The plague of locusts that Israel defeated just as the Passover holiday approached has come back in a fury seven weeks later on the eve of Shavuot.

Approximately 30 million locusts have landed in the Western Negev and threatened to wipe out Israeli farmers’ crops. The Agriculture Ministry is using helicopters and pickup trucks to combat the insects with spray and prevent a total disaster to farms that have carried out the dream of Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, by making the desert bloom.

“They are easy targets now, but in two or three days when their wings develop, it will be a disaster,” Lior Katari, one of the Agriculture Ministry’s coordinators, told NBC.

Experts think that despite the spraying of the locusts two months ago, the insects already had mated and laid eggs in the sand and which now are hatching.

The appearance of the Biblical plague has ironically made the desert green, the color of the locusts.

Organic farmers have little hope. NBC quoted organic farm owner Golan Cohen as saying that volunteer workers have helped  out at the herb farm by banging on pots to keep the pests away.

“They were eating the weeds at first, they were small, so we ignored them,” said Golan Cohen,

After the threat of devastation grew worse, workers tried the noise-making method. “It worked,” said Dror Cohen-Chen, a worker on the farm. However, “The next day we came back and they had destroyed everything.”

“Three thousand years ago God sent the Egyptians a plague of locusts; now we are getting them back,” said a one local resident.

The average life expectancy in Israel is 81.7 years, fifth highest among OECD countries, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

The annual report on the eve of Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, also reported that 10 percent of Israelis live in Jerusalem

Tel Aviv is the second most popular city, where 5 percent of Israelis live. The figures do not include the entire metropolitan Tel Aviv, known in Hebrew as Gush Dan and includes Kfar Saba, Ra’anana, Petach Tikvah, Bnei Brak, Ramat Gan and Rishon LeTzion, among others.

Arabs comprise 20.7 percent of the entire population, and the statistics reflect a continuing trend that denies the claim that the Arab percentage of the population is increasing.

However, the Bedouin population continues to soar in the Negev, where Jews are a small minority outside of Be’er Sheva.

An Arab with Israeli citizenship allegedly turned against the state and now is the first Israeli Arab to be charged with joining Syrian jihadists and fight with the rebels, according to an indictment filed in an Israeli court Wednesday.

The case has been under wraps since his arrest last at Ben Gurion Airport after the citizen, 29-year-old Hikmat Massarwa, returned from Syria via Turkey.

His lawyer claimed that Massarwa had no intention of harming Israel and was in Syria for the innocent purpose of locating his brother, who left Israel for Syria several weeks ago and also is suspected of joining  Al Qaeda-affiliated groups.

The increasingly frequent phenomenon of Arabs helping enemy states is of great concern not only to intelligence officials but also to politicians.

Avigdor Lieberman, who heads the Israel Beitenu faction that has since joined the Likud party, has won broad support from nationalists and horrified center-left parties by pushing for a loyalty oath and insisting that Arabs have no less an obligation to the country to fulfill a term of national service.

Israeli Arabs have no less than former Knesset Member Azmi Bishara to look “up” to as a model for a fifth column.

He fled the country six years ago after being indicted for passing on intelligent information to Hizbullah during the Second Lebanon War, in which thousands of Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded in the 34-day war that devastated northern Israel, including Haifa.

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) said that Massarwa, a resident of an Arab area called the “triangle” because of its three-sided area between Netanya and Tel Aviv and the western border of Samaria, is a foreign agent.

Massarwa’s lawyer argued that after his client entered Syria to look for his brother, he was forced “to be part of this population,” referring to Syrian rebels associated with jihadists.

“He did not join the rebels. He helped them build tents and so on, said the attorney, Helal Jabar. “It seems more than a few Israeli Arabs have done this.”

Security agents asserted that rebels in Syria asked Massarwa about information concerning IDF weapons and the nuclear reactor in Dimona and that he was asked to carry out a terrorist attack in Israel, a request he refused.

Arabs with Israeli  citizenship have plenty of encouragement to work against the state. Most Arab Knesset Members not only side with the Palestinian Authority but also often speak against Zionism and the existence of a Jewish state. MK Hanin Zoabi boarded the Mavi Mamara flotilla ship, manned by IHH terrorists, three years ago and has incited against the state.

She has called Israel “inherently racist,” rejects the idea of Israel as a Jewish country, and Zoabi has backed Iran’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon, apparently preferring to die in an Iranian nuclear attack if Israel would be destroyed at the same time.

Other magnets for Israeli Arabs to help destroy Israel include the Hamas regime in Gaza, which recruit Bedouin Negev, turning several Arab population centers, such as Tel Sheva next to Be’er Sheva, into Hamas strongholds that Israeli police are frightened to enter.

Another attraction for Israeli Arabs to become Israeli traitors is the Palestinian Authority, whose official maps define Arab Palestine’s borders as the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the Jordan River on the east, and the Lebanese and Egyptian borders on the north and south.

With the spillover of the Syrian war into Jordan and Lebanon, and occasional fire on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights, Massarwa may not be the last Israeli Arab citizen to be charged with helping the enemy.

With Hamas ruling over Gaza and recruiting Bedouin allies in the Negev and with Palestinian Authority Arabs increasingly frustrated with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ failure to improve their political and economic lives, the Syrian civil war is another inducement to work against Israel.

With the spillover of the Syrian war into Jordan and Lebanon, and occasional fire on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights, Massarwa may not be the last Israeli Arab citizen to be charged with helping the enemy.

Spray planes are working overtime and so far have overcome millions of locusts that have invaded southern Israel, with much smaller numbers reported in northern Israel.

Planes sprayed fields in the Negev overnight and early Wednesday morning before the locusts could feast on fields of wheat and vegetables.

Tzfat (Safed) residents were surprised to see a small horde of locusts in their neighborhoods, but there is no threat to nearby fields. Agriculture Ministry officials pointed out that locusts cause virtually no damage in small numbers, but the threat remains in the south.

Small swarms of locusts have invaded Israel, and some of the pests were sighted as far north as the Golan Heights on Monday, but their small numbers will prevent them from creating any measurable damage, at least for the time being.

The timing of last week’s widespread locust attack in Egypt was perfect for recalling the eighth plague that struck ancient Egypt before the Exodus of the Jews, which will be celebrated in two weeks.

However, any moral messages to be learned from their appearance in Israel cannot be based on damage. Spraying has more or less prevented any danger to crops, although Agriculture Ministry officials warn that expected hot weather and winds from the south could create a danger that massive hordes of locusts could move into Israel and swoop down on farms for a pre-Passover feast.

The locusts are like isolated tourists and also are a tourist site for curious Israelis.

One hiker told the Jewish Press that while walking in the central Negev, south of Be’er Sheva, to enjoy strolling amid a multitude of flowers after heavy winter rains, he found a dead locust under a rock, providing a novel photograph.

לְנַגֵּב

Yesterday, we saw that the Hebrew word for dessert – קִנּוּחַ- comes from the active-intensive פִּעֵל verb, לְקַנֵּחַ- one of the words for to wipe.

A more common word for to wipe is לְנַגֵּב, also a פִּעֵל verb. Unlikeלקנח, however, לנגב implies wiping to the point of dryness.

For example:

אָחֲרֵי שֶׁרוֹחֲצִים יָדַיִם, טוֹב לְנַגֵּב אֹתָם.
After washing hands, (its) good to wipe them dry.

Eating hummus is sometimes called לְנַגֵּב חוּמוּס, since eaters tend to wipe their plates dry with pitta.

You may have noticed that the root of לנגב is נ.ג.ב (n.g.b), the same as that of the name of the Israeli desert (not dessert, desert), the Negev – הַנֶּגֶב. It’s not clear exactly what the etymology of נגב-Negev is, but one theory is that the נגב is a place that has “been wiped dry” of precipitation.

A couple living in the נגב is looking to change that, fulfilling David Ben Gurion’s vision of making the desert bloom – with people, vegetation, and a thriving economy. Check out their video.

נ.ג.ב is also the root of the Hebrew word for towel, מַגֶּבֶת.

Visit Ktzat Ivrit.

An Israel company is progressing with efforts to dig in the northern Negev for large amounts of uranium, a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon.

Gulliver Energy announced Wednesday it has began exploration in an existing borehole near Arad, located east of Be’er Sheva and overlooking the Dead Sea several miles further east, the Globes business newspaper reported.

Gulliver expects to complete the $130,000 project by March 24 and will announce the results and recommendation concerning further exploration by April 1.

Gulliver has a one-year license for exploring an area between Sodom and Arad.

On Thursday, the Regavim NGO appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to try to stop the implementation of Beni Begin’s hastily passed plan to transfer 220,000 dunams (54,000 acres) of Negev land to the Bedouin.

But facts on the ground, may have done two-thirds of the work for Regavim.

According to a report in Friday’s Makor Rishon, in their rush to pass the bill, the government never took upon itself to do the basic due diligence that such a serious bill requires.

It turns out that from the 220,000 dunams, 30% belongs to the Electric Company, Bezeq, and Mekorot and is used for their infrastructure, the rest of that 30% includes roads, and the planned train route. Much of that land is also not stable enough for building buildings on it.

Another 80,000 dunam are owned by the IDF, which has army bases located on it, including the famous Tze’elim training base and the infantry school in Yerucham. With the current plan to move many of the army bases in the center of the country down south to the Negev, as well as the lack of large training areas outside of the Negev, it’s unlike these bases will be moving to accommodate the Bedouin.

Another 10,000 dunam are owned, title and all, by Jews (who bought the land, unlike the Bedouin who are squatting on it), on which the Ministry of Building and Construction already has planned to build a new Jewish settlement.

And then,  there is also an airfield in that area, and the law forbids housing construction near any airfields.

At best, there’s only 85,000 dunams (21,000 acres) available to implement Beni Begins Bedouin land grab plan from the 220,000 in the original plan.

It’s not clear how this deficit will affect the plan, but it is clear that Beni Begin didn’t do his homework.