BANGKOK: When Hamas militants stormed into Israeli villages and towns along the border of the blockaded Gaza Strip last month, many Thai migrant agricultural workers shared the fate of hundreds of Israelis who were killed, kidnapped or forced to run for their lives.
Since that day nearly a month ago, more than 7,000 of some 30,000 Thais working in Israel have returned home on government evacuation flights. But many others have decided to stay, choosing to take the risk for the opportunity to earn wages far higher than at home.
Thailand reports that at least 23 Thais are believed to have been abducted by Hamas, which rules Gaza. It’s the largest single group of foreigners held by the militant group. Many more may be missing and 32 have been reported killed.
In a visceral illustration of the fate met by some, Israel’s UN envoy drew a rebuke from Thailand’s Foreign Ministry after showing the General Assembly a video last week of what he said was a Hamas fighter decapitating a Thai agricultural worker with a garden hoe as he lay on the ground.
“Such horrific brutality has stirred a sense of outrage not only among Thais, but undoubtedly people throughout the world,” the ministry said, criticizing the decision to show it as disrespectful to the victim and his family.
‘Please help my son stay safe’
Like many other Thai agricultural laborers in Israel, Natthaporn Onkeaw had been his family’s main breadwinner, sending money home regularly after going to Israel to work on a kibbutz in 2021.
The 26-year-old was among those abducted by Hamas, said his mother, 47-year-old Thongkun Onkeaw, who lives in a poor rural area in northeastern Thailand near the border with Laos.
He was one of the few Thai captives pictured in a photo released by Hamas whose names were later confirmed by the Thai Labor Ministry. His mother said she had not heard from him since he was taken, and no officials have given her or her husband any updates.
“I can only pray: Please help my son stay safe,” she told The Associated Press.
Thai media has followed developments in the conflict closely, with regular reports on the plights of the workers who have fled or chosen to stay, as well as what little is known about the hostages.
A video of one man, who was purported to be a Thai migrant worker being dragged away in a chokehold by a militant, has been widely circulated on social media. Identified as 26-year-old Kong Saleo by his wife, Suntree Saelee, he was allegedly taken from an avocado orchard when Hamas militants raided the worker’s camp.
“When I saw the picture and the clip, I knew it was him,” Suntree was quoted as saying in the Bangkok Post. “I am concerned for his safety. Please help him.”
Thai workers looking for higher wages
Farm laborers from Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia seek work in more developed countries where there is a shortage of semi-skilled labor — at wages considerably higher than what they earn at home.
Israel started bringing in migrant workers in earnest after the first Intifada, the 1987-93 Palestinian revolt, after employers began to lose trust in Palestinian workers.
Most came from Thailand, and they remain the largest group of foreign agricultural laborers in Israel today. The countries implemented a bilateral agreement a decade ago specifically easing the way for Thai agricultural workers. Many Palestinian workers had since returned, and before the Hamas attack about half of Israel’s workforce was made up of foreign and Palestinian laborers.
In recent years, Israel has come under criticism over the conditions in which the Thai farm laborers work. Human Rights Watch, in a 2015 report, said they often were housed in makeshift and inadequate accommodations and “were paid salaries significantly below the legal minimum wage, forced to work long hours in excess of the legal maximum, subjected to unsafe working conditions, and denied their right to change employers.” A watchdog group found more recently that most were still paid below the legal minimum wage.
To attract foreign workers back to evacuated areas, Israel’s Agriculture Ministry has said it will extend their work visas and give them bonuses of about $500 a month. The offer is tempting, compared to the approximately $1,800 lump sum Thailand’s government has made available to aid Thais fleeing Israel.
Beyond the official offers, Thailand’s government has warned that scammers have been messaging family members claiming to be looking to pay back wages or benefits, only to collect personal information and trick them into transferring money.
When the Israeli chicken farm where Sompong Jandai had been working since July was rocked with explosions in the early days of the Israel-Hamas war — sparked by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel — the 31-year-old first thought about going home.
But two things changed his mind: the salary he makes — more than eight times what he’d earn in Thailand — and knowing he can send the bulk of it home to support his wife and four children and pay off loans he took to finance the move to Israel.
“At first I thought about leaving,” he said. After being initially evacuated to a safer area, he came back to work at the farm.
Thailand’s efforts to get help
Thailand’s Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a telephone conversation Wednesday for help with Thais hostages.
Srettha has also been urging workers to come home, and wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday that the conflict is likely to expand.
“I would like to emphasize that the safety of our people is the most important thing,” he wrote. “Please return to our home.”
A Thai parliamentary delegation last week traveled to Iran, a Hamas ally, to meet with a Hamas representative and approach the issue from the other side.
Areepen Uttarasin, a Thai official who led the delegation, told reporters that the Hamas representative said the group would “try every possible way for all Thais held captive to return safely.” He did not identify the Hamas representative but said that he was told any releases had had been complicated by ongoing fighting.
In Israel, Yahel Kurlander, a volunteer who has been helping Thai workers in the aftermath of the attack, said she knows of at least 54 missing or kidnapped Thais. She said many bodies haven’t been identified yet.
Hours after the Hamas attack, Kurlander, a sociologist with Israel’s Tel-Hai College who specializes in agricultural labor migration with a focus on Thai workers, said she and other scholars and members of nongovernmental organizations started talking about what they could do to help.
“We just came to this realization,” she said. “If we won’t gather together and reach a hand to the Thai workers, nobody will.”
The first priority was to evacuate “highly traumatized” workers and provide food and other aid, she said. Now they’re reaching out to families of the missing, trying to gather details about tattoos or other identifying marks, and also help those who fled the Hamas rampage to return home or find new work. It’s important, she said, to give the workers “the freedom of choice.”
For Siroj Pongbut, that choice was to return home — at least until the fighting ends — even though he doesn’t make enough farming in Thailand to feed his wife and three children. The 27-year-old had been working as a farmhand in Israel for less than a month after more than a year of bureaucracy and borrowing money for the trip.
From that Saturday morning when Hamas attacked, he said he could hear sirens and explosions from the tomato farm where he worked. He made up his mind it wasn’t worth the risk to stay; about 150 of his coworkers at the farm stayed in Israel.
“I don’t know how it is going to be in the future,” he said by telephone while awaiting an evacuation flight from Tel Aviv last week. “I’m worried that it will become more serious.”
Stay in Israel, or flee? Thai workers caught up in Hamas attack and war are faced with a dilemma
https://arab.news/m6sva
Stay in Israel, or flee? Thai workers caught up in Hamas attack and war are faced with a dilemma
- More than 7,000 Thais working in Israel have returned home on evacuation flights since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, but some 23,000 have decided to stay
- At least 32 Thais have been reported killed, 23 are believed to have been abducted by Hamas, and many more may be missing
Canadian university teachers warned against traveling to the United States
- The Canadian government recently updated its US travel advisory, warning residents they may face scrutiny from border guards and the possibility of detention if denied entry
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia: The association that represents academic staff at Canadian universities is warning its members against non-essential travel to the United States.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers released updated travel advice Tuesday due to the “political landscape” created by President Donald Trump’s administration and reports of some Canadians encountering difficulties crossing the border.
The association says academics who are from countries that have tense diplomatic relations with the United States, or who have themselves expressed negative views about the Trump administration, should be particularly cautious about US travel.
Its warning is particularly targeted to academics who identify as transgender or “whose research could be seen as being at odds with the position of the current US administration.”
In addition, the association says academics should carefully consider what information they have, or need to have, on their electronic devices when crossing the border, and take actions to protect sensitive information.
Reports of foreigners being sent to detention or processing centers for more than seven days, including Canadian Jasmine Mooney, a pair of German tourists, and a backpacker from Wales, have been making headlines since Trump took office in January.
The Canadian government recently updated its US travel advisory, warning residents they may face scrutiny from border guards and the possibility of detention if denied entry.
Crossings from Canada into the United States dropped by about 32 percent, or by 864,000 travelers, in March compared to the same month a year ago, according to data from US Customs and Border Protection. Many Canadians are furious about Trump’s annexation threats and trade war but also worried about entering the US
David Robinson, executive director of the university teachers association, said that the warning is the first time his group has advised against non-essential US travel in the 11 years he’s worked with them.
“It’s clear there’s been heightened scrutiny of people entering the United States, and … a heightened kind of political screening of people entering the country,” said Robinson, whose association represents 70,000 teachers, librarians, researchers, general staff and other academic professionals at 122 universities and colleges.
Robinson said the group made the decision after taking legal advice in recent weeks. He said lawyers told them that US border searches can compromise confidential information obtained by academics during their research.
He said the association will keep the warning in place until it sees “the end of political screening, and there is more respect for confidential information on electronic devices.”
Afghan children will die because of US funding cuts, aid official says
- More than 3.5 million children in Afghanistan will suffer from acute malnutrition this year, an increase of 20 percent from 2024
Afghan children will die because of US funding cuts, an aid agency official said Tuesday.
The warning follows the cancelation of foreign aid contracts by President Donald Trump’s administration, including to Afghanistan where more than half of the population needs humanitarian assistance to survive.
Action Against Hunger initially stopped all US-funded activities in March after the money dried up suddenly. But it kept the most critical services going in northeastern Badakhshan province and the capital Kabul through its own budget, a measure that stopped this month.
Its therapeutic feeding unit in Kabul is empty and closing this week. There are no patients, and staff contracts are ending because of the US funding cuts.
“If we don’t treat children with acute malnutrition there is a very high risk of (them) dying,” Action Against Hunger’s country director, Cobi Rietveld, told The Associated Press. “No child should die because of malnutrition. If we don’t fight hunger, people will die of hunger. If they don’t get medical care, there is a high risk of dying. They don’t get medical care, they die.”
More than 3.5 million children in Afghanistan will suffer from acute malnutrition this year, an increase of 20 percent from 2024. Decades of conflict — including the 20-year US war with the Taliban — as well as entrenched poverty and climate shocks have contributed to the country’s humanitarian crisis.
Last year, the United States provided 43 percent of all international humanitarian funding to Afghanistan.
Rietveld said there were other nongovernmental organizations dealing with funding cuts to Afghanistan. “So when we cut the funding, there will be more children who are going to die of malnutrition.”
The children who came to the feeding unit often could not walk or even crawl. Sometimes they were unable to eat because they didn’t have the energy. All the services were provided free of charge, including three meals a day.
Rietveld said children would need to be referred to other places, where there was less capacity and technical knowledge.
Dr. Abdul Hamid Salehi said Afghan mothers were facing a crisis. Poverty levels among families meant it was impossible to treat severely malnourished children in private clinics.
“People used to come to us in large numbers, and they are still hoping and waiting for this funding to be found again or for someone to sponsor us so that we can resume our work and start serving patients once more.”
Magnitude 5.6 earthquake strikes Hindu Kush region, Afghanistan, EMSC says
- EMSC first reported the quake at a magnitude of 6.4
KABUL: An earthquake of magnitude 5.6 struck the Hindu Kush region in Afghanistan on Wednesday, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) said.
The quake was at a depth of 121 km (75 miles), EMSC said, and the epicenter 164 km east of Baghlan, a city with a population of about 108,000.
EMSC first reported the quake at a magnitude of 6.4.
US plans to use tariff negotiations to isolate China, WSJ reports
- US officials plan to use negotiations with more than 70 nations to ask them to disallow China to ship goods through their countries and prevent Chinese firms from being located in their territories to avoid US tariffs
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump administration plans to use ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure US trading partners to limit their dealings with China, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday citing people with knowledge of the conversations.
US officials plan to use negotiations with more than 70 nations to ask them to disallow China to ship goods through their countries and prevent Chinese firms from being located in their territories to avoid US tariffs, the report added.
UNICEF projects 20 percent drop in 2026 funding after US cuts
- UNICEF has implemented some efficiency measures but “more cost-cutting steps will be required,” said the spokesperson
UNITED NATIONS: UNICEF has projected that its 2026 budget will shrink by at least 20 percent compared to 2024, a spokesperson for the UN children’s agency said on Tuesday, after US President Donald Trump slashed global humanitarian aid.
In 2024, UNICEF had a budget of $8.9 billion and this year it has an estimated budget of $8.5 billion. The funding for 2025 is “evolving,” the UNICEF spokesperson said.
“The last few weeks have made clear that humanitarian and development organizations around the world, including many UN organizations, are in the midst of a global funding crisis. UNICEF has not been spared,” said the spokesperson.
UNICEF did not specifically name the US, but Washington has long been the agency’s largest donor, contributing more than $800 million in 2024. Since UNICEF was established in 1946, all its executive directors have been American.
“At the moment, we are working off preliminary projections that our financial resources will be, at a minimum, 20 percent less, organization wide, in 2026 compared to 2024,” said the UNICEF spokesperson.
Since returning to office in January for a second term, Trump’s administration has cut billions of dollars in foreign assistance in a review that aimed to ensure programs align with his “America First” foreign policy.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week that it will cut 20 percent of its staff as it faces a shortfall of $58 million, after its largest donor, the United States, cut funding.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also last month said he is seeking ways to improve efficiency and cut costs as the world body turns 80 this year amid a cash crisis.
UNICEF has implemented some efficiency measures but “more cost-cutting steps will be required,” said the spokesperson.
“We are looking at every aspect of our operation, including staffing, with the goal of focusing on what truly matters for children: that children survive and thrive,” the spokesperson said. “But no final decisions have been taken.”
