Cherry trees in Gush Etzion
Cherry trees in Gush EtzionGershon Elinson/Flash90

After the court released three Arab residents of the Beit Ummar village who stole dozens of pounds of cherries and destroyed and damaged cherry trees in Gush Etzion, Yaron Rosenthal, Kfar Etzion Field School Director, published their pictures and urged that they not be employed in the future.

Rosenthal wrote in a post: "The court released the three cherry thieves we caught red-handed harvesting dozens of pounds of cherries in our orchard, and damaging the trees. And if you ask why there is so much agricultural terror and theft from orchards - the leniency with which the court addresses this plague of the country is the central reason for it.”

I think the readiness to forgive on the part of the judges is mainly related to the fact that they do not understand how difficult it is to be a farmer in the country, and it is our job to explain, educate, yell, persuade, and restore agriculture to its natural place, as the most obvious expression of the relationship with the land. For thousands of years, our people have not been engaged in agriculture, and there is apparently still a long way to go before we go back to appreciating the right we have here, that we did not have in the diaspora. "

Rosenthal concluded: "I chose to publish the pictures of the thieves from the village of Beit Ummar, so that no one from Gush Etzion will ever employ them!"