Chasdei Meir, a non-profit organization named after the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, has embarked on an initiative for planting fruit tree saplings in the hills of Judea and Samaria. The planting is being carried out before Tu BiShvat, the Jewish holiday on the 15th day of Shvat which marks “the new year of the trees”. Schoolchildren traditionally plant trees all over Israel on this day.
The group said that the planting campaign is intended to encourage “the people of the hilltops” (the term for those who make their homes on isolated hills in Judea and Samaria) and to strengthen Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria.
Chasdei Meir will distribute about 15,000 saplings in the outposts and hilltops, at a total coast of about NIS 100,000. The funding is from public donations, and is intended as a rebuttal of the construction freeze policy which the government has initiated in response to US presssure.
Bentzi Gofshtein, one of the heads of the organization, said that “every hill that will have saplings and trees on it is ours. Thank G-d, the government of Israel has not declared a freeze on saplings, and therefore we will go out to the field and tell Netanyahu, Barak and their friends – we are here and we will never leave! They freeze and we plant.”
Gofshtein praised the public response to the campaign and said that contributions are still coming in and that the organizers hope to enlarge and possibly even double the number of trees being planted.”
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Topic: 'They Freeze, We Plant' (Read 760 times)