On Friday afternoon in the Tel Aviv Museum, David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Provisional State Council, declares Israel’s independence. The United States is the first country to recognize the new and already besieged state of Israel.
The second secret meeting between the two is a last-ditch effort to persuade Transjordan to stay out of an impending war with the soon-to-be declared State of Israel.
Arab forces ambush a medical convoy en route to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem. Seventy-nine people, mostly doctors and nurses are killed in the attack.
March 13, 1948 The Davidka, a mortar designed and manufactured at the Mikveh Israel agricultural school for use in Israel’s fight for independence, is used in combat for the first time in an attack on…
February 29, 1948 Jewish militants from the Lehi underground group mine train cars carrying British troops on the Cairo-Haifa line north of Rehovot. The attack uses one or more bombs placed on the tracks and…
Following the United Nations vote for the Partition of Palestine on the previous day, violence ensues between Jews and Arabs in the British Mandate of Palestine. The first phase of Israel’s War of Independence begins.
The United Nations General Assembly passes Resolution 181 by a vote of 33-13 with 10 abstentions. The Resolution recommended the creation of separate Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, linked by an economic union.
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko proposes a unitary state for Palestine, but vows to support partition if it is deemed the only workable solution.
November 1, 1945 The newly formed Jewish Resistance Movement sets off explosions at more than 150 sites along the railway system of British Mandatory Palestine and blows up three British gunboats in the Jaffa and…
November 20, 1944 Haviva Reik and two other paratroopers from British Mandatory Palestine are among about 40 Jewish fighters executed by the Nazis after the suppression of an uprising in Slovakia. Reik, who was born…
November 16, 1924 Haim Bar-Lev, an Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, is born in Vienna, Austria. His family moves to Yugoslavia before settling in Palestine in 1939. He studies at the Mikveh Israel agricultural…
Shmuel Katz, a leader of Revisionist Zionism and a founder of the Herut Party in Israel, is born in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Charles Winters, an American who helps Israel acquire fighter planes in 1948, is born in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Ralph Bunche is born in Detroit, Michigan. He is appointed to the UN Special Committee on Palestine in 1947, which is charged with devising a partition plan.
November 11, 1902 Yisrael Amir, the first commander in chief of the Israeli Air Force, is born in Vilna in the Russian Empire as Yisrael Zabludovsky. He makes aliyah in 1923 and that year joins…
Moshe Sharett is born as Moshe Shertok in Kherson, Ukraine. Sharett’s parents were early Zionists, having been involved in the BILU movement in the early 1880’s.
Dive in, or choose a pathway: Topics, Types, Eras and/or Languages. Explore robust content. Come back often for more.