ENRICO MARTINO

Thay migrants working in the fields, mechanised agricolture, new technologies and tourism business for Christian pilgrims. The idealistic world of the Kibbutzim is gone for ever and the most popular icon of Israel today is a business like others. Kibbutz Kinneret near Kinneret lake, the Sea of Galilee, created a real golden mine, the Yardenit site on the bank of the Jordan River. The traditional location where John the Baptists baptized Jesus was near Jericho but officially for security reasons, and also for touristic business, the State of Israel and the Kinneret Group moved the baptism site north, where the Sea of Galilee pours into the Jordan River, filled every day with Christian pilgrims baptized here, in, at least so claim the local kibbutzim unlike the majority of historians. Also because. Not so far Kibbutz Ginossar on the western banks of the Sea of Galilee, originally an agricultural community, now has a primary source of income from tourism thanks to the Museum where is conserved a boat old of 2000 years, the time where Jesus Christ lived on the shores of the lake. On the Jordan river the old collective Ortal ("Light and Dew") factory of the Kibbutz today is owned by private owners where many kibbutzim produce avanced technology for European car industry. The historical Ein Gedi kibbutz, founded in 1953 on the western shore of the Dead Sea on the edge of the Judean desert, is involved with tourism of the surrounding area of the Ein Gedi spring. The kibbutz operates a botanical garden housing over 900 plant species from around the world. It is the only populated botanical garden in the world, with 500 residents. The incredible landscape of the Judean desert near mount Sodom, the place of the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, is explored with guides coming from a kibbutz where live some artists loving the desert, while the agricultural fields are processed by Thai emigrants.