Modern Israel & the Diaspora
(2010 - Present)
January 11 |
IAF airstrike killed four Islamic Jihad operatives, including Awad Abu Nasir, one of the terror organization's senior field commanders known to be behind dozens of IED and gunfire attacks. |
February 1 |
The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip with close ties to Hamas, tries to carry out an attack on Israel by placing bombs in barrels and sending them into the Mediterranean Sea from the Gaza coast. |
February 10 |
NCO Sgt 1st Class Ihab Khatib, 28, of the Arab-Druze village of Kfar Maghar, is knifed to death at the Tapuach junction in the West Bank by a senior Palestinian police officer. |
March 18 |
A Thai greenhouse worker is killed when a Kassam rocket fired by Gaza terrorists explodes in the Netiv Ha’asara area. Ansar al-Sunna and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade both claim responsibility for the attack. |
March 26 |
A team of IDF soldiers from the Golani
Brigade is ambushed and attacked with mortar shells and gunfire
after crossing the border into the Gaza Strip when several people
are seen placing explosive devices near the Israeli security fence.
Two soldiers are killed and three are injured. Hamas and Islamic Jihad claim responsibility for the attack. |
May 27 |
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May 31 |
Israeli naval forces intercepted six ships attempting to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. During the boarding of the Mavi Marmara, the demonstrators onboard attacked the IDF naval personnel. As a result of the violence, seven soldiers were wounded and there were nine activist casualties. |
June 11 |
A Palestinian militant attempts to run over two Israeli border policemen in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz. Other members of the border police force at the scene shoot and critically injure the driver as he tries to escape. The two policemen are lightly injured and receive medical treatment on the spot |
June 14 |
One Israeli policeman is killed and three policemen are injured when Palestinian militants open fire on a their vehicle on Highway 60, south of Hebron. |
June 20 |
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July 7 |
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July 26 |
Six Israeli soldiers and one Romanian soldier die in an Israel Air Force helicopter crash, during a joint Israeli-Romanian aviation exercise in northern Romania. |
July 30 |
A series of Israeli airstrikes killed a senior commander of the Hamas military wing, Issa Batran. |
August 5 |
Elena Kagan is sworn as a Supreme Court Justice. |
September 1 |
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November 4 |
The Shin Bet and the Israeli Air Force successfully carried out an operation to kill Mohammed Namnam, a senior al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist, by a car bomb in Gaza City. Namnam was a top operative with the Army of Islam, a radical Palestinian terror group affiliated with al-Qaida and involved in the 2006 abduction of Gilad Shalit. |
January |
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January 11 |
Islamic Jihad operative Mohammed
Najar, who was involved in the planning of a terror attack
in Israel, was killed in an IAF targeted airstrike while riding
a motorcycle in the Gaza
Strip. |
January 17 |
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud
Barak announces he will leave the Labor
Party to establish a new faction with other legislators called
Atzmaut (Independence). |
January 23 |
Al Jazeera releases The
Palestine Papers, revealing a trove of documents, e-mails
and minutes of meetings, shedding light on 10 years of negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinians. |
March 11 |
Udi Fogel, 36, and Ruth Fogel, 35, along with
three of their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and 3-month-old Hadas
were stabbed to death by terrorists in their home in Itamar, in
northern Samaria, on Friday night. |
March 15 |
IDF Navy fighters intercepted the cargo vessel " Victoria"
loaded with various weaponry. The vessel, flying under a Liberian
flag, was intercepted some 200 miles west of Israel's coast. The
Victoria carried as much as 50 tons of weapons along with a large
amount of 60 and 120 mm mortar shells. |
March 23 |
One woman, identified by the police as a 56-year-old
British tourist, was killed and about 50 wounded when a bomb exploded
across from the Jerusalem Convention Center, near the Central
Bus Station. The bomb had been placed near a telephone booth at
a crowded bus stop next to Egged city bus #74. |
March 27 |
Israel and Russia signed a framework
agreement for cooperation between the Russian Federal Space Agency
and the Israel space
agency. The agreement, which was signed in the presence of
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, enhances cooperation between the Israeli and Russian
space agencies in the fields of space research, observation, navigation,
medicine and biology in space, research in advanced materials
and launchings. |
March 28 |
IDF Home Front Command and Medical Corps aid
delegation to Japan arrived at Minami Sanriku in the Miyagi
prefecture, a city handling many displaced persons. The following
day, they opened an advanced medical clinic featuring pediatrics,
surgical, maternity and gynecological, and otolaryngology wards,
an optometry department, a laboratory, a pharmacy and an intensive
care unit. |
March 30 |
IAF aircraft struck a terrorist cell in the
southern Gaza Strip, killing member of Islamic Jihad. According
to the IDF the cell was responsible for firing rockets into Israel. |
April 1 |
Justice Richard Goldstone published an article
in the Washington Post refuting his " Goldstone
Report" issued in the aftemath of Israel's Operation
Cast Lead in Gaza during the winter of 2008-9. The report had originally claimed
that Israel intentionally attacked civilian targets among other
war crimes; Justice Goldstone said that after more evidence came
to light he now understands that Israel did not knowingly attack
Palestinian civilians. |
April 2 |
IAF aircraft killed three Palestinian terrorists
and critically wounded one in the southern Gaza
Strip in a strike aimed at the terrorist squad planning to
kidnap Israelis in the Sinai Peninsula and Israel during the upcoming Passover holiday. |
April 7 |
Daniel Viflic, 16, of Bet
Shemesh, died (April 17) of mortal wounds suffered when an
anti-tank missile was fired at a school bus in the Negev near
Kibbutz Sa'ad just moments after it had dropped off the rest of
the school children. |
April 8 |
The Israeli developed Iron
Dome anti-missile system successfully shoots down its first
two rockets fired by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. The rockets, aimed towards Israeli
communities in the south, were immediately destroyed on impact
by Iron Dome missiles which were released mere seconds after the
initial launches. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud
Barak called the incident a first in military history. |
April 24 |
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April 27 |
Fatah, led by PA President Mahmoud
Abbas, and Hamas,
rulers of the Gaza Strip, signed a reconciliation agreement in
Cairo to reform a unity government that had been split since the
two parties violently broke awat from the government in 2007. |
April 29 |
Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail
Haniyeh urged the PLO Friday to rescind its recognition of
Israel in response to the Jewish state's objection to the Palestinian
unity agreement. Haniyeh said that there was no justification
for recognizing the ‘Israeli entity’ in wake of Israel's
objection to Palestinian rights and unity. |
May 12 |
John
Demjanjuk was found guilty of being an accessory to the murders
of tens of thousands of Jews while he served as Nazi guard at Sobibor death
camp in Poland during World
War II. The German court charged Demjanjuk for his involvement
in 27,900 murders and sentenced the 91-year-old to five years
in prison. |
May 24 |
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu spoke
in front of a joint session of the U.S.
Congress to outline his desires for peace in the region and
his calls to the Palestinian Authority to sit down for negotiations
without preconditions. He also called on PA President Abbas to
recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. Netanyahu
received a very warm welcome and the congressmen gave standing
ovations throughout the speech. |
June 3 |
For the fourth time during his presidency, U.S.
President Barack Obama delayed for six months the moving of the U.S. embassy in Israel
from Tel Aviv to the capital, Jerusalem.
Ever since 1995, when the Jerusalem
Embassy Relocation Act was passed by Congress ordering the
transfer of the U.S. embassy, every president has routinely delayed
the move. |
June 23 |
The IDF welcomed its ever female major general, as Orna Barbivai was promoted
as commander of the Manpower Directorate. Her rank is the IDF’s
second-highest, directly reporting to Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, IDF chief
of staff. Barbivai has served in the IDF for 30 years, devoting
her entire army career to the directorate. |
July 19 |
Israeli naval forces intercepted the vessel
Al-Karama which had attempted to break Israel's blockade and reach
the Hamas-controlled territory of the Gaza Strip. Unlike the flotilla
that attempted the same provocation in the summer of 2010, the
passengers on the vessel did not attack IDF forces who boarded the ship and, without incident, they were transferred
to the Israeli port of Ashdod for medical examinations and to be sent home. There were no humanitarian
supplies on the boat. |
August 6 |
Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians marched
in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, among
other places throughout the country, to demand government assistance
in lowering the cost of living and to help subsidize housing.
The cost to own or rent homes in these major cities has skyrocketed
over the past few years to a level far above that seen almost
anywhere in the world, including the United States, Germany and
France. The demonstrations, led mainly by students and young professionals,
were started days earlier when protesters began living in tents
along major roadways to show their discontent with the policies
of the government |
August 18 |
Eight Israelis were killed and more than forty
(40) wounded in coordinated terrorist
attacks against multiple civilian and military targets on
desert Highway 12, just north of the coastal city of Eilat.
Terrorists killed six civilians after firing automatic weapons
at a passenger bus headed from Be'er
Sheva to Eilat and after attacking an empty bus with suicide
bombs. One IDF soldier was killed when his jeep struck an IED on the same highway
as his unit was responding to the attacks. The eighth victim,
a veteran member of the Israeli police special SWAT unit, was
killed during intense fighting with the retreating terrorists.
Hamas terrorists in Gaza launched
mortar rounds and shot Qassam rockets towards Israel immediately after the terrorist attacks
and continued firing rockets into the next day. At least two rockets
were intercepted and destroyed by an Iron
Dome battery stationed outside the Gaza Strip. |
August 29 |
Eight people were wounded in south Tel Aviv when a Palestinian from the West Bank city of Nablus rammed a stolen car into a group of policemen and teenagers outside a popular night club and then proceeded to stab people before being apprehended. Tel Aviv District Police Commander Aharon Eksol said the attack was "definitely an act of terror". |
September 23 |
Asher Palmer, 25, and his year old son Yonatan, of Kiryat Arba in the West Bank were killed when their car crashed on Route 60 near Hebron after being struck by stones thrown by Palestinians from a nearby village. Though the Israeli security services orignally said it was a routine car accident, they later changed the story when they concluded they were indeed killed in a terrorist attack. |
September 23 |
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the opening plenary of the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly directly following a plea from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the United Nations to recognize the State of Palestine. Netanyahu pledges that he will continue to work towards peace and two-state solution with the Palestinians but that unilateral actions such as Abbas' request from the UN are only detrimental to the peace process. |
October 11 |
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announces that the Israeli Cabinet and Hamas have agreed in signing to a deal that will secure the release of captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for the freeing of more than 1,000 Palestinians prisoners in Israeli jails. |
October 18 |
In the early afternoon hours, IDF Sergeant First-Class Gilad Shalit crosses the border into Israel and is officially free from his captivity of more than five years in the Gaza Strip. Simultaneously, Israel permits the release of 477 Palestinian prisoners in the first stage of an exchange that will eventually see 1,027 prisoners freed. The majority of those freed today are exiled out of the area, around 150 are sent to the Gaza Strip and less than 100 back to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. |
October 29 |
Moshe Ami, a 56 year old resident of Ashkelon, dies from shrapnel wounds incurred after his car was struck by a GRAD rocket launched by terrorists in the Gaza Strip. He is survived by his mother Zvia and sister Zehava, four children, Nira, Shlomi, Rachel and Yossi, and five grandchildren. |
May 8 |
Israeli Prime Minister, and head of the Likud party,Benjamin Netanyahu forms a coalition government with Shaul Mofaz, head of Kadima opposition party. With 94 Knesset members supporting the merger, the coalition becomes Israel's largest sinec 1984. |
May 8 |
Jewish American author Maurice Sendak, most famous for his book Where the Wild Things Are, dies at the age of 83. |
May 22 |
Israeli supermodel Bar Rafaeli named Maxim Magazine's "Most Beautiful Woman on Earth" for 2012. |
May 23 |
A 2,700-year-old clay shard with an ancient Hebrew inscription mentioning the city of Bethlehem was found in an archaeological dig in Jerusalem, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. The shard, measuring less than one inch across, was found by crews sifting through debris removed from the excavation site known as the City of David, just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. Head archaeologist Eli Shukron said the inscriptions on the shard are significant because they are the first archaeological evidence that Bethlehem existed as a city during the period generally referred to by biblical archaeologists as the First Temple era. |
May 30 |
Israeli chess Grandmaster Boris Gelfand places second in 2012 Chess World Championsip after falling short in the rapid playoff rounds. |
June 1 |
IDF Staff Sergeant Netanal Moshiashvili, a 20 year old resident of Ashkelon who served as a paramedic in the Golani Infantry Brigade, was killed in an exchanged of gunfire between IDF soldiers and Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip. During the fight, the attacking terrorist, from the Hamas organization, was killed. |
February 1 |
Ed Koch dies at age 88.The former army sergeant, lawyer, political commentator, and congressmen served as mayor of New York City from 1978 until 1979. He was the first New York mayor to win both the Republican and Democratic tickets. |
February 27 |
Jack Lew, 57, is confirmed as the 76th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. |
February 28 |
Yitiyish Aynaw, 22, becomes the first black and first Ethiopian-Israeli Miss Israel. She was invited to attend Shimon Peres gala as a guest of President Obama. |
February 28 |
Dr. Alasdair Conn, Chief of Emergency Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, says in a report that it was Israeli expertise and techniques that helped set up triage in the hours after the bombings at the Boston marathon finish line. |
June 28 |
Andrew Driscoll Pochter, a 21-year old student at Kenyon College, from Chevy Chase, Maryland was fatally stabbed in Alexandria, Egypt during clashes between the Muslim Brotherhood and ant-President Morsi protestors. |
| July 28 |
Ester Levanon resigns as CEO of the Tel Aviv stock exchange. She was the first woman appointed to the position.. |
| October 28 |
Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Shas party founder and spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef dies at age 93. |
| November 6 |
Former Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman is acquitted of fraud. |
| December 4 |
Israeli actress Gal Gadot is announced as Wonder Woman in Warner Brother’s “Batman vs. Superman” starring Ben Affleck. The film is set to be released summer 2016. |
December 10 |
The Knesset passes the “Law to Advance Competition and Limit Monopolization” in response to anti-trust fervor among Israelis. |
January 7 |
Elan Carr, district attorney prosecutor in Los Angeles, announces his candidacy for Congress in California's 33rd district. |
January 30 |
Henry Waxman, Congressman from California's 33rd district, announces he will not seek reelection to a twenty-first term in 2014. |
March 2 |
Between 300,000 and 500,000 people gather in Jerusalem to protest proposed legislation requiring orthodox Yeshiva students to serve in the IDF for the first time since 1977. Adjunct protests were held around the world, including 50,000 protestors in New York City on March 9. |
June 10 |
Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor loses Republican primary election in the seventh district. Cantor announced his resignation as House Majority leader, effective July 31. He is the only currently-serving Jewish Republican member of Congress. |
June 12 |
Three Israeli teenagers (Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, Eyal Yifrah) are kidnapped from Gush Etzion, later to be found dead. |
| July 28 |
In response to a surge in rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, the IDF announces Operation Protective Edge to eliminate rocket fire from Gaza. |
| August 5 |
After 50 days, the IDF announces the end of the ground offensive portion of Operation Protective Edge. |
| December 2 |
Netanyahu fires Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid after disagreements over new settlements and a controversial Israeli Jewish nationalism bill. |
| December 8 |
The Knesset voted to disolve itself following problems within Netanyahu's cabinet. Netanyahu called for new elections, which will be held on March 17 2015. |
January |
Israel sends a relief team to provide aid and assistance to the Philipino victims of Typhoon Hagupit (Ruby), which devastated the islands during December 2014. |
January |
The IDF launched 14 new programs during 2014. |
January |
The Fouad Debbas photo collection is added to the Jewish Virtual Library. |
January |
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and and Canadian Department of Trade, Foreign Affairs, and Development, sign a Memorandum of Understanding. |
January 28 |
The oldest human remains ever found outside of Africa are unearthed in the Cave of Manot in Northern Israel. |
January 31 |
The OPCW announces that the destruction of the first of Syria's chemical weapons facilities has been completed. |
February |
Israel is ranked fourth in the world on Bloomberg Business' Global Innovation Index. |
February |
Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon made the first official visit of an Israeli Defense Minister to India. |
March |
Ben-Gurion University and the University of Arizona sign a collaborative research agreement. |
March |
Israel suspends plans to construct approximately 1,000 settlements in Har Homa. |
March 18 |
Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party are victorious during the election, winning 30 seats in the Knesset. |
April 20 |
The British Royal Society and the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities sign a major joint research agreement. |
April 20 |
The organization Women of the Wall read a full-sized torah at the Western Wall for the first time ever. Women are not allowed to pray with Torahs at the Wall, and Orthodox men attacked the women. |
April 30 |
Director Steve Tisch (Forest Gump, The Equalizer), an alumnus of Tel Aviv University, donated $10 million to the university's film program. |
April-May |
The IDF sent relief and assistance to Nepal, after the country was rocked by an 8.1 magnitude earthquake. Magen David Adom participated in the efforts. |
| May |
Israel sent an observer representative to the UN month-long nuclear non-proliferation conference for the first time in 20 years. |
| May 14 |
The Knesset approves Netanyahu's cabinet list. |
| July |
Israel provides Jordan with a fleet of Cobra helicopters to improve border security. |
| August 5 |
An ancient Mikveh, or ritual bathhouse, was uncovered while constructing a pre-school in Jerusalem. |
| August 17 |
100 year anniversary of the lynching of Leo Frank. |
| August |
The Eye From Zion organization travelled to Kyrgyzstan and performed restorative optical procedures on 90 individuals. |
| September 9 |
Zambia opens their embassy in Israel. |
| September 9 |
The Israeli embassy in Egypt opens for the first time in four years, following closure due to instability during the Arab Spring. |
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