Bnei Yehuda (Israeli settlement)

Bnei Yehuda (Hebrew: בְּנֵי יְהוּדָה) is an Israeli settlement organized as a moshav located in the southern Golan Heights, under the administration of Israel. The moshav was built in 1972 and falls under the municipal jurisdiction of the Golan Regional Council. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights illegal under international law, but the Israeli and the U.S government disputes this.^[2] In 2022 its population was 1,152.^[1]

Bnei Yehuda בְּנֵי יְהוּדָה‎
Bnei Yehuda Show map of the Golan Heights Bnei Yehuda Show map of the Golan Heights
Coordinates: 32°47′55″N 35°41′23″E
District	Northern
Council	Golan
Founded	1972
Population  (2022)[1]	1,152

History

Late Ottoman and Mandate periods

In the winter of 1885, members of the Old Yishuv in Safed formed the Beit Yehuda Society and purchased 15,000 dunams of land from the village of Ramthaniye in the central Golan.^[3] Due to financial hardships and difficulty in securing a kushan (Ottoman land deed), the site was abandoned a year later. Soon afterwards, the society regrouped and purchased 2,000 dunams of land from the village of Bir esh-Shagum on the western slopes of the Golan.^[4]

In 1890, six houses were built with the help of the Hovevei Zion organisation from London. In 1906, the population was 33, and the land area was 3,500 dunams (3.5 km²). A Hashomer scheme to settle more farmers there in 1913 was not successful.^[5][6] The Jews fled in the wake of the 1920 Nebi Musa riots.^[7] The last to depart was the Bernstein family, who left on 25 April 1920 after Arabs attacked the village and killed two family members.^[8]

Modern village

Modern Bnei Yehuda was founded in 1972 east of the former site by workers of the Negev Nuclear Research Center and Israel Aircraft Industries, following an appeal by the Jewish Agency.^[9] The village is located on top of the depopulated and demolished Syrian village of Sqoufiya.^[10]

References

1. "Regional Statistics". Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
2. "The Geneva Convention". BBC. December 10, 2009.
3. Gil-Har, Yitzhak (1981). "Separation of Trans-Jordan from Palestine". The Jerusalem Cathedra, ed. Lee Levine, Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi and Wayne State University, Jerusalem, p. 306.
4. Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922, Martin Sicker
5. M. R. Fishbach, Jewish property claims against Arab countries, Columbia University Press (2008), pp. 36-37.
6. Aharonson, Ran. Rothschild and early Jewish colonization in Palestine, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. p. 98. ISBN 0-7425-0914-1
7. Gil-Har (1981), p. 306.
8. Vilnai, Ze'ev (1976). "Benei-Yehuda". Ariel Encyclopedia (in Hebrew). Vol. 1. Israel: Am Oved. pp. 955–57.
9. HaReuveni, Immanuel (1999). Lexicon of the Land of Israel (in Hebrew). Miskal - Yedioth Ahronoth Books and Chemed Books. pp. 145–46. ISBN 965-448-413-7.
10. "In recognition of the Moshavim movement in Israel" - The story of Givat Yoav Link