GAZIT

GAZIT (Heb. גָּזִית; "hewn building stones," Isa. 9:9), kibbutz in eastern Lower Galilee, Israel, S.E. of Kefar Tavor, affiliated with Kibbutz Arẓi Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir, first founded in 1943 by a group known as "Irgun Borochov," and taken over by a Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir group in the summer of 1947. A year later, the present kibbutz was established, while the battles of the war of independence were in progress nearby. Its members were pioneers from Argentina, Romania, and other countries. The kibbutz economy was based on field crops, orchards, beef   cattle, dairy cattle, and poultry along with plastics, rubber, and furniture factories. Its population was 415 in 1968 and 581 in 2002. (Efraim Orni / Shaked Gilboa (2nd ed.)