Sde Nehemia

33°11′12″N 35°37′21″E / 33.18667°N 35.62250°E / 33.18667; 35.62250CountryIsraelDistrictNorthernCouncilUpper GalileeAffiliationKibbutz MovementFounded19 December 1940Founded byAustrian, Dutch and Czechoslovak JewsPopulation1,288

Sde Nehemia (Hebrew: שְׂדֵה נְחֶמְיָה, lit. Nehemia's Field) (Sde Nehemya) is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located in the Upper Galilee, it falls under the jurisdiction of Upper Galilee Regional Council. In 2022 it had a population of 1,288.^[1]

The Banias and Hasbani Rivers converge on the grounds of the kibbutz.

Sde Nehemia was founded on 19 December 1940 by settlers from Austria, the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia, on land bought from the Palestinian village of al-Dawwara. It was originally known as Kvutzat Huliot, but later renamed after Nehemia de Lieme, a Dutch banker and Zionist activist who served as head of the Jewish National Fund.^[2]

In the early days of the kibbutz, the settlers lived in tents in the midst of malaria-infested swampland. According to one anecdote, a Dutch settler and physician named Yehuda Abas distributed anti-malarial pills free of charge to the local Palestinian population, but discovered these pills were being cut into four and sold for large sums of money to Arabs from as far away as Syria and Lebanon. Abas's solution was to introduce injections.^[3]

Rafael Reiss from Sde Nehemia was one of seven parachutists sent into Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944. He was captured by the Nazis and executed on 20 November 1944.^[4]

During the Nakba, on May 25th, 1948, the Palestinians from the nearby village Al-'Abisiyya were ethnically cleansed in Operation Yiftach by Zionist forces.^[5] In May, 1948, kibbutz Sde Nehemia then seized, "somewhat shamefacedly", 1,700 dunams of land from Al-'Abisiyya.^[6] The former Palestinian residents of al-Abisiyya were never allowed to return to their village or reclaim their stolen property.^[5]

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  Sde Nehemia 1944
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  Sde Nehemia 1944
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  Sde Nehemia 1945
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  Sde Nehemia, 1946

Located in the fertile Hula Valley between the Golan Heights and Lebanon, agriculture is a significant source of income. The kibbutz also owns a plastics factory, Huliot, a leading manufacturer of pipe systems and plastic products. Huliot specializes in flow products for water supply, drainage, sewage and greywater recycling which it sells on the local and global markets. The factory was established in 1947.^[7]