"Thai deaths in Hamas massacre spotlight poor agricultural workers from Asia who toil in Israel’s fields"

Like his father Chumporn and dozens of other able-bodied men from their village in northeast Thailand, Manee Jirachart moved to Israel in search of work, dreaming of a better life.

Jobs were hard to come by within his rural community so when Manee found a cleaning position at a government office in southern Israel near the Gaza it seemed like a real opportunity...

But among many of the foreigners killed and captured by Hamas were also migrant workers from Asia, without familial links to either Israel or the Palestinian Territories, who hail from mostly poor, rural families and work in the country’s agricultural, construction and healthcare sectors.

At least 10 Nepali agriculture students were killed when the Hamas militants stormed the Alumim kibbutz, an agrarian community near Gaza, and another Nepali is missing, the country’s ambassador to Israel told CNN.

Two Filipinos were also killed, according to the Philippines government.

But it is Thailand, which for decades has made up one of the biggest sources of migrant labor in Israel, that has suffered one of the highest tolls of any nation beyond Israel itself.

So far at least 21 Thai nationals have been killed as of Thursday, according to Thai authorities...

“During the 1990s, migrant workers (began to) replace Palestinians working in construction sites and agriculture fields as Palestinians workers became unwelcome and ‘unreliable’ due to regular lock downs and security issues,” Ladizhinskaya [spokesperson for Kav LaOved, a non-profit advocating for labor rights in the region] added...