The election of Isaac Herzog as the 11th President of Israel reminds us of a historically unknown aspect of the Herzog family's ties to Cyprus, which dates back to the 1930s. Isaac Herzog is a descendant of two politically important Israeli families who played their role in the multi-year process of building the state of Israel since the late 19th century. His father, Chaim Herzog, was the 6th President of Israel and ambassador to the United Nations, while his grandfather, Yitzhak Isaac HaLevi Herzog, was the first chief rabbi of the state of Israel. However, the family has a special relationship with Cyprus on the part of Aura Ambache's mother. Simcha Ambache's father, a successful businessman, has been the founder and president of companies in Cyprus since 1933, including the pioneering Cypriot-Palestinian Plantation Company in Fasouri.
Simcha Ambache was born in Ottoman Palestine in 1892 and was a descendant of a family of pioneering Jewish Zionists who settled in the area with the first wave of aliya, the Jewish migration stream to the Promised Land, following the anti-Semitic pogroms that broke out in Russia. Europe in the 1880s. Ambache studied engineering in Nantes, France and then settled in Ismailia, Egypt, where he worked as director of the Electricity & Ice Supply Company, a supplier to the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez, which managed Suez. From 1936 he settled in Cairo to expand his business activities in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean basin, while in 1947 he returned to Palestine and settled with his family in Herzliya.
In 1933, together with Jewish investors from Palestine, he bought a large plot of land in Fasouri, founding the first joint-stock company of Jewish interests on the island, the Cyprus-Palestinian Plantations Company Ltd (hereinafter CPP). Fasouri, an area of 3,034 acres in Cyprus, was bought by CPP in 1933 for £ 1,200 from the English company Boyle Son & Company. The backdrop of the swampy, deserted and unexploited areas of the area was strongly reminiscent of Jewish investors in the Palestinian territories, which they transformed from barren land into productive kibbutzim. Fasouri was modeled on the swampy Jezreel Valley in Galilee, which was systematically and scientifically drained, cleared of mosquito outbreaks, and cultivated by Jewish businessmen.
The company was founded in July 1933 by 13 investors with a share capital of £ 50,000 and a paid-up capital of £ 37,000. The president of the company and the main shareholder was Simcha Ambache. With its extensive land market along the west coast of Limassol port and east of Larnaca port, the company aimed at intensive and scientific production and packaging of citrus fruits for export to the British market.
Operating in a geographical business triangle in the Eastern Mediterranean, the company's capital base was Cairo, offices to export to Britain operated in Palestine, and the center of business was in the Fasouri area of Limassol. The company's impetus was given to the protectionism to which Great Britain and its possessions turned during this period as a measure to deal with the effects of the economic downturn and the revival of intra-imperial trade. Under the system of preferences, products from Cyprus, such as citrus fruits and certain industrial items, could be exported at favorable tariffs to Britain as opposed to third countries or regions such as Palestine, which, although under British mandate, found itself outside protectionism and therefore exposed to competition. Jewish capitalists and businessmen who moved their operations from Palestine to Cyprus during this decade sought to take advantage of the favorable tariff framework from which exports from Cyprus benefited.
The shareholders of the company came from a wide range of professional specialties in the field of citrus cultivation. The group of capitalists consisted of Chelouche and Hassidoff, trained in the selection of suitable land, accompanied by Haim Nahmias, grower and owner of orange groves in Cyprus, and Ness Ziona, Joel Eisenberg, owner of orange groves in Cyprus and Magdi specializing in citrus cultivation, trade and marketing, and Isaiah Rakower, who has been a consultant for citrus growers in Palestine for many years. The director of the technical department and manager was the qualified agronomist David Slonim.
CPP acted as a business model in citrus cultivation and was included in the educational trips organized by the Department of Agriculture for the training of Cypriot farmers. The operation of the modern packaging plant was pioneering for the Cypriot data. The optimization of production was achieved by the use of American-origin agricultural tractors and mechanical pumps for irrigation. In addition, the company pioneered the introduction of new varieties from Palestine, such as grapefruits that were not widely grown in Cyprus, and the production of raisins in a modernized packaging plant. The operation of the company took place at a key point for the economy of the island, since at the same time the Government launched the enlightenment campaign of the Cypriot farmer around the correct method of production and packaging of citrus, in order to boost the exports of Cypriot products to Great Britain and to make the citrus trade competitive in the European markets as well as profitable to the Cypriot producers. One of its most important contributions was the exploitation of a huge uncultivated and inhospitable area, which was plagued by malaria, as well as the introduction of the concept of commodity export crops.
With specific design, road construction, construction of warehouses for transport and distribution of products, and packaging, isometric division of the area into 36 land blocks of ten acres each, mass tree planting and opening of roads between the estates that ended at the main road to the main road. the image of the area changed drastically. More than 20,000 eucalyptus trees have been treated for malaria in the Akrotiri salt flats, as eucalyptus trees can absorb large amounts of moisture and help drain stagnant water. From its earliest stages of operation, the company focused on citrus cultivation. Encouragement was given to the cultivation of grapefruit, a newly imported fruit in Cyprus. Grapefruit was mass-produced in Palestine as it was in great demand in European markets. The first grapefruits appear to have been planted experimentally by the Government in Famagusta and Nicosia in the early 1930s. However, the impetus needed to expand its production came from Fasouri and CPP. With the introduction of vaccines from Palestine, thousands of lemon trees were grafted, resulting in the immediate development of the cultivation of this fruit. In 1934 the company had planted 5,000 – 6,000 trees, while in 1935 the production almost increased tenfold, reaching 50 thousand trees. By 1952 production in Fasouri had reached one million boxes of grapefruit.
In addition, in the middle of 1937 the company engaged in viticulture and specifically the production of sultanas in an area of 400 acres and raisins. Raisins were in high demand in the British market, which is why the company turned to the export trade of this product. Calling a specialist from Smyrna for the raisin and packaging of sultanas and introducing special processing machines, the company pioneered the scientific packaging of grapes and the export of raisins from Cyprus to the British market. During the three years 1935 – 1938, 200 ladders of sultanas bore fruit and 14 tons of raisins were exported. In 1939 the company proceeded to the construction of a factory for drying and packaging of sultanas with the import of machines from Greece for cleaning, sorting, pressing and drying according to the Cretan system.
95% of the company's citrus exports were destined for the UK market and the rest for the Nordic countries, Palestine and Egypt. The company's products reached the markets under the brand name “Selected Cyprus Oranges” The Seal “of Quality”.
Ambache's business was not limited to Fasouri, which was Jewish-owned until his death in 1974. He was also president of two other companies in Cyprus, Cyprus Olive Plantations Company Ltd in Larnaca and Trading & Industrial Company Ltd in Limassol, while he was also the director of Lighterage & Transport Company Ltd, also in Limassol. It could be said that the Herzog family's business ties reflect the importance of Cyprus to the region's Jewish economic elite from the years before the establishment of the state of Israel.
Philenews
