The New Guardians, a volunteer organization that revolutionized Jewish agriculture-based security in the Galilee and Negev, is celebrating 18 years of activity.
“The story of the establishment of the New Guardians began with a personal family crisis,” says Yoel Zilberman, the director and founder of the New Guardians. “I was on army leave at my home in Tzipori [a moshav in northern Israel] at a family Shabbat dinner when my father told us he was considering closing the family farm. Arab villages on all sides surround our land.”
He adds, “Until then, relations had been great and I grew up with very close friendships and relationships with Arabs in the communities around Tzipori. However, one day a gang of from one of the nearby Arab villages decided to take over the family’s lands. A group of 14 men cut the pasture’s fences, poisoned our animals and also physically attacked my father, who fled in his car. Then about ten different herds belonging to Arabs began grazing on our land.”
Zilberman, 40, is originally from Moshav Tzipori, an agricultural-based moshav in the Lower Galilee, but now lives in the Golan Heights. He is married to Tal, a gynecologist, and together they have five children.
Besides leading the New Guardians, he also serves in the IDF reserves with the rank of lieutenant colonel and fought in the war against Hamas. “On Oct. 7, 2023, we recruited over a hundred jeeps and drivers on social media. These drivers took fighters into action, rescued hundreds of people from their homes, and evacuated hundreds of bodies,” he said.
This led to the creation of the Mount Zion Mobile Brigade, established by the IDF Home Front Command, to provide a rapid response by jeep units to enemy incursions.
Returning to the story of the New Guardians, Zilberman said, “After hundreds of complaints to the police were ignored, my father finally managed to contact the commander of the regional police station. He recommended that my father give the gang a monthly ‘protection’ payment or part of his land, and then they might leave him alone. You have to understand that it is state-owned land my father is leasing.”
He continued, “When my father told us he was considering closing the farm, it was clear to me that I couldn’t allow that to happen. A week later, I received an Israeli flag from my sergeant on base and returned home. I called up a few buddies, took an irrigation hose, pitched a tent, put two mattresses and a few bottles of water in it, and hung the flag I got from my commander on it, and that’s how the first guard post was established.”
The guard post worked, scaring away potential invaders. Today, the New Guardians places tens of thousands of volunteers from all over the country on farms across Israel. These volunteers engage in a variety of activities related to protecting farmland and connecting young people to the land through agriculture.
When this first guard post was established, additional volunteers began to arrive to help Zilberman protect his father’s lands.
In Zilberman’s words, “They were friends from the army, from my high school and people from the area. After a few months of this, the head of the Cattle Breeders Association, Haim Dayan, asked me to hold a public symposium on the matter.”
He continued, “At this conference, I met the famous IDF commando, Meir Har-Zion, who told us that we needed to help farmers throughout the country. All the ranchers at the conference presented their personal struggles with the gangs and land theft. There were many very difficult stories. Even more painful was that only people sixty years and older attended. They had no future generations to take over the family farm.”
Over time, as more volunteers arrived to help protect the farms, Zilberman discovered that the vast majority of them had never been involved in agriculture. In those years, agricultural terrorism was featured prominently on news broadcasts and the public mobilized for the mission to help farmers protect their lands, livelihoods, and property.
“I had the opportunity to meet hundreds of volunteers who came to lend a hand, and I realized that the importance of working the land was no longer a part of their education,” Zilberman said. “They had all visited the Western Wall, Yad Vashem and Masada. In other words, they all visited places that represented destruction, to one degree or another. But the thing that most symbolizes growth, creation, putting down roots and returning to nature, had been completely erased from the education system.”
This led to the organization launching an educational program.
“There is a difference between giving a child something ready-made, or whether he builds it himself with Lego,” he said. “Obviously, he will appreciate something more if he built it himself. The same is true of the connection to the land through agriculture. How do you learn to value your land if you don’t work on it yourself? It used to be a central component of our education and identity, but all of that was erased in the 1990s. I grew up right inside this crisis, when the aspiration became to become rich with a start-up company and education began to focus more on business and technology.”
He continued, “In the past, thousands of dunams of agricultural lands were surrendered in Israel. Today things are very different. There is not a square meter of abandoned farm land, and there are hundreds of thousands of new dunams in Israel being used for agricultural work and grazing. Our method has proven itself. It’s not a one-time thing, but a daily grip on the land, and whoever is the last one standing is the winner. This is the Middle East.”
Following the success of the New Guardians, many similar organizations were established, including Artzenu, Hechalutz, Kedma and the Guardians of Judea & Samaria.
“There are common criminal acts that started in agriculture and spread like an epidemic,” Zilberman explained. “We know that there are protection rackets today not only in agriculture, but in every field. Unfortunately, the State of Israel whitewashes the problem. It literally gives money and budgets to government tenders to pay for protection. Regrettably, there is not a single minister in Israel who is brave enough to stand up and address this issue, despite the fact that there is a special law to deal with the problem that is not being enforced.”
He added, “Farmers are the first wall protecting society, but as soon as this wall is breached, it reaches everywhere. What provides security for the residents? Not fences, but the people who go outside the fences, protecting the farm lands located outside the settlements, and showing we are not afraid to protect what is ours.”
This article was first published in Hebrew by Olam Katan.