Dear people,

My name is Merav Vender Osher from Bekaot. I am reaching out with a plea from the bottom of my heart, asking for help. It is not easy for me, but I have no choice left. I am shattered to pieces. I became an orphan at the age of 16 and a half, and from that young age I entered the dark world of bereavement.

My father, Avi Osher, was brutally murdered with a machete used for date-palm pruning in 1991 by his own worker. My father, Avi Osher (may his memory be blessed), was the salt of the earth, the son of Haganah fighters who came from Poland and established a farm in Ra’anana. He was raised with values of dedication and love for the Land of Israel. His dream was to come and settle the land.

My father was a special person — a man with a big, joyful heart who loved and valued every human being. A true and honest man. He always helped anyone who asked, at any hour, and brought joy to everyone around him. He came from Ra’anana to the Jordan Valley with my mother, Eilat of blessed memory, a respected teacher who educated thousands of children over the years.

My father came out of an idealistic mission to make the desert bloom, and in 1976 my parents settled in the community of Bekaot. He was a farmer and an outstanding agricultural instructor who grew the fruit of the land with devotion and love. He even invented creative agricultural solutions, built his home in the community, planted trees in the yard, and managed the community’s agricultural operations and the vineyard for many years. He did all this with immense love, devoting countless hours — a true man of the land.

At the age of 40, he went out in the morning to work as the manager of the date orchard in the nearby community of Massua. There, a wicked man ambushed him and, with great deceit — claiming that there was a burst in the irrigation pipe — attacked him and slaughtered him. The murderer did not stop with one stab; he pierced his body with 14 fatal stab wounds. My father tried to fight with all his strength but was overpowered. The murderer tied his body, threw it into my father’s pickup truck, hid the vehicle to make it hard to find, and stole his weapon. After two days of searching, his body was discovered.

A year after the murder, the killer was caught after firing my father’s stolen weapon at an army vehicle near his shack on the Jiftlik road in the valley. He confessed to the murder and was imprisoned. My world as a teenage girl collapsed. My life since then has continued with great hardship; I tried to survive my orphanhood, living in the shadow of the murder and the crushing weight of bereavement that destroyed my life.

In 2013 the murderer was released in a unilateral political gesture, before finishing his sentence. He was returned to the very same home and area from which he had left on the morning of the murder. He opened a car-wash business, a construction-equipment business, improved his living conditions, and received grants and a monthly stipend from the Palestinian Authority. He drives around freely in a luxury vehicle as if nothing ever happened, roaming throughout the valley, and has even disguised himself and attempted multiple times to obtain work in the nearby communities. I always warned farmers about him. He lives like a king — and this is no exaggeration.

I tried with all my strength to fight his release. I also fought to prevent his return to the valley that my father loved so deeply — but I did not succeed. In response, that same year, my husband and I decided to return to my parents’ home in the community and revive their land. We wanted to restore the trampled honor of a man of the land and of our family. We started from zero, poured our lives into this mission — everything we had — to operate the farm on our own. We took loans, worked the land, and grew grapes.

Sadly, after a few years, my teenage son became ill with a rare neurological disease that paralyzed his legs for a year. We had to leave the farm and stay with him in hospitals and later in a long rehabilitation program with overnight stays, until he could stand and walk again. During this time, my hyperthyroid condition worsened severely, and my husband had to stop working as well.

After our son completed rehabilitation, just one day after he finally began walking again, I was rushed into emergency surgery to remove my thyroid gland. Unfortunately, not long afterward it was discovered that the operation had failed and my parathyroid gland had also been removed. Since then I have been coping with severe calcium deficiency and heart problems, and over time my body weakens and I struggle to walk. I take large amounts of calcium just to survive.

My condition prevents me from working, and my husband is now the only one supporting us, doing everything he can — and still we barely manage. We have fallen into poverty and bank foreclosures. My mother passed away a few years later in her home; I inherited the farm and the house I grew up in, but I also inherited her debts. Because of this, plus our own debts and my illness, we collapsed. We found ourselves broken, in pain, unable to gather the pieces.

For four years every possible option for our situation was thoroughly examined. At first we tried everything to keep up with the payments — we sold everything we could, tried to pay whatever was possible each month — but it reached a point where there was not enough food. We ended up without a car, unable to continue, and we fell into severe financial ruin.

My father’s home is everything to me. It remains exactly as he left it — we could not afford even minimal renovations, and its condition deteriorated. We tried many ways to bridge the gap, but everything failed. It reached the point where my parents’ farm was in real danger of being taken by a court-appointed receiver. My world collapsed once again — the beloved place my father poured his heart and life into, but never got to fully realize before being murdered — is now at risk. For me, my father is buried beneath the trees he planted in the yard along with his dreams.

I am begging anyone who can help us escape this situation and assist us in paying off the debts, helping us rise out of this severe financial crisis, and saving us from this immense heartbreak.

The thought of losing the only remaining memory of my parents — the home I cannot bear to lose — makes it hard for me to breathe.

I have never received any assistance or allowance from the state, and I receive nothing today.

We are simple, modest people, and all I ask is to save my small family, which is struggling terribly because of our situation.

Unfortunately, there is no one else who can help us get out of this, and I am emotionally exhausted from fighting for help — for the sake of what remains of a unique and precious man who left for work one morning and never returned, simply because he was a Jew.

It is unbearable that the home of a pioneer has been trampled; it is unbearable for me to endure this pain. I came here for him — to give life to a place where life was destroyed.

I am pleading — please help me escape this situation.

Perhaps I will succeed, with your help, to stand on my feet again. To live with dignity, as the daughter of my father, may he rest in peace, while living alongside a vile terrorist who caused all this disaster and lives not far from me.

With appreciation and gratitude for those that can assist,

Merav Osher