Getz

Mr Getz said Omer has dual American-Israeli citizenship, and when he finished high school he took a gap year trip in Israel to "learn about his family routes", later deciding "it was his obligation to do service in the army" and join the IDF.

Mr Getz said: "We still have hope. But every day is crucial, every day is critical."

Manne, a drummer and bandleader who has recorded with a who’s who of jazz savants — in 1957, he featured on albums from Quincy Jones, Stan Getz and Sonny Rollins — hit The Penthouse in 1966 with an experienced band that Weeds calls “a well-oiled machine.”

“If the kibbutzim … will not come back, no one will come,” says Shlomo Getz, a researcher who studies the communities.

“It’s a practical problem,” says Shlomo Getz, who leads a center for kibbutz research at the University of Haifa, noting that the communities accounted for most of the population on Israel’s side of the border.