El Rom is an Israeli settlement

Israeli settlement

An Israeli settlement is a Jewish civilian community built on land that was captured by Israel from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered occupied territory by the international community. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank...

 and a kibbutz

Kibbutz

A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...

, in the northern Golan Heights which lies in the municipal territory of the Golan Regional Council

Golan Regional Council

The Golan Regional Council is the regional council consolidating almost all Israeli settlements located on the Golan Heights. It is made up of 19 moshavim and 10 kibbutzim, and other villages...

. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights illegal under international law

International law and Israeli settlements

The international community considers the establishment of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories illegal under international law, but Israel maintains that they are consistent with international law because it does not agree that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the...

, but the Israeli government disputes this.

Geography

The settlement is located about two kilometres west of Mount Hermon

Mount Hermon

Mount Hermon is a mountain cluster in the Anti-Lebanon mountain range. Its summit straddles the border between Syria and Lebanon and, at 2,814 m above sea level, is the highest point in Syria. On the top there is “Hermon Hotel”, in the buffer zone between Syria and Israeli-occupied...

, at an elevation of 1050 metres (3,444.9 ft) above sea level

Sea level

Mean sea level is a measure of the average height of the ocean's surface ; used as a standard in reckoning land elevation...

. Both El Rom and the nearby moshav

Moshav

Moshav is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists during the second aliyah...

 Odem

Odem

Odem is an Israeli settlement, moshav shitufi, situated in the northern part of the Golan Heights. It is located on Mount Odem, at a height of above sea level, making it the second-highest town in Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. It is surrounded by the Odem Forest. Odem means ruby...

 are the two Jewish settlements in Israel with the highest elevation, after Nimrod.

History

The kibbutz was founded in 1971 by a core group of settlers from the Machanot HaOlim Zionist youth movement

Zionist youth movement

A Zionist youth movement is an organization formed for Jewish children and adolescents for educational, social, and ideological development, including a belief in Jewish nationalism as represented in the State of Israel...

. Although they had intended to settle in Beit HaArava

Beit HaArava

Beit HaArava is an Israeli settlement and kibbutz in the West Bank. Located near the Dead Sea and Jericho at the eponymous Beit HaArava Junction, the intersection of Highway 1 and Highway 90, it falls under the jurisdiction of Megilot Regional Council...

 in the southern Jordan River Valley, they were eventually persuaded to move to the Golan Heights. The original settlement was located in the vicinity of the occupied Syrian town of Quneitra

Quneitra

Quneitra is the largely destroyed and abandoned capital of the Quneitra Governorate in south-western Syria. It is situated in a high valley in the Golan Heights at an elevation of 1,010 metres above sea level...

, however, this settlement was destroyed during the Yom Kippur War

Yom Kippur War

The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War or October War , also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria...

, and an enormous tank battle

Armoured warfare

Armoured warfare or tank warfare is the use of armoured fighting vehicles in modern warfare. It is a major component of modern methods of war....

 was fought in its fields.

Climate

El-rom has Mediterranean-type weather, with hot and dry summers followed by cold and humid winters. Being situated at the northern part of the Golan Heights and at an altitude of over one thousand meters above sea level gives it a unique year-round weather in comparison to most of Israel. Summer time, in between May and September, is dry with almost no precipitation at all and temperatures of 25-30 degrees Celsius during the day in the hot months of July and August. Nights are mostly cool due to the continental wind blowing from the vast desert to the east. Winter temperature averages seven degrees Celsius in the cold months of January and February during the day and lows of 2-3 degrees Celsius, at times dropping below zero. The rains start in September and go on until May giving life to the area, filling up the reservoirs and a lot of precious water to the Sea of Galilee. The annual rainfall averages 940 millimeters of rain and occasional snow. Fog is very common throughout the year. In recent years, temperatures are rising and droughts are becoming more frequent because of global warming and the shifting weather patterns.

Population

El Rom has a population of approximately 350 (2005). They have adopted a liberal

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

 Zionist

Zionism

Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 philosophy, focusing on tolerance and an ecologically

Ecology

Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

 sound integration into the surrounding environment. This is expressed in a local pre-school system developed specifically for the kibbutz's children. The kibbutz is planning (as of 2005) to establish a new neighborhood of one-story homes to the north, which will significantly increase its population.

Economy

The economy is based primarily on agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

. Crops include apple

Apple

The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family . It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans. Apple grow on small, deciduous trees that blossom in the spring...

s, pear

Pear

The pear is any of several tree species of genus Pyrus and also the name of the pomaceous fruit of these trees. Several species of pear are valued by humans for their edible fruit, but the fruit of other species is small, hard, and astringent....

s, strawberries

Strawberry

Fragaria is a genus of flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae, commonly known as strawberries for their edible fruits. Although it is commonly thought that strawberries get their name from straw being used as a mulch in cultivating the plants, the etymology of the word is uncertain. There...

, grape

Grape

A grape is a non-climacteric fruit, specifically a berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or they can be used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, molasses and grape seed oil. Grapes are also...

s for wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

. They also raise cattle

Cattle

Cattle are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos primigenius...

 for food

Food

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...

, and chicken

Chicken

The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...

s. In 1984, the kibbutz established El Rom Studios to provide an alternative employment opportunities and revenue stream. The studios command a large share of the market for adding subtitle

Subtitle (captioning)

Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added...

s as well as other translation services for film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

. In Israel, since foreign language movies and TV programs are rarely dubbed

Dubbing (filmmaking)

Dubbing is the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be...

, there is a constant need to provide these services.