Shafir

Shafir
Shafir
Shafir
Coordinates: 31°41′48″N 34°43′43″E / 31.69667°N 34.72861°ECoordinates: 31°41′48″N 34°43′43″E / 31.69667°N 34.72861°E
District	Southern
Council	Shafir
Affiliation	Hapoel HaMizrachi
Founded	15 August 1949
Founded by	Czechoslovakian and Hungarian immigrants
Population (2015)[1]	842

Shafir (Hebrew: שָׁפִיר‎) is a moshav in southern Israel. Located in the Shephelah near Kiryat Malakhi, it falls under the jurisdiction of Shafir Regional Council. In 2015 it had a population of 842.

History

Shafir was founded on 15 August 1949 by immigrants from Hungary and Czechoslovakia and was built on land that had belonged to the Arab village of al-Sawafir al-Sharqiyya,^[2] which had been depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It was named after the Biblical city of Shafir that is mentioned in the Book of Micah 1:11, which also means "good and beautiful".^[3] Today Shafir is made up of a mixture of Czechoslovakian/ Hungarians, and Persians. For the past 20 years the Ayube tribe has been prominent.

References

1. "List of localities, in Alphabetical order" (PDF). Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 16 October 2016.
2. Khalidi, Walid (1992), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, p. 135, ISBN 0-88728-224-5
3. Vilnai, Ze'ev (1980). "Shafir (b)". Ariel Encyclopedia (in Hebrew). Volume 8. Israel: Am Oved. p. 7996.