Kfar Giladi

Kfar Giladi is a kibbutz in the Upper Galilee, on the northwestern rim of the Hula Valley, north of Kiryat Shmona and close to the Lebanese border.[1][2] It lies beside Route 90 and, from the Naftali Mountains, overlooks the Hula Valley and Mount Hermon.[9] Its border-area setting has shaped both its history and its contemporary experience: the settlement was founded as part of Jewish agricultural and defensive activity in the north, and in recent years it has faced rocket alerts, restrictions on movement, and evacuation.[10][7]

Kfar Giladi is particularly associated with Hashomer, the early Jewish guard organization whose members founded the kibbutz, and with Tel Hai, the nearby settlement where a pivotal battle took place in 1920.[3][4] The Tel Hai cemetery and Roaring Lion monument anchor the area’s memorial landscape.[11] Kfar Giladi’s Hashomer museum and surviving arms caches connect its local history to wider accounts of Jewish settlement, self-defense, and state-building.[5][12]

Kfar Giladi was established on October 21, 1916, during World War I, on land belonging to the Jewish Colonization Association, also known by its initials ICA. It initially bore the name Kfar Bar Giora. Its founders were members of Hashomer, led by Israel Giladi, and included Israel and Manya Shochat, Joseph Trumpeldor, Alexander Zeid, and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.[3][2]

The founders intended to establish Jewish settlements in what they regarded as the most dangerous areas of the Land of Israel and therefore selected the northern reaches of Palestine. The kibbutz’s early purposes included guarding Jewish land and increasing food supplies for the wartime Jewish community, or yishuv.[3][1] The land had been purchased by the Baron in 1898, and Kfar Giladi settled it under a lease from PICA before later seeking a long-term lease rather than ownership.[13]

The settlement’s name commemorates Israel Giladi, one of Hashomer’s founders. After his death on November 2, 1918, the community changed its name from Kfar Bar Giora to Kfar Giladi in his honor.[3][2]

Official archival records identify October 1916 as the date of establishment. A 1937 thesis, by contrast, lists Kfar Giladi as a kibbutz founded in 1917 and gives its population at the end of 1933 as 100. The thesis also includes it among four Upper Galilee kvutzot assisted by the Palestine Workers’ Fund during the war years.[3][14]

Hashomer grew out of an earlier group named Bar Giora. The group was founded in 1907, when young immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia gathered in Yitzhak Ben-Zvi’s Jaffa apartment, with goals that included guarding Jewish communities and settling the land. In 1909, Bar Giora became the organized Hashomer Eretz Israel. When Hashomer members established Kfar Giladi in 1916, they brought with them the wives and orphans of members who had fallen.[5]

Kfar Giladi’s early history is closely intertwined with Tel Hai, a nearby Jewish settlement. By 1919, two additional outposts, including Tel Hai, had been established near Kfar Giladi.[1] The area’s political setting was unsettled after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat: a 1919 border arrangement shifted Tel Hai and other parts of the Upper Galilee from British to French control, while the Jewish residents wanted British control. Local Arabs were primarily concerned with ending French rule in Syria.[4]

On March 1, 1920, a Shi’ite Arab militia accompanied by local Bedouins attacked Tel Hai. Joseph Trumpeldor led a detachment of reinforcements from nearby Kfar Giladi. He was wounded in the hand and stomach and died while being evacuated.[4] Hashomer member Devorah Drechler had been sent as reinforcement to Kfar Giladi and then onward to defend Tel Hai. Pinhas Schneerson, who took command after Trumpeldor was fatally wounded, recalled her saying: “On the front you go where they send you, no questions asked.”[15]

Accounts differ over how the Tel Hai fatalities are counted. The Center for Israel Education reports eight Jewish and five Arab deaths in the battle.[4] An editorial passage in the ninth volume of The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann instead says that Trumpeldor and five other men and women were lost on March 1.[16] The Jewish Virtual Library separates two Jewish deaths in a January attack from six deaths on March 1, yielding eight Jewish fatalities across the two attacks.[11]

The crisis affected Kfar Giladi directly. The Weizmann papers describe northern Jewish settlements as vulnerable amid the rebellion against French rule and report that debates in January and February 1920 considered abandoning them. After Tel Hai fell on March 1, Kfar Giladi and Metullah were evacuated two days later.[16] Kfar Giladi’s settlers returned ten months later.[1] Historians cited by Maariv state that all four Upper Galilee settlements—Metula, Kfar Giladi, Tel Hai, and Hamara—were abandoned in spring 1920. The later ideal of never abandoning a settlement was associated with the Tel Hai story, though the actual course of the evacuations was more complicated.[17]

Interpretations of Tel Hai’s wider historical meaning also differ. One historian treats the settlement as a foundational case linking Jewish presence to borders; another argues that the idea of settlements determining borders developed later and that borders were ultimately shaped mainly by war or diplomatic negotiations. Kfar Giladi was part of the settlement network affected by the crisis, but the battle’s later political meaning remains a matter of historical interpretation.[17]

Trumpeldor and seven other Tel Hai dead were first buried in temporary graves at Kfar Giladi. In 1924, with agreement between the Kfar Giladi and Tel Hai groups, their remains were transferred to a shared cemetery between the settlements. A ceremony marking the transfer was held at Kfar Giladi on the fourth anniversary of the battle. A memorial tree was planted at the temporary burial site, and trees were planted where the coffins were reinterred.[18]

A permanent monument by sculptor Abraham Melnikoff was erected at the new burial place. The cemetery study dates the Roaring Lion monument’s inauguration to 1934, while the Jewish Virtual Library says the statue was erected in 1926. The sources may be describing different milestones, but the available accounts do not reconcile the dates.[18][11] The cemetery study describes a rectangular stone base 2.35 meters high, topped by a lion sculpture 3.85 meters high. A committee appointed by the National Committee reviewed the monument and recommended inscribing the names of the fallen on the front of its base.[18]

Kfar Giladi’s own cemetery developed a related commemorative role. The kibbutz and Hashomer veterans sought to make it a memorial pantheon for Hashomer members who had died while on guard duty elsewhere, and the site came to represent a tradition of heroic sacrifice associated with the Tel Hai dead.[18] The nearby common grave is the site of an annual memorial ceremony on the 11th of Adar for the defenders of Tel Hai.[11]

Kfar Giladi’s founding in the Hashomer period established a continuing association with guarding and defense. Members of Hashomer later helped lay foundations for the Israel Defense Forces.[19] During World War II, in 1941, Kfar Giladi and Metullah guarded the northern border against a possible invasion by Vichy French troops.[1]

During the British Mandate, Hashomer members maintained hidden arms caches known as sliks. Israel Shohet instructed members to prepare secret hiding places because Jews were not allowed to own weapons. Twenty-two hiding places at Kfar Giladi were gradually discovered, some by accident, and the caches helped supply weapons to the Haganah in Haifa during the 1929 riots. Manya Shohet disguised herself as a nurse and transported concealed weapons in an ambulance truck.[5]

A bunker dug in 1922 became one of the best-known caches. It was created by former Hashomer members and Labor Battalion members who had formed a separate “secret kibbutz” rather than accepting Haganah authority. Ynet describes a nine-square-meter chamber connected to an escape tunnel approximately 20 meters long. A separate visitor account places the entrance beneath a foal stable and describes a descent of about five meters by ladder.[12][20]

The bunker contained weapons and money, including funds the group had taken to finance its activities. It was discovered in 1983 by Nahum Horowitz, described as the last of the Hashomer guards. The cache held rifles from the 1920s, including Italian and Polish weapons. Twenty-three caches had been found in Kfar Giladi over the years, and weapons from the 1922 bunker were later moved to another cache for display.[12]

A separate Haganah cache, built in 1939, served as a strategic hub for bringing weapons from Syria and Lebanon and distributing them to other caches around the country. It and its weapons remained secret after Israel’s establishment and became publicly known in 1975.[21]

The kibbutz was also associated with assistance to Jewish refugees and unauthorized immigration. During the Mandate, Kfar Giladi helped organize unauthorized Jewish immigration across the nearby border.[1] Jewish immigrants from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Europe were sometimes smuggled to safety through local chicken coops.[9] The old coops were also used to hide Jewish refugee children during Aliyah Bet operations.[20]

British forces besieged and searched the kibbutz in 1946, and Kfar Giladi suffered casualties.[1] A Yizkor-book page names Zvi Ashkenazi among those who “fell in the defense of Kfar Giladi” that year, identifying him as a descendant of Eliezer Ashkenazi but providing no further details about the incident.[22]

Kfar Giladi developed as an agricultural kibbutz. Its economy has been described as based mainly on irrigated field crops, deciduous-fruit orchards, dairy cattle, and fishery. Other enterprises included a quarry, a plant nursery, and a rest home.[1] The kibbutz established a convalescent home in 1942; it later became the Kfar Giladi Hotel.[23]

Historical population figures show changes over several decades: Kfar Giladi had 680 inhabitants in 1968, approximately 710 in the mid-1990s, and 559 in 2002. These figures refer to those specific years and do not establish the community’s current population.[1]

In 1952, Kfar Giladi decided to join Iḥud ha-Kevuẓot ve-ha-Kibbutzim after a split in the Ha-Kibbutz ha-Me’uḥad movement.[1] Over time, former agricultural and residential spaces also acquired visitor-oriented uses. The kibbutz’s old chicken-coop area became the Chicken Coops Trail, with shops, cafés, a brewery, galleries, and other businesses. The trail’s setting preserves the connection between the site’s earlier agricultural structures and its reported role in hiding refugee children.[20]

Beit Harishonim is described as Kfar Giladi’s first building. For decades it served as a community center, children’s dormitory, and dining room. Beit HaShomer, at the kibbutz entrance, is a museum built in 1968 to tell the story of Bar Giora and Hashomer and their role in the foundations of the Israeli army.[5]

The Tel Hai cemetery and the Roaring Lion monument are among the area’s most prominent memorial sites. The lion stands above the common grave of the Tel Hai defenders, including Joseph Trumpeldor, and the annual ceremony on the 11th of Adar keeps the battle present in the region’s public commemorations. Sources give different dates for the statue’s erection and formal inauguration.[11][18]

Kfar Giladi’s visitor sites also include former arms-cache locations and the Chicken Coops Trail. The 1922 slik, discovered in 1983, is a tangible reminder of the hidden infrastructure maintained by underground groups; weapons from it were moved to another cache for display.[12] The trail combines businesses and galleries with the history of the old coops and their reported use in refugee assistance.[20]

On August 6, 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, a rocket fired from southern Lebanon struck an open assembly area beside the Tel Hai cemetery, about 200 meters from the entrance to Kfar Giladi. Twelve reserve soldiers were killed and 15 people were injured. The reservists had been waiting to be assigned to units and bases along the northern border.[6]

The strike occurred within a wider rocket campaign. One report says close to 4,000 rockets were fired during the war and that rocket fire left 53 people dead. Its main account divides the victims into 41 civilians and 12 soldiers, but a later legal-appendix passage calls all 53 victims civilians. The inconsistency appears within the same report; its account of the Kfar Giladi strike records the deaths of 12 soldiers.[24]

The strike also became the subject of public accusations about whether kibbutz residents had prevented soldiers from entering. In a 2007 letter to Kfar Giladi residents, the head of Northern Command’s staff said the IDF accepted responsibility for failures and mistakes leading to the fatal strike and that residents should not be held responsible. The kibbutz business manager said the gate had been open and that some soldiers were inside the kibbutz when the rocket struck.[25]

Contemporary Ynet reporting and a 2007 follow-up date the strike to August 6, 2006.[6][25] A 2026 anniversary article gives August 7 in its opening account, although the same article says a survivor arrived at the kibbutz on August 6 before the attack. The contemporaneous date of August 6 is therefore better supported.[26]

On August 4, 2021, sirens sounded at Kfar Giladi, Tel Hai Technological College, and Kiryat Shmona after three rockets were fired from southern Lebanon. Two fell in Israel and one in Lebanon; the rockets that landed in Israel caused several fires near a residential area of Kiryat Shmona. No organization claimed responsibility, and responsibility was attributed only to statements by Lebanese sources rather than established as a confirmed claim.[27]

On September 30, 2024, the IDF designated Kfar Giladi and several other border-area communities as a closed military zone, prohibiting entry. The closures appeared linked to the possibility of a ground offensive.[10] On the same date, Hezbollah announced its first use of a Nur missile to attack Kfar Giladi. The missile was described as an Iranian cruise missile designed to attack vessels, based on Chinese C801 and C802 coastal missiles, with a stated range of 170 kilometers and a 165-kilogram warhead. This records Hezbollah’s announcement, not independent confirmation of the claimed attack.[28]

About 800 residents were evacuated on October 7, 2023. The kibbutz’s youth initially stayed in children’s houses at Kibbutz Nir David. The youth group later returned before their parents and before the state formally declared the evacuation over, helping the local security team and addressing damage accumulated while the kibbutz was largely uninhabited.[7]

Residents returned in February 2025 after a year and four months away and began restoring the kibbutz, including reopening its renovated swimming pool.[8] The report describing the return called the displacement Kfar Giladi’s first evacuation, but that statement conflicts with historical sources documenting the community’s evacuation or temporary abandonment in 1920.[1][16]

Sources differ on several details of Kfar Giladi’s history. Official archival records identify October 21, 1916, as the establishment date, while a 1937 thesis lists 1917.[3][14] Accounts of Tel Hai differ over whether six or eight Jewish deaths should be assigned to the March 1 battle; another account separates two deaths in January from six on March 1.[4][16] The Jewish Virtual Library dates the erection of the Roaring Lion statue to 1926, while a cemetery study dates its inauguration to 1934.[11][18] Contemporary evidence supports August 6, 2006, for the fatal rocket strike, despite an August 7 date in one later anniversary article.[6][26]

Some modern reports record claims rather than independently established responsibility. No organization claimed the August 2021 rocket fire, and the September 2024 missile account reports Hezbollah’s own announcement of an attack.[27][28] The 2006 rocket-campaign report also contains internally inconsistent descriptions of the civilian and military death toll, although its account of the 12 soldiers killed near Kfar Giladi is consistent with contemporary reporting.[24][6]