Founded 1924 | ||
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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.
Between 1933 and 1935 the kibbutz moved north-east 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 took intensive shelling from Syrian, Iraqi and Transjordanian forces.
In 1953, as a result of the split in the HaKibbutz HaMeuhad movement, the kibbutz was split in two:
South of Ashdot Ya'aqov beside the island of Naharayim (meeting of the Jordan and Yarmouk river) there is a memorial for the 7 twelve-year-old Israeli girls murdered by a Jordanian border guard in March 1997.