Shamir

History

Surrounding the kibbutz is a field of more than 400 dolmens, dated to the Bronze Age IB (c. 2350–2000 BCE). The largest of the dolmens has a basalt capstone of 50 tons which has rare rock art on its underside. Its excavators judge that the scale of the dolmen field and size of the dolmens indicate a governmental system more complex than that usually assigned to the period. Of notable interest are 3rd/4th-century Dioclateanic boundary stones with Greek inscriptions. The stones name the village of Migēramē (Greek: Μιγηραμη), identified at the site of al-Muqārināt, northeast of Kfar Szold, in the Golan Heights. The kibbutz was established in 1944 by a small group of mainly Romanian immigrants. The first-generation settlers were members of the socialist Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War the United Nations-established border between Israel and Syria was drawn to run only a few hundred yards east of the kibbutz. On Thursday 13 June 1974, four PFLP-GC militants infiltrated the Lebanon-Israel border and invaded the kibbutz with the aim of capturing hostages for a prisoner swap. They entered one of the buildings shooting a pregnant woman Edna Mor (28) and another woman Shoshana Galili (58). Edna left behind a child and husband. They continued shooting at random. Judith Sinton (19), a Kibbutz volunteer from New Zealand, on her way back to the apiary after breakfast, was shot and killed by one of the terrorists. The members of the kibbutz seized their weapons and ran in the direction from where gunfire was heard. In the gun battle that followed, all four militants were killed. Their written message ends: "We love to die, as you love to live." The artist Avraham Eilat who was at that time a member of the kibbutz documented the event.

Most-observed species

• Arabian gazelle

  Gazella gazella (Pallas, 1766) · Mammalia
  5,060
• Chukar

  Alectoris chukar (J.E.Gray, 1830) · Aves
  3,743
• Hooded Crow

  Corvus cornix Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  3,599
• White-spectacled Bulbul

  Pycnonotus xanthopygos (Hemprich & Ehrenberg, 1833) · Aves
  3,576
• Eurasian Kestrel

  Falco tinnunculus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  3,485
• Eurasian Collared-Dove

  Streptopelia decaocto (Frivaldszky, 1838) · Aves
  3,049
• Eurasian Jay

  Garrulus glandarius (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  2,987
• House Sparrow

  Passer domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  2,949

Most recent

• M 4.3 — 2026-04-06
  52 km NW of Tyre, Lebanon
• M 3.7 — 2022-01-23
  4 km ENE of Kafr Mi?r, Israel
• M 4.1 — 2022-01-22
  4 km E of Taiyiba, Israel
• M 3.3 — 2020-08-04
  1 km ENE of Beirut, Lebanon
• M 3.8 — 2018-11-03
  44 km WNW of Sidon, Lebanon
• M 2.9 — 2018-07-27
  1 km ESE of Migdal, Israel