A group of American cowboys went viral this week for their trip to Israel to help out Israeli farming communities in the West Bank who they say are in desperate need.
John Plocher and Yosef “Yoss” Strain from Montana – along with two other cowboy hat-wearing companions – were spotted en route to Israel on Nov. 6 at New York’s JFK Airport, and again when they arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, and photos quickly went viral on social media, with one post on X, formerly Twitter, garnering several million views.
Plocher and his fellow cowboys are volunteers with Operation Ittai, a project spearheaded by HaYovel, a Christian volunteer organization that works in “Judea and Samaria,” the area more commonly known as the West Bank. Operation Ittai is named after “a foreigner who stood with King David in the Bible,” according to HaYovel.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Joshua Waller, director of operations for HaYovel, says the cowboys will be meeting a critical need by bringing supplies and equipment to help small farms, after many Israeli reservists in the farming community have been called up to serve in the Israeli military.
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Cowboy John Plocher from Montana flew to Israel to volunteer in Operation Ittai. (HaYovel)
“It’s so critical right now to be giving a helping hand to these farmers… their farms are really in jeopardy of being lost if they can’t get the crops, get the people that they need to keep things moving,” Waller said.
Waller explained that while rightfully a concentration of aid and attention has been focused on the areas of Israel that were the heaviest hit during the Oct. 7 onslaught by Hamas terrorists, other parts of Israel are struggling, too.
Operation Ittai is also raising nearly $30 million to bring supplies like protective vests, thermal drones, night-vision goggles, binoculars, flashlights, and security cameras to Jewish communities in the West Bank that Waller says are under threat from “terrorism lurking everywhere.”
“All these farms are on the front line, they’re all surrounded by Arab villages. And these Arab villages have enough hostility within them to cause major trouble,” said Waller, noting that on Wednesday a Jewish husband, wife and baby were shot at and are currently in critical condition.
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Cowboys from Montana and Arkansas flew to Israel to volunteer with HaYovel, a Christian volunteer organization in Judea and Samaria. (HaYovel)
“We have terrorism lurking everywhere. One thing the world doesn’t understand is that this is the fourth front of the war. They don’t understand that the battle is touching this area,” Waller says, adding that he believes the reason is because “the world has already decided that they want to split the one and only Jewish state in half and create a 23rd Arab state.”
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A group of American cowboys went viral this week on their journey to Israel to help Israeli farming communities in the West Bank. (HaYovel)
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“So you see the political situation going down here. The Biden administration has stopped arms from coming to this area. So again, they’re leaving the 500,000 Jewish people out here on their own without American support. And we’re saying, no, that’s unacceptable,” said Waller.
“As an American, especially as these cowboys, they’re saying one clear message. We’re not leaving 500,000 Jews out here in Hamas territory to be slaughtered like in the south. We’re saying no, absolutely not,” he said.
