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…
Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s seventh Prime Minister and staunch advocate for settlements in the West Bank, passes away in Tel Aviv at the age of 96.
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.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a thirty-minute foreign policy speech at Bar-Ilan University, offering details for a completely demilitarized Palestinian State.
The leader of the Jewish community in Yemen and nine others immigrate to Israel to escape terrorist threats.
May 8, 2007 A public announcement reveals that the tomb of King Herod the Great has been found at Herodium in the Judean Desert of the West Bank in an excavation led by archaeologist Ehud…
Organized by Israeli author Aharon Applefeld and politician Natan Sharansky, the Kisufim Conference opened in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, a leading scholar and Jewish communal and religious leader, passes away from heart failure at the age of 84.
January 27, 2006 The first U.N.-recognized International Holocaust Remembrance Day is held on the 61st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The goal of the commemoration is to educate the nations of the world and…
November 10, 2004 More than half a century after the founding of the state of Israel, the Knesset officially adopts “Hatikvah” (“The Hope”) as the national anthem. The song became the anthem of the Zionist…
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.
Matti Shmulevitz, a member of the underground Lehi and an advisor to Menachem Begin, passes away at the age of 75 one day after collapsing during a chess game in Tel Aviv.
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…
August 3, 1981 Excavations in Jerusalem’s Area G, on the eastern side of the City of David, are suspended because of attacks on archaeologists at the site by Haredi Jews, most of them part of…
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.
