Wearing a safety belt, helmet and work boots, Raju Nishad navigates the scaffolding, hammering blocks that will form part of a building in a new neighbourhood in Beer Yaakov, in central Israel. He and other Indians are part of an Israeli government effort to fill a void left by tens of thousands of Palestinian construction workers barred from entering Israel since Hamas's unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack.
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00:30And after the terror attacks of October 7th, the Israel, you know, due to the security situation,
00:39this workforce wasn't allowed to come back to their work sites. So not wanting to stop the
00:46construction industry, the Israeli government was looking for alternate sources of workers.
00:51And India, because India and Israel enjoy excellent relations, India was one of the
00:57key countries that they wanted to bring people from.
01:27There is a lot of money. In a short period of time, people can earn a lot of money.
01:32In India, if you work for a maximum of more than an hour, you will still get paid Rs. 25,000-30,000.
01:42I used to work with my contract. I used to get Rs. 60,000 a month.
01:48And after coming here, it's triple. It's three times more.
01:53So Israel is good for me. It's the best.
01:57I landed here in Israel in June, 4th.
02:09After that, while we were working, the siren used to go off.
02:12So we used to run from the side, under the bunker, and get safe there.
02:17Later, when the siren went off, we used to come back to work.
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