A foreign agricultural worker from Thailand was killed today after being struck by unexploded munitions while working in the northern kibbutz of Yir’on.
Nissan Marim, 42, is just the latest foreign worker to be affected by the ongoing conflict. In March, the 30-year-old Indian worker Patnibin Maxwell was killed by an antitank missile in the orchards of Moshav Margaliot.
That’s after some 50 foreign workers were killed and 30 taken hostage on October 7. Nine Thai workers are still held hostage in Gaza.
Some have raised concerns that foreign workers are being made to work in unsafe conditions.
Yahel Kurlanded, a consultant to the foreign workers advocacy organization Kav LaOved, lamented the continued employment of foreign workers in dangerous areas that lack access to bomb shelters. Such workers are being used as “cannon fodder,” she said.
“It is prohibited by law to employ foreign workers in evacuated areas,” Interior Minister Moshe Arbel said after news broke of Marim’s death. “The head of the Population and Immigration Authority and I agreed to tighten the enforcement of the ban on employing foreign workers in evacuated areas. The obligation to protect the lives of all people is more important than opening drip irrigation in evacuated agricultural areas.”
This article was translated from Hebrew and edited for context by Leah Schwartz.