Ashdot Ya'akov

Ashdot Ya'akov (Hebrew: אַשְׁדוֹת יַעֲקֹב, lit. Ya'akov Rapids) is a kibbutz in northern Israel. It was founded in 1924 by a kvutza of Hashomer members from Latvia on the land which is today Gesher. It was named after the rapids of the nearby Yarmouk River and James "Ya'akov" Armand de Rothschild.

Ashdot Ya'acov, 1947
Members of the Yiftach Brigade receiving construction training at Ashdot Ya'akov in 1948

History

Between 1933 and 1935 the kibbutz moved northeast of its original location, onto land which had been bought by the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association.

The children of Ashod Yaacov were evacuated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when the kibbutz suffered intensive shelling from Syrian, Iraqi and Transjordanian forces.[1]

In 1953, as a result of the split in the HaKibbutz HaMeuhad movement, the kibbutz was split in two:

South of Ashdot Ya'akov, at the confluence of the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers near the island of Naharayim, there is a memorial for the 7 twelve-year-old Israeli girls murdered by a Jordanian border guard in March 1997.[2]

References
  1. Jewish National Fund (1949). Jewish Villages in Israel. Jerusalem: Hamadpis Liphshitz Press, pg 6.
  2. Find further information about this memorial: Zeev's Israel Travel Guide

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