Two Israeli paratrooper platoons made up of approximately fifty IDF soldiers storm an Egyptian army camp in Gaza. The raid is a reprisal for continued fedayeen (Palestinian militants) attacks against Israeli civilians.
February 21, 1955 Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion ends his 14-month semiretirement from politics to replace Pinhas Lavon as the defense minister in Prime Minister Moshe Sharett’s Cabinet. Ben-Gurion has remained a member of the…
The Knesset passes the Bank of Israel Law by a vote of fifty-five to zero with fourteen abstentions. The new law, which goes into effect on December 1, 1954, establishes the Bank of Israel as the central financial authority for the country.
December 7, 1953 Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who declared Israel’s independence as the head of a provisional government May 14, 1948, announces his resignation and his plan to retire to Kibbutz Sde Boker…
At the end of the traditional thirty-day mourning period for Israel’s first President Chaim Weizmann, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi is inaugurated as Israel’s second President in a Knesset ceremony.
Chaim Weizmann, a leader of the Zionist movement and the first President of the State of Israel, passes away at his home in Rehovot after a year-long illness.
Dalia Itzik is born in Jerusalem to a family of Iraqi immigrants. In the Seventeenth Knesset (2006), she becomes the first woman to serve as Speaker of the Knesset.
July 20, 1951 Abdullah I, the founding king of Jordan, is assassinated by a Palestinian nationalist at the Al Aqsa Mosque entrance in Jerusalem. The king’s bodyguards immediately shoot the assassin dead. Abdullah’s grandson, Hussein,…
Ben-Gurion’s trip, the first visit by an Israeli Prime Minister to the US, includes a tour of hydroelectric and water projects in Tennessee and Alabama.
After more than a year of continued debate on the issue, the First Knesset adopts the “Harari Resolution,” which stipulated that the “constitution” of Israel would be composed of a series of Basic Laws approved by the Knesset.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the ninth and current Prime Minister of Israel, is born in Tel Aviv. Although he spends a good portion of his childhood in Philadelphia, Netanyahu returns to Israel in 1967 to fulfill his service in the IDF.
In an address to the Knesset, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett reconfirms Israel’s willingness to negotiate agreeable and sustainable terms of peace with its neighbors.
The iconic flag with two blue stripes and a blue Star of David at its center becomes the official Israeli flag more than five months after the establishment of the state.
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion summons dozens of Palmach commanders for a conference. There he announces a plan to dismantle the elite, underground fighting unit and integrate it into the newly established Israel Defense Forces.
The Altalena arrives off the coast of Kfar Vitkin from France carrying 900 immigrants and a large stockpile of weapons.
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 US State Department prepares a memorandum for Secretary of State George Marshall and President Truman seeking non-implementation of the UN partition resolution (181) on Palestine.
Berl Katznelson, a leader in the Labor Zionist movement, dies suddenly at the age of 57 in Jerusalem. His advocacy for the creation of a labor-based society in Israel would eventually form the basis of the Mapai party, which was created in 1930 and would dominate Israeli politics until the late 1970′s.
February 28, 1942 Dorit Beinisch, the ninth president of Israel’s Supreme Court, is born Dorit Werba in Tel Aviv to a father who works as a civil servant after arriving from Poland in the 1930s…
Jacob Toledano returns to the Land of Israel in early 1942 to take up his new post as Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Tel-Aviv and Jaffa.
Yossi Sarid, a politician on the left known as “Israel’s moral compass,” is born in Rehovot.
A close associate of Theodore Herzl, Max Bodenheimer is the first president of the Zionist Federation of Germany and is a leader in the establishment of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). He dies in Jerusalem.
In the midst of the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt, a debate over British policy in Mandatory Palestine is held in the House of Commons.
David Ben-Gurion of Ahdut Ha’avodah and Joseph Sprinzak of Hapoel Hatzair recognize that their parties have more in common with each other than they have differences and begin moving towards a merger. The Mapai party is the result.
Dive in, or choose a pathway: Topics, Types, Eras and/or Languages. Explore robust content. Come back often for more.