Ilaniya

Ilaniya ( _he. אִילָנִיָּה) is a moshav in Israel's Lower Galilee Regional Council. The village is also known as Sejera, after the adjacent Arab village al-Shajara (or as-Sajra, Arabic for 'tree'), abandoned during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, some of those lands later becoming part of Ilaniya.

History

Ilaniya began as a farm which its land were acquired by the baron Edmond James de Rothschild and passed to the management of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) in 1899. The "Sejera farm" was worked by settlers of the Second Aliyah, among them the young David Ben Gurion. By taking what was one of the least profitable ranches in the land and making it profitable, Manya Shochat showed that her ideas for a communal collective could work. Later near the farm, a moshava was founded by inhabitants of Rosh Pina, Yesod HaMa'ala, Tiberias and Safed, joined by students of the Mikve Israel school, by several Jewish families from Kurdistan and Morocco and 8 families of Russian Subbotniks from Astrakhan.

The organization "Bar-Giora", which was founded in order to put the guarding of the Jewish settlements in Jewish hands, took upon itself in 1907, to replace the unreliable Circassian guards. They showed that Jews could defend the Jewish communities just as well as any locals. In 1909 "Bar-Giora" was absorbed into Hashomer.

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War the village was attacked several times by the Army for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Kaukji. Most of the Jewish inhabitants temporarily abandoned the place, while the remaining ones took part in the fighting. By 1949 the settlement expanded and included the territory of the Arab adjacent village of al-Shajara, which was abandoned by its residents during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Ilaniya and the Sejera farm are on the list of conserved sites.Some places of note are:
*the old school, founded in 1922
*the mikvah tohara in a sepulchral grotto
*The house of the peasant Naftali Fabrikant - now a library and educational centre
*the ruins of a synagogue from the Byzantine era

Bibliography

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* ed. Yuval Elazari - "Map's Concise Gazetteer of Israel Today" MAP - Mapping and Publishing, Tel Aviv, 2003 he icon