December 25, 1925 Politician and activist Geulah Cohen, the founder of the Tehiya party, is born in Tel Aviv. Cohen becomes involved with political movements in Mandatory Palestine when she is young, and she joins…
November 16, 1924 Haim Bar-Lev, an Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, is born in Vienna, Austria. His family moves to Yugoslavia before settling in Palestine in 1939. He studies at the Mikveh Israel agricultural…
November 9, 1924 Avraham Tamir, a military strategic mastermind who rises to the rank of major general, is born. He is one of the first Israeli officials to meet with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and…
In border designations for states drafted primarily by Britain and France after WWI, the new state of Syria gains control of the Golan Heights.
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.
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 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…
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.
As part of the British campaign during World War I, the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade overtake the Turkish defenders and capture Beersheba.
Sarah Aaronsohn, a Nili intelligence operative, dies four days after shooting herself in an effort to avoid further torture and interrogation by Turkish authorities.
Chaim Weizmann, first President of Israel, then working as a chemist in Manchester, England, is appointed to the British Admiralty as an Honorary Technical Adviser on acetone supplies.
Israeli politician, diplomat, historian, and writer Abba Eban is born in Cape Town, South Africa.
Shmuel Katz, a leader of Revisionist Zionism and a founder of the Herut Party in Israel, is born in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Responding to a plea from Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to Turkey and American Jewish leaders, led by Louis Marshall and Jacob Schiff, quickly raise $50,000 in aid for the Jewish community in the Palestine.
Charles Winters, an American who helps Israel acquire fighter planes in 1948, is born in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Ralph Bunche is born in Detroit, Michigan. He is appointed to the UN Special Committee on Palestine in 1947, which is charged with devising a partition plan.
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.
Moshe Sharett is born as Moshe Shertok in Kherson, Ukraine. Sharett’s parents were early Zionists, having been involved in the BILU movement in the early 1880’s.
September 11, 1881 Yosef Haim Brenner, the leading Israeli literary figure of the early 20th century, is born in Novi Mlini, Ukraine. He grows up receiving a Jewish education and joins the Bund, a Jewish…
Known for dying while defending the Jewish settlement of Tel Hai in 1920, Joseph Trumpeldor, a Zionist political activist and military hero, is born in Pyatigorsk, Russia.
Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky is born in Odessa, Ukraine. He is mostly known for his revisionist attitudes towards Zionism, which serve as the ideological foundation of Israel’s Likud political party.
November 3, 1840 A coalition of Austrian, British and Ottoman forces commanded by Austrian Archduke Friedrich bombards the port city of Acre and drives out the Egyptian garrison. More than 1,100 Egyptians are killed in…
Following a siege that began on September 20, Jerusalem falls to Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt.
