Danielle Abraham

For farmers in northern Israel – where almost 95% of all Israeli apples are grown – the past year has been anything but sweet. These agricultural heartlands are reeling from the devastation wrought by almost 2 years of war. Over 9,000 rockets rained down across the region, reducing well over 40,000 hectares – twenty times the size of Haifa –  of orchards, vineyards and pastures to ash. Even partial estimates of agricultural damages exceed $100 million. I wish the losses were only agricultural.

After three months spent tirelessly scouring the news, I thought I understood what happened on October 7th. The loss was still too much to bear, but I thought I understood. Then came the curve ball. During one of my many trips to the Otef as part of my work with ReGrow Israel – an initiative dedicated to saving and strengthening the devastated farming communities in the western Negev – a sentence stood out.

How do we ensure that the farmers of the western Negev not only survive, but emerge once again as global leaders in agricultural production? Israel made the desert bloom. Against all odds, a group of visionary pioneers realized an agricultural miracle. They turned a dry, rocky, barren desert quite literally into a garden of Eden. And this was the true triumph of Zionism, a pioneering spirit and no small dose of ingenuity and innovation. No region embodies this triumph more than the western Negev.