August 5, 1953 Unit 101, an independent special forces section of the Israel Defense Forces, is formed under the command of Ariel Sharon, hand-picked by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Facing the constant threat of terrorist…
June 27, 1945 Ami Ayalon, who leads the Shin Bet and the Israeli navy, is born in Tiberias. He serves in the navy from 1963 to 1996. He volunteers for the Shayetet 13 commando unit,…
Brigadier General Orna Barbivai is promoted to the rank of major general, becoming the highest-ranking female officer in the history of the IDF.
June 7, 1981 Eight Israeli F-16s fly a 2,000-mile round trip to bomb Iraq’s Osirak plutonium nuclear reactor at the Tammuz I complex 10 miles south of Baghdad. The mission, Operation Opera, succeeds at destroying…
David Elazar, who served as Chief of Staff of the IDF in the early 1970s, passes away at the age of fifty following a heart attack.
March 17, 1921 Meir Amit, a career soldier who builds the Mossad into an internationally renowned intelligence agency, is born Meir Slutzky on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in Tiberias. He attends agricultural…
March 7, 1965 Egyptian authorities release details about the arrest Feb. 22 of German-Israeli spy Wolfgang Lotz and his wife, Waldrud, on espionage charges. Some reports say Lotz’s arrest was part of a roundup of…
March 1, 1920 A Shi’ite Arab militia, accompanied by local Bedouins, attacks the Jewish agricultural settlement of Tel Hai, which has served as a border outpost in the Upper Galilee between British-controlled Palestine and French-controlled…
December 30, 2002 The Israeli Supreme Court rules that Israeli Defense Forces reservists may not refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza. Coming during the deadly violence of the Second Intifada, the ruling…
As fears about a nuclear Iran intensify, the United States agrees to provide Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with $10 billion in military aid.
November 14, 2012 Ahmed Jabari, the Hamas military chief, is killed in an Israel Defense Forces airstrike on Gaza that marks the start of Operation Pillar of Defense. The strike comes in response to an…
Major General Israel Tal passes away at the age of 85. Tal is best known for heading the 1970 committee that designed and developed the Israeli-made Merkava tank.
Yossi Harel, commander of the Aliyah Bet ship Exodus, passes away at the age of ninety.
January 8, 2008 Moshe Levi, the first Mizrahi chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, dies at age 72 of a brain aneurysm at HaEmek Medical Center in Afula a week after suffering his…
IDF soldier Gilad Shalit is captured by a group of Palestinian militants and is held hostage for over five years before being exchanged for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.
August 7, 2002 The Palestinian Authority Cabinet agrees to a truce deal proposed by Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer to withdraw the Israel Defense Forces from Palestinian-controlled parts of the Gaza Strip and from the…
Israeli commandos overtake a weapons ship, the Karine-A, and seize fifty tons of Iranian weapons, including a number of long-range rockets.
July 19, 1999 Stella Levy, who commanded the Women’s Corps of the Israel Defense Forces in the 1960s and briefly served in the Knesset, dies. She was born in French Mandatory Syria in 1924 and…
May 28, 1999 The Israeli submarine Dakar, which disappeared in January 1968, is discovered between Crete and Cyprus almost 9,800 feet (nearly two miles) beneath the surface of the Mediterranean Sea. The diesel-electric Dakar, originally…
Major General Aharon Remez, who led Israel’s Air force in its early years and served as Ambassador to Great Britain died on April 3, 1994 in Jerusalem at the age of seventy-four from illness
Ezer Weizman is elected President by the Knesset on the second ballot in a narrow vote of 66 to 53.
August 12, 1991 Yeruham Cohen, an Israeli intelligence officer known for his friendship with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, dies at age 75. Cohen was born into a Yemeni family in Tel Aviv in 1916 and…
August 30, 1987 On a 12-11 vote, the Israeli Cabinet decides to end production of the Lavi fighter jet, under development since 1980 by Israel Aerospace Industries and first flown as a prototype in December…
Ron Arad, the 28-year-old navigator of an Israeli F-4 Phantom II, is captured by the Shia terrorist group Amal after parachuting out of his burning aircraft over Lebanon.
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