Missile Strike Destroys a Lifetime’s Work at a Rare Lily Nursery in Kerem Maharal
What was reported as another incidental hit in an “open area” during Iran’s missile attack on Israel earlier this week turned out, for the Simantov family in Kerem Maharal, to be a personal and professional disaster. Interceptor fragments that fell in the night between Sunday and Monday struck the unique white lily plot at their “Zeraim MiTzion” nursery and caused heavy damage to a rare conservation project built over more than two decades.
The story of this specific project began in 2004, during the Carmel Tunnels excavation. White lily bulbs exposed in the engineering work were transferred to the Simantov family with the approval of the Nature and Parks Authority, in order to save the rare plant. Using tissue culture, they produced thousands of new bulbs, some of which were returned to the wild in the Carmel, while others were kept in the nursery for propagation and conservation.
“When we started, there were only a few dozen bulbs,” Simantov says. “Today we have tens of thousands of bulbs. We are actually the only place in the country that holds the original white lily from the Carmel, not a commercial variety but the real natural plant, which is returned from here to its natural place in the Carmel and to other places in Israel that are suitable for it.”
According to him, the plot reached its peak only about a month and a half ago. “After 12 years of waiting, we saw amazing blooming. Flowers about a meter tall. Thousands of people came to see, photograph, and be moved. We were expecting a large seed crop that would allow us to continue and expand the project.”
But the morning after the missile attack, the grim picture became clear. “Our dedicated Thai workers called and told me to come to the site immediately,” he recalls. “We found a huge crater, about six meters in diameter, right in the middle of the plot. Parts of the area were thrown long distances, and the damage is spread over hundreds of meters.”
Shortly afterward, police officers and Border Police troops arrived at the scene. “They saw the hole, documented it, collected the fragments that were in the area, and left,” says Simantov. “But so far no government official has come to inspect the damage itself.”
According to him, representatives of the Property Tax Authority are only expected to arrive next week. “And that is exactly the point,” he says. “This is not like an orange grove where you can count how many trees were hit and calculate what they are worth. This is something unique that has almost no equivalent in the country. You need an expert to examine what happened above ground and below it.”
The biggest difficulty, he explains, is that much of the damage is not visible at all. The lily bulbs are underground, and some of them take many years to mature before they bloom. “We still do not know how many bulbs were destroyed,” he says. “It could be hundreds, it could be thousands. Only in months and even years will we know the full extent of the damage.”
Hila Friedman, his daughter, who manages the nursery together with her father and her husband, says this is more than an economic loss. “This is not just an agricultural plot. It is heritage, it is nature conservation, it is something my father devoted decades of his life to.”
For now, while the family waits for the official damage assessment, it is trying to hold on to the hope that some of the bulbs survived. “We do not intend to give up,” says Simantov. “But it is clear that the road to recovery will be very long. What was destroyed in a moment took us more than 20 years to build.”
