want to return to the north after the war."
Industrial work on the front line faces multiple obstacles, including logistical challenges such as supplying raw materials and transporting workers, as well as the growing global tendency to boycott Israeli products.
Harel said caring for the workers is the most important part of the story and the driving force that allows work to continue.
“We must have industry at the borders. We must maintain our economy despite the war,” she said. “This is the insight we gained following October 7: it is impossible to restore communities without a living economy. That is why it is so important to keep the factories operating. It’s industry for the resilience of the people.”
