November 12, 2009 Former Knesset member Eliyahu Speiser dies at age 79. Born in Haifa on March 23, 1930, Speiser was educated at the Hebrew Reali School and Hebrew University, where he earned a degree…
December 16, 1984 Israeli humanitarian and peace activist Abie Nathan arrives in famine-struck Ethiopia with a plane full of relief supplies donated by Jews worldwide. The $300,000 shipment includes equipment to build a refugee camp…
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin are jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to bring about peace between Israel and Egypt.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat lands in Israel for a historic 36-hour visit, most of it spent in Jerusalem.
David Ben-Gurion, (born David Gruen) Israel’s first Prime Minister passes away at the Tel Hashomer-Sheba Medical Center in Tel-Aviv at the age of 87.
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion resigns as a result of the controversial, covert operation in Egypt, setting the stage for new elections in the summer of 1961.
Killed in an ambush along the Gaza border, Ro’i Rothberg is eulogized by Moshe Dayan. Rothberg becomes a symbol for the inability to achieve peace in Israel’s early years.
Shortly after assuming the Presidency of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Selig Brodetsky suffered a major heart attack.
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, dies in Rehovot after a yearlong illness.
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.
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.
December 12, 1943 Hanan Porat, a leader in Israel’s post-1967 settlement movement, is born in Kfar Pines, northeast of Hadera. The family moves in 1944 to Kfar Etzion in the Judean Hills, then returns to…
Louis Brandeis, retired United States Supreme Court Justice and celebrated American Zionist, passes away in Washington DC at the age of 84.
Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s 5th Prime Minister, is born in Jerusalem to parents who came to Israel during the Third Aliyah. He is the first Israeli Prime Minister to be born in Eretz Yisrael.
Born into a family of thirteen children in Mit Abu al-Kum, Egypt, Sadat is a member of the Free Officers movement that overthrew Egypt’s monarchy in 1952. As Egypt’s President, he signs a historic peace agreement with Israel in 1979.
Shmuel Katz, a leader of Revisionist Zionism and a founder of the Herut Party in Israel, is born in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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…
Israel’s third prime minister, Levi Eshkol, is born Levi Shkolnik into a Hasidic family near Kyiv, Ukraine.
