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THE CHILDREN skipping happily up and down the makeshift stage on the lawn of Moshav Amirim, and singing about the trials of catering to the needs of holidaymakers - lo rotzim kaitan, rotzim rak balagan! - didn't really mean it. They were rehearsing for the 3Oth anniversary celebrations of this charming little vegetarian village in Lower Galilee. And besides, catering to holidaymakers is part of what Amirim is all about.
Hundreds of people turned up last weekend, applauded the performance enthusiastically, then danced till dawn at the festivities, which marked the launching of this ecologically-minded moshav - the third attempt at settlement after two earlier failed efforts in the early Fifties by North African and Yemenite groups.
"We've mellowed since those early days," said Haim Hamiel, Amirim resident and organizer of the commemoration festivities. "We had bitter struggles years ago - over lifestyle, educating our children, between vegetarians and vegans, to spray or not to spray our orchards ..."
Today Amirim looks the picture of tranquillity and contentment, on a wooded hillside in olive-growing country overlooking the Kinneret mid-way between Tiberias and Safed. Though it, too, has suffered the economic woes of other members of the Moshav movement and is by no means out of the woods yet, it is relatively less badly off, partly, explained Hamiel, because it has no livestock.
Amirim's twin sources of livelihood are a rather special sort of vegetarian tourist season from April to October, and orchards. They scrapped avocados after a few bad seasons some years ago and now grow plums, apples, pears, nectarines, grapes and olives. Approximately half the village's 75 households host guests in small...