July 1, 1973 — Israeli Military Attache Is Killed in Maryland Col. Yosef “Joe” Alon, a military attache at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, is shot five times in his driveway in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and dies within an hour at a hospital....

June 17, 1939 — Refugee Ship St. Louis Returns to Europe The SS St. Louis, carrying Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria, completes its crossing of the Atlantic back to Europe after Cuba and the United States refused to admit almost all of its...

June 3, 1974 — Rabin First Becomes Prime Minister After defeating Shimon Peres for the Labor Party leadership, Yitzhak Rabin becomes Israel’s fifth prime minister when he presents his coalition government to the Knesset. In succeeding Golda Meir,...

May 27, 1911 — Longtime Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek Is Born Teddy Kollek, Jerusalem’s mayor from 1965 to 1993, is born in a Budapest suburb. His parents name him after Theodor Herzl. After growing up in Vienna, he moves to Palestine with his family...

May 20, 1948 — Swede Is Named Peace Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat, is appointed by the U.N. Security Council to serve as the mediator for Middle East peace efforts five days into Israel’s War of Independence. Although he succeeds...

May 13, 1975 — Israel, U.S. Sign Economic Pact The United States and Israel sign a wide-ranging economic agreement at the end of a two-day summit chaired by U.S. Treasury Secretary William Simon and Israeli Foreign Minister Yehoshua Rabinowitz in Washington....

May 6, 1947 — Lehi Teenager Disappears Alexander Rubowitz, 16, a member of the youth wing of Lehi (the Stern Gang), is chased, caught and forced into a car by a large, athletic man in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood while distributing propaganda....

April 29, 1976 — Meretz Politician Tamar Zandberg Is Born Meretz legislator Tamar Zandberg is born in Ramat Gan. An urban environmentalist and social democrat known for advocacy on women’s issues, she wins a Tel Aviv City Council seat in 2008. She...

April 15, 1945 — Bergen-Belsen Is Liberated The British 11th Armored Division liberates the Nazis’ Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Anne Frank is among an estimated 50,000 Jews and others who die in the final two years of World War II. About...

April 8, 1960 — U.N. Head Protests Egyptian Seizure of CargoU.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold for the first time publicly criticizes Egypt for confiscating Israeli cargo on ships passing through the Suez Canal. Israel fought Egypt in 1956 in large...

Jan. 28, 1996 — Dumping of Ethiopian Blood Sparks RiotsAbout 10,000 Ethiopian Jews demonstrate outside Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ office to protest the government’s decision to accept blood donations from thousands of Ethiopian Israelis, only...

Dec. 31, 1898: Israel Museum Founder Is BornEliyahu Dobkin, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who founds the Israel Museum, is born in Bobruysk, Belarus. He immigrates to Palestine in 1932. He works with the Jewish Agency’s immigration department...