In Israel’s open areas, a security breach can begin with a cut fence, a stolen calf, an arson attempt, or a suspicious figure moving across isolated terrain. For the farmers who live there, the distance from police stations and nearby response forces can turn minutes into a matter of life and death.
A new Israeli nonprofit, Moledet, is trying to close that gap.
Founded by Tamir Abukasis and Moshe Francis, Moledet operates a civilian operations room that monitors dozens of farms and open areas in real time. The system receives alerts from sensors and cameras in the field, analyzes them, and coordinates with local security teams, law enforcement, and other responding forces.
The goal, its founders say, is simple: no farmer should be left alone at the edge of the map.
“The farms are located in extremely remote areas, with a small number of people holding vast tracts of land, ranging from hundreds of dunams to tens of thousands of dunams,” Abukasis said. “They are far from police stations and security forces, and in many cases, there are hostile elements nearby seeking to take control of the land.”
Farmers, he said, face property damage, harm to livestock, arson, theft, harassment, and at times threats to life.
“The goal is to break the farmers and make them leave,” Abukasis said.
Francis, 43, comes from the intelligence and security sectors and is a graduate of Sayeret Matkal. Abukasis brings years of work with farmers and field operations in southern Israel through HaShomer HaChadash. The two met through One Family, an organization supporting victims of terror and bereaved families. Francis volunteers with the group, while Abukasis is part of a bereaved family.
They soon realized they had identified the same problem: Israeli farms had cameras, fences, weapons, and local security contacts, but no single body was watching the whole picture in real time.
“A farm is not just a workplace,” Francis said. “Farmers guard their farms 24/7, 365 days a year, including holidays, weekends, and nights. There is no real ability to leave and assume that the family and the land will remain protected.”
Abukasis described the gap in everyday terms.
“Most people in the world leave home for work, lock the door, and can leave their children at home, leave their car parked, and go about their day, with the understanding that nothing will likely happen,” he said. “By contrast, hundreds of farmers in Israel cannot leave their farms or their families alone without protection or supervision.”
After October 7, the exposure deepened
The security challenges around isolated farms existed long before the October 7 massacre. After the Hamas-led attacks, the founders said, the vulnerabilities became sharper.
Many farmers were called up for reserve duty. In some areas, women, families, and a small number of workers remained behind to hold large areas of land. Security attention and resources naturally shifted toward active fronts and threatened communities, leaving remote farms more exposed.
“In a situation of wide-scale fighting, much of the focus naturally shifts to communities and frontlines,” Abukasis said. “Farms located in remote open areas are sometimes left without continuous operational coverage. And beyond that, since October 7, many farms were emptied of men who went to fight. Women were left to hold the farms and the land, sometimes alone.”
The two founders had worked together before Moledet, including on the joint establishment of a special unit under Southern Command. They also served in reserve duty during the war in Gaza, a period that deepened their view of farms as strategic points in Israel’s internal security map.
“The gap is synchronization and a complete real-time picture,” Abukasis said. “There are forces, armed civilians, and good people everywhere, but there is no single entity that coordinates everything: who sees what is happening at the edge points, who receives the alert, who transmits it quickly to the right actors, and who closes the loop.”
One incident helped crystallize the need for constant monitoring.
Abukasis said a close friend, Yonatan Margi, a cattle farmer near the separation fence in the Beit Shemesh area, spent Yom Kippur fasting while guarding his farm. After the fast ended, he left for about an hour to attend the break-fast meal. When he returned, intruders had crossed the fence, entered the farm, slaughtered a cow, and stolen calves.
“The realization that someone was waiting,” Abukasis said. “Waiting for the one moment the farmer stepped away.”
He said the incident showed that farms require continuous protection, rather than systems that record crimes after the fact.
How Moledet works
Moledet’s operations room is designed to turn scattered alerts into an operational response.
Operators monitor feeds and alerts from farms, classify unusual events, verify what is happening, and pass real-time information to the relevant security forces. The system also uses an application developed by the founders to connect farmers, volunteers, local security teams, residents, and other relevant actors.
“As part of the array, we operate an application to which all end users are connected,” Francis said. “This begins with the farmers themselves, and extends to volunteers and local security forces who assist us in managing incidents. Our objective is to identify events as early as possible, monitor them in real time, and enable forces already in the field to respond as quickly and effectively as they can.”
Abukasis said operators work according to predefined procedures once an anomaly is detected.
“The operator must receive the alert as quickly as possible and relay it to the relevant security forces with the same speed,” he said. “From there, the security forces manage the incident with our support, guiding responding units, transmitting precise coordinates, and mobilizing nearby civilian forces to assist.”
Moledet’s founders stress that the nonprofit does not replace the state or security forces. Its role, they say, is to support them by identifying incidents, maintaining the live picture, and passing accurate information to those authorized to respond.
“Moledet carries out the demanding, continuous work of identifying and monitoring incidents, and in moments of truth, in full synchronization, transfers real-time information to the security forces,” Abukasis said.
A senior military official in Central Command described the farms as strategically significant.
“The agricultural farms spread across our sector are frontier points with high operational sensitivity, and at times, real vulnerabilities,” the official said. “They hold substantial strategic importance in maintaining territorial control and spatial continuity around communities.”
The official said cooperation with Moledet strengthens community protection and Central Command’s operational effectiveness.
68 farms and plans to expand
Moledet currently operates across approximately 68 farms in Judea and Samaria, the Jordan Valley, and the Negev. Its operations room is staffed by trained operators, and the organization plans to expand its human infrastructure by integrating national civilian service participants and building a field volunteer network.
The nonprofit was established with support from David Fergon, a Canadian Jewish philanthropist who visited the area and saw the challenges firsthand. His donation, made in memory of his late wife, Sarah Fergon, helped launch the network, according to the founders.
Moledet’s operating model combines philanthropy, donations from Israel and abroad, and partnerships with government ministries.
The Ministry for National Missions has assumed responsibility for security components at farms in Judea and Samaria and invested tens of millions of shekels in technological security measures, according to Moledet. Discussions are also underway with the Ministry of National Security to expand the model to additional farms in the Negev and the Galilee.
“From the moment we established the network, we understood that our mission required a nonprofit framework,” Abukasis said. “We wanted to provide farmers with the maximum level of protection at the lowest possible cost.”
Private companies, he said, can charge thousands of shekels per month for similar services, placing them beyond the reach of many farmers.
A Sderot operations room shaped by memory
Moledet’s operations room is located at Mishkan Ella in Sderot, a site tied deeply to Abukasis’s family.
Twenty-one years ago, his sister, Ella Abukasis, 17, was walking home from a Bnei Akiva youth movement activity on Shabbat with her younger brother, Tamir, when a Qassam rocket landed nearby. Ella shielded him with her body and later died of her wounds. Tamir survived.
“When we decided to move forward and establish the network, we received many offers to locate the operations room in northern and central Israel,” Francis recalled. “But after October 7, everything aligned. Mishkan Ella, which for years served as a center for social action and commemoration, stood empty after Sderot’s residents were evacuated.”
Abukasis said the decision carried symbolic weight.
“From the place where others tried to destroy us, from the place where my sister was killed and memorialized, and where, on October 7, fighting took place just meters away near the old police station and adjacent road, we now operate to protect Israel’s internal frontiers,” he said.
Inside the operations room, Moledet also commemorates the Nahal Oz tatzpitaniyot (IDF surveillance soldiers), whose warnings before October 7 have become a central part of Israel’s post-massacre reckoning.
Francis said operators see their photographs before entering the room.
“They understand the weight of responsibility they carry,” he said.
For Karen Bank-Moralis, a member of Moledet’s board, the issue ultimately comes back to the farmers themselves.
“Our future depends on those men and women who hold the land, protect it, and grow life from it,” she said. “There is no future without our farmers, without these farms.”
Abukasis put Moledet’s worldview in sharper terms.
“Security in Israel is not only in Gaza or Lebanon,” he said. “Security within the State of Israel is just as critical, especially along its internal frontiers. Holding land is an ideological stance with real consequences.”
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