Thailand has confirmed the death of twelve of its nationals in Israel, at the hands of Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza on Saturday. Even more surprising is that at least eleven of those kidnapped in said raid and currently imprisoned in the strip would also be Thai nationals. This was reported by the Foreign Ministry in Bangkok, which also reported the presence of eight Thais among the injured.
Thus, Thais would represent a surprisingly high percentage of the hostages in Gaza, whose number would be between one hundred and one hundred and thirty, according to various estimates. The use of the Israelis as a bargaining chip to negotiate the release of more than five thousand Palestinian prisoners is taken for granted. On the other hand, the large number of hostages could be forcing the Israeli army to measure its bombings – ongoing since Saturday afternoon – and would increase the risks of the invasion probably in the making, due to the possible use of human shields.
Some thirty thousand Thais work in the Israeli agricultural sector, in many cases in plantations and greenhouses in the south that sometimes border the fences installed by Israel after gaining ground in the 1967 war. The presence of Thai day laborers dates back to 2005, when The blockade of Gaza – still in force – forced agricultural owners and cooperatives that until then employed Gazans to look for foreign labor.
Those Jews who, in the first decades of the state of Israel, “turned the desert into a garden” through their kibbutz, provoking the admiration of half the world – and especially the left – have long ago turned their backs on this type of labors.
Although several Western countries, such as the United States, already count some victims among the thousand or so deaths caused by the Hamas orgy of blood, in many cases they are Israeli Jews with dual or triple nationality (more than a million Israelis would have the less than a second passport). The situation is different for Filipino domestic workers or Thai agricultural workers, often on five-year work visas, with no other link to the Zionist state than purely labor.
The Philippines is still trying to determine the number of its nationals affected – more than thirty thousand work in Israel – while Cambodia already recognizes one death. The massacre comes as a shock to Southeast Asia, where the vast majority of countries are neutral in the conflict and recognize both Israel and Palestine. The exceptions are Burma and Singapore, which only recognize Israel, as well as Malaysia and Indonesia, which only recognize Palestine. In fact, the first time, Indonesia’s refusal to host the Israeli soccer team in its U-20 World Cup, “out of respect for human rights,” led FIFA to move the celebration to Argentina.
“We are trying to help all the citizens of Thailand,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Kanchana Patarachoke. Her ministry has condemned “violence in all its forms” and has demanded “the cessation of clashes” as well as “the immediate release of all civilians”. He has also clarified that around 5,000 of the 30,000 Thais in Israel work in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip. Their industriousness and resistance to heat is highly appreciated in the greenhouses.
It should be said that Ashkelon, one of the towns hardest hit by the Hamas incursion, as well as the land where Esderot stands, were part of the area attributed to the Palestinians in the plan for the division of British Palestine approved by the United Nations in 1947. However, in the 1948 war, the area was taken by the army of the new state of Israel, so it was repopulated – mostly with Jews from the Maghreb, although also from Iran or Iraqi Kurdistan – after the expulsion of its neighbors. towards an increasingly overcrowded Gaza strip.
The Prime Minister of Thailand, Srettha Thavisin, had already confirmed this Sunday via X (formerly Twitter) the death of two of his citizens. It is not the first time that these day laborers have taken the brunt of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. In 2010, one of them was killed by a projectile launched from Gaza. Two others died in a more recent wave of violence
Srettha indicated this Sunday that an Air Force plane, with capacity for 423 people, is prepared to fly to Israel in the event that it is necessary and the evacuation of its citizens is allowed. Few of these, at the moment, would have expressed interest. According to Bangkok, the death of twelve of its citizens would have been reported to the embassy in Tel Aviv by their respective agricultural businessmen.
