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She doesn’t know why they’re fighting in the Holy Land, on the other side of the world, or even who exactly is fighting. All she wants is for her son to come home.
In Thailand’s impoverished northeast, among cassava fields and cows dozing in the heat, Watsana Yojampa has her son’s new house almost ready for his return. There is a room for her daughter, which will soon be painted purple because that is her favorite shade of Care Bear. She will have stylish lighting fixtures and air conditioning.
In less than two years, his son Anucha Angkaew, 28, had saved enough as an avocado farm worker in Israel to pay for the construction. On October 6, Ms. Watsana showed him bathroom tile options via video call. He was very picky about his “modern house” and promised to respond to her about his preferred shade of gray, she said.
A day after that call, Hamas attackers laid siege to Israeli communities near the Gaza border. According to the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by the time the bloodshed stopped, 32 Thai farm workers had been killed and at least 22 had been taken hostage. Another estimate puts the total number of Thais who were killed, kidnapped or missing but feared dead at 80.
Either way, the Thais, who have no connection to Israel except as a destination for a few years of hard work, are the second largest group of victims in the October 7 attack, after the Israelis.
Anucha was among a group of Thai hostages whose photos were posted on social media, their faces terrified as a masked man pointed an assault rifle at them. Her 7-year-old daughter still doesn’t know what happened in Israel. Her family has told him that her phone is broken and that is why dad has suspended his daily check-ups on her.
“Why are they hurting Thai people? Why are they kidnapping my son? Ms. Watsana asked visiting New York Times reporters. “We have nothing to do with their war.”
Thailand is the largest source of foreign agricultural labor in Israel, with around 30,000 citizens working there before the Hamas attack. Nearly a month later, the plight of Thai farm workers remains trapped in a haze of bureaucratic mystery and diplomatic ambiguity.
Families of those missing or believed to be hostages say they have not received any communication from Thai or Israeli government officials.
Many relatives in Thailand say they have no idea whether their loved ones are alive or dead, or how to know.
“It’s natural that there will be confusion in the days after Hamas terrorism, but it’s been almost a month now,” said Dr. Yahel Kurlander, a migration expert at Israel’s Tel-Hai College, who has helped compile lists of victims. thai
Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara, the Thai foreign minister, flew to the Middle East and said on Friday that Iran, Egypt and Qatar were acting as intermediaries with Hamas to try to free the hostages. An earlier Israeli count of Thai hostages put the number at 54, out of more than 220 people believed to have been taken to Gaza.
On Wednesday, Ms Watsana received a call from a local Thai official telling her she needed to send a DNA sample. Is it because her son has died or is it a routine collection process? She does not know. The local official said he didn’t know either.
“I hope to have good news, but right now I just need any news,” Ms. Watsana said.
Another farm worker, Kriangsak Phansuri, was resting on October 7 – his day off – within sight of the barbed wire border with Gaza, when he heard what sounded like rockets overhead.
Mr. Kriangsak looked and saw men in military uniforms. He assumed it was Israeli soldiers who were there to protect the Thais. But as they moved forward, Mr. Kriangsak noticed that they all had beards. He and the other farmers blocked their door with boxes of potatoes they had just harvested.
Finally, the uniformed men left and the Thai workers came out waiting for help. None came. A few hours later, more militants returned, this time dressed in black. Kriangsak and others dispersed to a nearby orange orchard. The shots echoed through the fruit trees. An accented voice mocked them in Thai, shouting sawasdee or hello. The Thais were silent.
He said the workers did not leave the orchard until the next morning.
“The rockets didn’t scare me,” he said. “But after this attack, I knew I couldn’t stay in Israel any longer.”
Mr. Kriangsak returned to his home in Udon Thani province on a repatriation flight organized by the Thai government.
Thai laborers working in the fields near Gaza grow much of the fresh produce that feeds Israel. Many come from the dusty villages of Isaan in northeastern Thailand, especially Udon Thani, where a Vietnam War-era American air base was converted into a civilian airport, the means by which generations of workers have sought escape poverty. Entire family trees of Udon Thani men have worked for years in the Middle East and Asia. Thousands of Western men have also settled in Udon Thani, bringing more cross-cultural currents.
The most coveted overseas jobs, residents say, are in Israel, where salaries can be at least five times higher than at home. However, Thai immigrants quickly discover that orange groves, strawberry fields and avocado farms are just a short distance from rockets fired from Gaza.
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system does not cover sparsely populated farms. Because they are considered temporary workers, Thais can stay in caravans and containers without the necessary missile shelters in other homes. In 2021, two Thai workers were killed by a Hamas rocket attack.
Still, money earned in Israel can be life-changing, and although some 7,200 Thai workers returned home after the Hamas attack, many thousands stayed. The danger remains. On October 10, two Thai farmers were killed by a Hamas rocket attack from Gaza, according to the local emergency service. On October 21, in northern Israel, two Thai workers were injured by Hezbollah rockets.
“It’s hard work and long hours, and rockets fly overhead,” said Sawaeng Phathee of Udon Thani, who had worked on a farm in Israel for 63 weeks, the maximum length of the contract. “But when we have the money in our hands, the fatigue disappears.”
Mr. Sawaeng’s nephew, Kiattisak Patee, was believed to have been kidnapped and taken to Gaza, along with Mr. Anucha. On Wednesday, Kiattisak’s father, Khamsee Phathee, who once worked in construction in Saudi Arabia, sat in the newly completed house that his son financed with profits from a chicken farm in Israel. A newly acquired car and tractor were also waiting outside.
“I go to pray at all the holy places I can find and I go to fortune tellers for their wisdom,” Khamsee said. “I can not do anything else”.
While Thai workers say they have nothing to do with a conflict that has been simmering for decades, their presence in Israel, which began to increase sharply in the 1990s, coincided with a desire to replace Palestinian workers with hand of foreign work after the first uprising of the Intifada by Palestinians.
Although most Thai farmworkers work legally in Israel, about 7,000 of the 30,000 are undocumented, labor groups estimate. While these workers enter Israel with valid visas, they overstay or change employers without notifying officials.
Gong Saelao is a member of the Hmong ethnic minority, one of the poorest in Thailand. His family went into debt to pay for his trip to Israel. In Thailand, Mr. Gong had earned about $10 a day transporting fruits and vegetables. The daily wage in Israel was about $50.
His wife, Suntharee Saelee, lives in a cinder-block house with a dirt floor in northern Thailand, near the border with Myanmar and Laos. On October 7, her husband posted on a Facebook account what he thought was a rocket attack. Ms. Suntharee chatted with him and told him to stay safe. That night, when she heard about the Hamas attacks, she called and called Mr. Gong, but got no answer.
After a few days, when lists of victims appeared in Facebook groups, Suntharee worried that his undocumented status meant he wouldn’t be counted. He visited the local employment office, which had advertised the job in Israel. They had no information.
A week after the Hamas attack, a Times journalist sent Suntharee a still image from a video that had been circulating online. The video, a graphic montage of people killed and assaulted in Hamas raids, featured a brief image of a man trapped in a chokehold and men dressed in black holding him down. That was her husband, Suntharee confirmed. It was her shirt, her black, wavy hair, her rosebud lips.
“People on the Internet responded to me and told me to go read the story about how Palestinians and Hamas are oppressed,” Ms. Suntharee said. “Well, I understand, but Gong is an innocent person.”