Shomrat () is a

kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...

in northern

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. Located in the western

Galilee Galilee (; ; ; ) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon consisting of two parts: the Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and the Lower Galilee (, ; , ). ''Galilee'' encompasses the area north of the Mount Carmel-Mount Gilboa ridge and ...

on the coastal highway just north of

Acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

, it falls under the jurisdiction of

Mateh Asher Regional Council The Mateh Asher Regional Council (, ''Mo'atza Azorit Mateh Asher'') is a regional council in the western Galilee of northern Israel. It is named after the Tribe of Asher which had been allotted the region in antiquity according to the Book of Jos ...

. In it had a population of .

History

The kibbutz was established on 29 May 1948 by

Hashomer Hatzair Hashomer Hatzair (, , 'The Young Guard') is a Labor Zionism, Labor Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary. It was also the name of the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party, the ...

members from

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

and

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

on land that had belonged to the depopulated

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

village of al-Manshiyya, north of the village site, and also incorporated some land from

al-Sumayriyya Al-Sumayriyya (, ''Katasir'' in Canaanite times, ''Someleria'' during Crusader rule), was a Palestinian village located six kilometers north of Acre that was depopulated after it was captured by the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab-Isr ...

.Khalidi, p. 30 Some of the founders had fought with the partisan forces against the

Nazis Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, while the majority came out of various Nazi concentration camps. Most of the kibbutz founders made their way to Palestine as part of the

Aliyah Bet ''Aliyah Bet'' (, "Aliyah 'B'" – bet being the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet) was the code name given to illegal immigration by Jews, many of whom were refugees escaping from Nazi Germany or other Nazi-controlled countries, and la ...

organization, and were consequently interned in DP camps in

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

. The founders originally resided in the agricultural experimental government station near

, and moved to the permanent location in 1950. Designer Tzuri Gueta attended secondary school at Shomrat, and his first job was in the kibbutz knitting factory. In August of 1988, a

gang rape In scholarly literature and criminology, gang rape, also called serial gang rape, party rape, group rape, or multiple perpetrator rape,Ullman, S. E. (2013). 11 Multiple perpetrator rape victimization. Handbook on the Study of Multiple Perpetrato ...

occurred in the kibbutz resulting in changes to Israeli law on sexual assault.

Economy

In 1993, the kibbutz opened a cotton spinning and knitting factory.Tzuri Gueta, once a struggling designer is now the toast of Paris
Haaretz Following the collapse of Shomrat's industrial enterprises at the end of the 1990s, Shomrat reorganized itself on the renewed kibbutz model, instituting a differential pay scale and deep privatization of kibbutz services.

References

External links

Kibbutz Shomrat Official website
{{Authority control Czech-Jewish culture in Israel Hungarian-Jewish culture in Israel Kibbutzim Kibbutz Movement Populated places established in 1948 Populated places in Northern District (Israel) Romanian-Jewish culture in Israel Slovak-Jewish culture in Israel 1948 establishments in Israel