HaYovel Volunteering

HaYovel Volunteering is an Evangelical organization, based in Patterson, Missouri.^[1][2][3] They recruit Christian Zionist volunteers in the United States to do volunteer work in Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories.

The HoYovel organization had previously been involved in a West Bank "land grab" in 2022.^[4]

During the Israel–Hamas war the organization focused on recruiting volunteers to do farm work in Israeli settlements in the West Bank region of Palestine, while the usual farmers are fighting for the IDF in Gaza.^[1] The volunteers and the Hoyovel organisation refer to the West Bank Region of Palestine as "Judea and Samaria" (the same name the Israeli settlers use) or "the biblical heartland" (their own words).^[1]

During the Israel–Hamas war the organization recruited a group of men who became known as the "Christian cowboys". They were a group of Christian Zionist "cowboys" who had come to volunteer on farms in Israel, and settler farms in the occupied West Bank, after the 7 October attacks.^[1][2]

The cowboys designed and printed their own unofficial version of the Hamas most wanted playing cards, with photos of the most wanted Hamas personalities and distributed the cards to Israeli soldiers in southern Israel and Gaza. The cards were designed and printed at Be'eri Printers at Kibbutz Be'eri, one of the hardest hit kibbutzim during the October 7 attack.^[2] The deck was printed in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, and included two joker cards and 12 Hamas personalities, including Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, Abu Obeida, Mohammed Deif, Issa, al-Arouri, Mashal, Hamad,^[who?] Sa'ad, Muhammad Sinwar. The depictions in these cards, from the drawings of the subjects to how their names were written in Arabic, are intended to mock the Hamas leaders. For example, Yahya Sinwar is written as "Sinfar", a play on the Arabic word for mouse, الْفَأْر al-faʔr, and his picture depicts him as a mouse.^[2] But most of the cowboys in the group the men seem are English-speaking White American men, not Arab Christians.^[1]

• Christian Zionism
• Israeli settlements