Noam Bendor had never grown strawberries before. "But I've been taught and it's easy," the 22-year-old enthuses, before putting Kanye West's rap back in his ears and kneeling on an irrigated plot. Like thousands of other Israelis, the Tel Aviv cook, who has been furloughed due to a lack of customers, has volunteered to support his country's economy, which has been hit hard by the conflict sparked by the Hamas terror attack on October 7. "It's my duty to help my people," says the curly-haired boy, who has little in his heart for Benjamin Netanyahu's government. All he had to do was connect to the web, where calls for solidarity abound, to find himself on this Tuesday morning in the fields of Chahi Ariel, a market gardener from Kadima Zoran in the center of the country.
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