Some 3,700 years ago, the Philistines of Gerar went after the patriarch Isaac, hitting him where it would hurt the most. They filled his father Abraham’s wells with dirt to drive him off the land. On Tuesday afternoon, on a hill above Alon Road in Binyamin, Isaac’s descendants met the same weapon in a deadlier form. A flock of sheep drank from a water trough that local residents say terrorists from the Arab village of al-Mughayyir had poisoned, and within minutes dozens of animals were convulsing in the grass. By evening, nine sheep and the dog that guarded them were dead, and more than 40 others were being treated where they had collapsed.
Local residents said a terrorist cell from the Arab village of al-Mughayyir slipped into the grazing area and poured a toxic substance into a water trough used by the local flocks, Arutz Sheva reported. Shepherds said the sheep began showing severe poisoning symptoms shortly after drinking. Residents rushed to the hill with veterinary medications. The shepherding dog drank from the same trough, developed severe symptoms soon after, and died. Security forces arrived and launched searches for the suspects.
Residents said Tuesday’s attack was the 13th poisoning in the grazing lands along Alon Road in the past year, and they attribute all of them to a cell operating out of al-Mughayyir. In earlier attacks, a few animals died each time. On Tuesday, roughly 50 sheep drank the poison.
AFSI Insight
AFSI views the repeated poisoning of water sources used by Jewish shepherds in Binyamin as a deliberate campaign of agricultural terrorism designed to drive Jews from their land. Thirteen attacks in a year—killing and sickening livestock—cannot be dismissed as isolated incidents. The pattern demonstrates the need for decisive action against those responsible, stronger protection for Jewish communities and farms, and recognition that controlling the land requires protecting the people who live and work on it.