August 11, 2017 Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest living man and one of the 10 longest-lived men ever, dies in Haifa one month before his…
March 21, 2016 The Jewish Agency secretly brings 17 Yemeni Jews to Israel, completing an effort in recent years that snuck roughly 200 Jews from Yemen to Israel amid Yemen’s civil war. “From Operation Magic…
April 30, 2012 Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, dies at home in Jerusalem at age 102. He was born Benzion Mileikowsky in Warsaw on March 25, 1910. His father…
Handler moves to Israel in 1948, taking a leadership role in Hapoel Ha-Mizrahi. In 2006, at the age of ninety, he makes Aliyah to Israel for a second time.
University of Haifa Professor Gershon Galil announces that he has deciphered an inscription from the time of King David’s reign in the 10th century BCE.
The leader of the Jewish community in Yemen and nine others immigrate to Israel to escape terrorist threats.
Organized by Israeli author Aharon Applefeld and politician Natan Sharansky, the Kisufim Conference opened in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Zerach Warhaftig, a founder of Israel’s National Religious Party and signatory of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, passes away in Jerusalem at the age of 96.
Yehuda Amichai, the poet laureate of Jerusalem, dies from lymphoma at the age of 76.
May 25, 1991 Operation Solomon flies more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 36 hours using 34 airplanes, including a Boeing 747 that sets a record with 1,087 passengers. The operation brings almost twice…
World-famous Soviet refusenik Anatoly Shcharansky is released after eight years in a Siberian labor camp and flies to his new life as Natan Sharansky in Israel.
November 21, 1984 Israel launches Operation Moses, the first of several covert missions to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel. The collaboration among the Mossad, the CIA and Sudanese State Security uses more than 30 aircraft…
Following a show trial lasting only twenty minutes, Habib Elghanian was executed by firing squad.
At Ben-Gurion Airport, five recently released Soviet Jewish prisoners are welcomed by Prime Minister Menachem Begin and cheering crowds. The five had been convicted in a 1970 hijacking plot, attempting to escape the anti-Semitic policies of the Soviet Union at the time.
Rose Luria Halprin, who served twice as the national president of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, passes away at the age of 83 in New York.
Former Egyptian Olympic fencer and leader of the Cairo Jewish community, Salvator Cicurel passes away.
Avraham Shlonsky, renowned Israeli poet, editor, and translator, passes away in Tel Aviv at the age of 73.
June 15, 1970 A dozen Soviet dissidents are arrested at Leningrad’s Smolnoye Airport just before boarding a 12-seat Antonov AN-2 aircraft for an attempt to fly to freedom. Also arrested are four conspirators in the…
A packed audience fills the amphitheater on Mount Scopus to celebrate the end of the June 1967 War and to mark the cultural unification of Jerusalem.
Shazar, a drafter of Israeli’s declaration of Independence who had helped Jews make Aliyah from Russia in the 1920s, becomes Israel’s third President.
The trial of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Nazi Final Solution, begins in front of a special panel of three judges at the Beit Ha’am community center in Jerusalem.
World-famous scientist and Zionist Albert Einstein dies at Princeton Hospital.
January 9, 1952 The Knesset ends three days of debate by voting 61-50 to accept more than $800 million in Holocaust reparations from the Western German government over 14 years. The decision sparks protests and…
The Third Maccabiah Games commence in the 50,000-seat stadium in Ramat Gan, Israel.
