The Jewish Agency for Israel Timeline


Year
 
Jewish Agency for Israel
 
Israel
 
Jewish History & Culture
1966            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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January 18: Louis A. Pincus is elected chairman of the Jewish Agency.

Alternate Chairman of the Executive of the WZO - Jewish Agency, American Section: Dr. Emanuel Neumann and Rose L. Halperin.

President of the World Zionist Organization: Nahum Goldmann.

Treasurer of the Jewish Agency: Louis Arie Pincus.

Chairman of the Immigration Department: Shlomo Zalman Shragai.

Chairmen Absorption Department: Avraham Czygel, Tzivia Lubetkin.

Chairman Settlement Department: Raanan Weitz.

Immigration and Absorption Authority: Shlomo Zalman Shragai, Avraham Czygel, Arie L. Dulzin.

Chairman Youth Aliyah Department:Yitzhak Artzi.

New immigrants in 1966: 15,730. This is the lowest figure since 1953.

 

 

January 12: Levi Eshkol forms a new government. Changes include the cooption into the coalition with Mapam and the replacement of Foreign Minister Golda Meir by Abba Eban.

January 30: American writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature John Steinbeck visits Israel.

January: King Hussein of Jordan attacks the PLO for its "treasonable attempts to undermine Jordanian unity."

February 2: Golda Meir is elected secretary-general of Mapai.

February 23: The left-wing coup in Syria is followed by increased PLO activity against Israel.

February 28: Tel Aviv restaurateur Abie Nathan pilots a light plane to Egypt on a one-man mission for peace. He is thought to be dead but returns the next day.

February: The U.S. announces it will sell 200 M-48 Patton tanks to Israel to maintain arms stabilization in the Middle East, as the Soviets are shipping arms to Egypt and Syria.

March 24: The Educational Television Service begins TV broadcasts.

April 8: A Fatah squad crosses into Israel from Syria and plants a mine which kills an Israeli farmer.

April 16: The Anti-Defamation League accuses the Coca-Cola Company of acceding to the Arab boycott by refusing to grant a franchise to an Israeli bottler. Coca-Cola denies the charge and enters into an agreement to establish a bottling plant in Israel. In November, the Arab League will vote to boycott Coca-Cola.

April 21: Soviet writer Konstantine Simonov visits Israel.

April 26: Ezer Weizman is named chief of operations at G.H.Q. after serving as air force commander for eight years. The new air force commander is Mordechai Hod.

April 29: The IDF raids two villages and two police stations in Jordan in the wake of Fatah terrorist acts in Israeli territory.

April: King Hussein arrests scores of PLO officials on charges of illegal activities.

May 2 : Former West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer arrives in Israel. He meets with the political leadership.

May 16: Two Jewish National Fund workers are killed when their vehicle triggers a mine.

May 18: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol declares that Israel has no nuclear arms and will not be the first to introduce them in the Middle East.

May 19: The U.S. announces the shipping of A-4 Skyhawk jet fighters to Israel.

May: West Germany grants Israel economic aid in the form of long-terms loans amounting to 160 million Deutsche Marks. This program follows the expiration of a 1952 agreement.

June: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol leaves for state visits in seven countries in Africa. President Shazar visits three states in South America.

June: King Hussein publicly denounces PLO leaders and their Arab supporters for their "subservience to international communism."

July 5 : A monument to President John F. Kennedy is dedicated in the center of the Kennedy Peace Forest, on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

July 12-13: More Fatah units cross the border from Syria and plant four more mines. Two Israelis are killed. This leads Israel to retaliate by air strikes.

In summer, a new agreement for 50 Mirage V aircraft is signed with France.

August 2: President Shazar visits the White House in Washington at the invitation of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

August 4: Israel signs an agreement with the American CBS television company for the planning of a general TV broadcasting service in Israel.

August 8: A prisoner exchange with Syria takes place. Four Israelis are returned.

August 15: After another Fatah raid across the border - in which nobody is killed - Israel attacks Syrian positions from the air. The Syrians return fire.

August 16: An Iraqi pilot flies his Soviet-built MiG-21 jet fighter to Israel and asks for asylum. It is assumed that inspection of the plane is made available to Western powers.

August 30 : The Knesset building is dedicated.

September 6: Another Fatah border crossing. Israel complains to the United Nations. There is no response.

September 8: An Israeli patrol catches a Fatah unit in the Upper Galilee. Two Fatah men are killed in the gun battle.

September 9: Three Israeli soldiers are killed when a Fatah-laid mine detonates in their path.

September 22: The Soviet Union cancels a planned tour of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra on account of the "anti-Soviet campaign" taking place in Israel.

October 8: Two more Fatah cross-border attacks are launched. Three Israeli civilians are hurt by bomb explosions in West Jerusalem, four more by a mine explosion south of the Sea of Galilee. The Israeli government submits a protest against Syria to the UN. It is defeated by a Syrian veto.

October 12: The Soviet Union says that Syria can count on its support if Israel begins hostilities.

October 13: Three Israeli soldiers are killed in a clash with a Fatah unit from Jordan.

October 19: A border policeman is killed in an incident in the Galilee. Three terrorists are killed.

October 27: A freight train triggers a mine on the Jerusalem line, wounding a railroad worker.

October: King Hussein declares that if Israel attacked Syria, Jordan would open a separate eastern front.

November 8: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol announces in the Knesset that the reduction of the compulsory military service for men to 26 months is annulled and will revert back to 30 months. The military rule in the arab sector of Israel will be abolished.

November 9: Syria and Egypt sign a mutual defense pact.

November 12: A truck containing an Israeli border police patrol strikes a mine that had been laid on the Israeli side of the Israel-Jordan border. Three border policemen are killed. A reprisal action is ordered immediately.

November 13 : An Israeli parachute command crosses the border into Jordan, evacuates the village of Samou and blows up 40 houses. They destroy trucks carrying Arab Legionnaires. A full-scale battle ensues, with Jordanian aircraft summoned to help, and Israeli aircraft being sent up to intercept them. 18 Jordanians and one Israeli officer are killed.

November 17: UN General Assembly Resolution 2154.

November 25: The UN Security Council censures Israel for the raid. Israel reiterates its right of self-defense. (Security Council Resolution 228).

November: Following the Israeli raid at the village of Samoa, King Hussein responds to antigovernment demonstrations by ordering arrest of hundreds of PLO followers and the seizure of PLO headquarters in Jerusalem. PLO leader Ahmad Shukairy calls for a holy war against Hussein.

December 10: Shmuel Yosef Agnon and Nelly Sachs are awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. (Nelly Sachs remarks: "Agnon represents the State of Israel. I represent the tragedy of the Jewish people.")

Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor for the State of Israel at Adolf Eichmann's trial, writes "Justice in Jerusalem", a description of Israel's actions and his view of Eichmann's guilt.

 

 

April: About 70.000 books in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York are destroyed by fire. Many important collections are lost.

July: In Britain, 130 members of Parliament sign a petition expressing their concern over "the continuing difficulties confronting Jews in the Soviet Union."

October: After nearly 500 years, Jews return to the Toledo synagogue for the first Jewish public ceremony since the expulsion. The ceremony is attended by Spanish government officials as well as members of the Catholic clergy.

October: Two members of the Nazi leadership, Baldur von Schirach, governor of Austria, and Albert Speer, Hitler's minister of war production, are released from the Spandau prison in West Berlin. The only remaining prisoner in Spandau is Rudolf Hess.

December: Anti-Jewish bias among the people of France is confirmed by a poll conducted by the French Institute of Public Opinion. However, 17% believe that French Jews are not really French, which compares favorably with 43% who held that view in 1964.

Sir Isaiah Berlin, English philosopher and political scientist, is appointed president of the newly created Wolfson College at Oxford University.

Isaac Bashevis Singer writes "In My Father's Court", a memoir of incidents from his childhood in Warsaw, where his father was a rabbi in a poor quarter of the city.

Elie Wiesel writes "The Jews of Silence", an eyewitness report of Jewish persecution in the Soviet Union, which brings the plight of Soviet Jewry to wider attention.

Dan Jacobson, British novelist, writes "The Beginners", a novel set in South Africa, England and Israel.

The America-Israel Cultural Foundation opens the America-Israel Culture House in New York, exhibiting Israeli arts and crafts and holding cultural programs to show the range and achievements of Israeli artistic activity. The funds makes also considerable donations to cultural institutions in Israel.

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