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,…
As a number of North African Arabs pass through Tripoli en route to join Arab armies in the 1948 War against Israel, a mob of rioters attacks the Jewish Quarter in Tripoli.
May 17, 1948 The Soviet Union officially recognizes the State of Israel three days after Israel declared independence and the United States immediately offered de facto recognition of the new state’s provisional government. The Soviet…
April 22, 1948 As communal violence increases with the approaching departure of British troops and expected declaration of Israeli independence, the Haganah seizes Haifa, and as many as 25,000 Arabs flee the city, possibly in…
April 4, 1968 Moshe Levinger and several other Israeli Jews pretending to be Swiss tourists check into a Hebron hotel to establish the first permanent Jewish presence in the city in almost 40 years, taking…
April 2, 1947 The British government notifies the United Nations of its intent to bring the question of Palestine’s future before the next U.N. General Assembly. The United Kingdom also requests a special General Assembly…
November 23, 1926 Rafi Eitan, whose intelligence career ranges from the high of capturing Adolf Eichmann in Argentina to the low of handling U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard as a spy, is born on a…
Brigadier General Orna Barbivai is promoted to the rank of major general, becoming the highest-ranking female officer in the history of the IDF.
January 18, 1991 Iraq fires eight Scud missiles at Israel in the predawn hours of the morning after U.S.-led allied forces launch airstrikes on Iraq at the outset of the Persian Gulf War. Missiles hit…
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…
April 17, 1954 Gamal Abdel Nasser, 36, is appointed the prime minister of Egypt. Nasser’s interest in politics goes back to age 12 when he accidentally participated in an ultranationalist protest calling for the overthrow…
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 31, 2002 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declares Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat “the enemy of Israel and the enemy of the free world” in an angry, five-minute, mid-Passover address to the nation after…
March 25, 2019 A rocket destroys a house in Mishmeret, 20 miles north of Tel Aviv, and injures seven people. In response, Israel Defense Forces planes bomb suspected Gaza military locations 12 hours later and…
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 9, 1932 Pinhas Rutenberg and the Palestine Electric Co. open a hydroelectric power plant at Naharayim. It supplies much of the electricity in Palestine until its destruction by Iraqi troops during the 1948 War…
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 6, 1975 An eight-man Palestine Liberation Organization raid planned by Abu Nidal hits the beach in Tel Aviv around 11 p.m. and, after being spotted by police, attacks the Savoy Hotel. The terrorists kill…
March 4, 1996 Abdel-Rahim Ishaq, 24, a Palestinian resident of Ramallah, detonates a 45-pound bomb packed with nails outside the Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv, killing himself and 13 Israelis. Later identified by a caller…
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…
February 22, 1948 Arab militants disguised as British troops, joined by a pair of British deserters, detonate bombs in three British military trucks and an armored car in the morning along the shopping district of…
February 9, 1953 The Soviet Union’s diplomatic outpost in Tel Aviv is bombed, leading the Soviets to break off diplomatic relations a few days later. One Soviet diplomat and the wives of two others are…
January 29, 2004 Israel releases more than 430 Arab prisoners — more than 400 to the Palestinian Authority, 29 to surrounding Arab nations, and one German citizen who worked with Hezbollah to Germany, from where…
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