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Chairman of the Jewish Agency. Louis A. Pincus.

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: Arie Dulzin.

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:Yosef Klarman.

Efforts made according to the World Zionist Organization - Jewish Agency (Status) Law to include organizations and other Jewish bodies within the framework of the World Zionist Organization bear little fruits. By authorizing its Executive to negotiate with other bodies towards the Reconstitution of the Jewish Agency, the WZO is implementing its commitment to the State of Israel and itself to bring about a greater unity of all sections of Jewry for the work of reconstruction, immigration and absorption.

June 1 : The 27th Zionist Congress, meeting in Jerusalem, revises the 1951 Jerusalem Program, making it more outspokenly Zionist. It calls for the centrality of Israel in Jewish life and the ingathering of the Jewish people in Israel through aliyah from all countries.

A general and thorough reorganization of the Jewish Agency departments is carried out, resulting in the merger of some departments and in a reduction of the total number.

June: The government decides to establish a ministry of immigration, which, instead of the Jewish Agency, will be in charge of the absorption of immigrants.

Following the Six Day War the settlement movement gained new momentum. During this period the tendency to consolidate existing settlements continued, as well as the expansion of settlements in central Galilee and in the Besor region.

A special Department for Project Renewal and Development is established. Project Renewal is the special rehabilitation program for depressed neighborhoods, a joint venture of the Jewish Agency and the governement.

New immigrants in 1968: 20,544.

January 1 : Chaim Bar-Lev becomes chief of staff of the IDF.

January 10: Compulsory military service for men is lengthened to three years.

January 21: The Labor Party is founded, amalgamating Mapai, Ahdut Haavoda and Rafi. David Ben Gurion does not join.

January 23: Israel and Egypt complete their P.O.W. exchange: 4,500 Egyptians for 10 Israelis, including the Mishap (see July 1954) prisoners.

January 26: The Dakar, an Israeli submarine, disappears en route from England to Israel.

February 4: The Dakar is declared missing.

February 20: Yitzhak Rabin takes up his post of ambassador to the United States.

February: Terrorist incidents proliferate along the cease-fire line with Jordan and in the territories.

February: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and President Lyndon Johnson meet in Texas. Eshkol persuades Johnson to sell Phantom jets in the light of the massive Soviet build-up of Arab arsenals and the French arm embargo. This agreement marks the beginning of an arms race which transforms the U.S. into Israel's major arms supplier.

March 18 : A series of terrorist raids from Jordan is climaxed when a bus carrying high school students strikes a mine near Eilat, killing 2 and injuring 28.

March 20: Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan is injured during a cave-in at an archeological dig at Azur and is hospitalized for several weeks.

March 21 : Israeli troops raid Karameh, Jordan, killing 150 terrorists and taking many prisoners. Arab Legion troops intervene, and heavy fighting results in 100 Jordanians killed and 90 wounded. Israeli losses are 27 dead and 70 wounded. The UN Security Council condemns Israel for the Karameh raid. (Resolution 248.)

March 26: President Zalman Shazar is reelected for a second term.

April: Terrorist incidents in the territories and along the Jordanian border continue.

April 12: A group of Jews celebrates the Seder night in Hebron, and announces the decision to settle in the town.

April: Arnold Newman, U.S. photographer who is world renowned for his environmental portraits where the setting and surrounding objects symbolize or describe the sitter's accomplishments, photographs David Ben Gurion on Israel's 20th anniversary in the Tel Aviv Museum, where he had announced Israel's independence.

May: Israel accuses the Soviet Union of antisemitic discrimination against its Jews during a UN Security Council debate.

June 14: A mortar attack from Lebanese territory targeting Kibbutz Manara marks the start of the deterioration of the security situation along the Lebanese border. Incidents continue along other borders as well.

June 22: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol declares: "The Jordan River is the security border for Israel."

June: Israel and Romania enter into a trade agreement after Romania's acting foreign minister visits Israel.

July 8: Golda Meir resigns from her post as secretary of the Labor Party.

July: George Ball, U.S. ambassador to the UN, visits Jordan and is authorized by the Israelis to convey the Israeli offer to King Hussein to return the West Bank, with minor modifications to Jordan in return for peace.

July 23: An Israeli El Al airliner, flying from Rome to Lod is hijacked and forced to land in Algeria. Algeria first releases 23 passengers carrying non-Israeli passports and later releases 10 Israeli women and children. The Israeli men will not be released until 31 August. Israel agrees to free 16 Arab prisoners as a "humanitarian gesture."

July 26: Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir resigns from the government. He is named secretary-general of the Labor Party.

September 4: Explosives planted by Palestinian terrorists in the Tel Aviv central bus station kill one person and wound 70.

September 8 : An artillery duel along the Suez Canal, during which Egypt fires over 10,000 shells, kills 10 Israeli soldiers and wounds 18.

September 25: Zubin Mehta, the young Indian conductor, becomes musical adviser to the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.

September: Both U.S. presidential candidates, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, issue statements supporting the sale of Phantom jets to Israel.

October: On the third day of the Sukkot holiday, 47 are injured in Hebron when a hand grenade explodes on the steps of the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

October: A sudden Egyptian artillery barrage along the Suez Canal kills 15 Israeli soldiers and wounds 34. In reply, Israel bombards Egyptian oil refineries at Suez, starting many fires.

October: Israeli troops attack deep into Egypt, blowing up the Qena and Naj Hammadi bridges and the Naj Hammadi transformer station on the Nile River.

November: King Hussein enters into an agreement with the PLO and al-Fatah, who agree not to interfere with Jordan in return for freedom to pursue their terrorist activities against Israeli territory.

November: A war of attrition is initiated by Palestinian terrorists and by the Jordanian army against border settlements and the IDF in the Bet Shean and Jordan Valleys.

November 2: Eilat is shelled by Katyusha rockets fired from Jordanian territory.

November 11: Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin in the Bet Shean Valley is shelled.

November 22 : Twelve are killed and 52 are injured in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market, when a car bomb explodes.

November 30: Katyushas from Jordan hit the Dead Sea Works but fail to cause damage.

December 1: Israeli mounts a retaliatory operation aimed at Jordanian targets south of the Dead Sea.

December 2 - 3: Israel air force planes bomb Irbid in Jordan in response to shooting at Israeli settlements south of Lake Kinneret.

December 4: A new Israeli air raid on Jordan, aimed this time at Iraqi troops. One Israeli plane is downed.

December 5: Surgeon Morris Levy conducts the first heart-transplant surgery in Israel. The patient, Yitzhak Sulam, will die two weeks later.

December 26 : Two Arab terrorists attempt to blow up an Israeli El Al airliner at the Athens airport, killing an Israeli engineer and injuring several passengers. Minister of Transport, Moshe Carmel, holds the Lebanese government responsible because "we know that the men came from Beirut."

December 27 : The Johnson administration announces that the U.S. will sell Israel 50 Phantom F-4 jets.

December 27: Israeli troops land at the Beirut airport and, after evacuating nearby people, destroy 14 Arab commercial aircraft without any loss of life. The UN Security Council unanimously condemns Israel for the raid. It does not consider Israel's complaint of the Athens incident.

December 31: The UN Security Council censures unanimously the IDF incursion into Beirut.

André Chouraqui, Israeli lawyer and government official who emigrated from North Africa to Israel, writes "Between East and West: A History of the Jews of North Africa."

Abba Eban writes "My People: The Story of the Jews", a highly personalized general Jewish history with special emphasis on the rise of the State of Israel.

Avraham Harman, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, becomes President of the Hebrew University. Under his leadership the Mount Scopus campus is rebuilt. Four separate campuses are maintained: Mount Scopus, Givat Ram, Ein Karem medical campus and the Rehovot campus.

February: "Fiddler on the Roof", the hit U.S. musical, opens in Hamburg as "Anatevka". It has an attendance over 300,000 at its 274 performances before it tours other West German cities.

February 20: The first episode of the "Columbo" series with Peter Falk is aired in the US.

March: Student demonstrations in Poland become a pretext for the Gomulka government's antisemitic campaign. Many Jews are fired from their jobs.

The "English-Yiddish - Yiddish-English Dictionary", edited by Uriel Weinreich (1926-1967), Yiddish scholar and linguist, is published posthumously. It will become the most widely used Yiddish dictionary.

Mel Brooks writes and directs "The Producers", a film comedy satirizing Nazism. Zero Mostel plays Max Bialystok, a theatrical producer of the play "Springtime for Hitler". Brooks wins an Oscar for the best original screenplay.

Marshall W. Nirenberg, U.S. biochemist, is awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work in deciphering the genetic code by which sequences of the units of DNA "spell out" instructions for the synthesis of proteins.

René-Samuel Cassin, French expert on international law and editor of the first draft of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1948, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Cassin is president of the Alliance Israélite Universelle.

"Israel Through the Ages", organized by André Malraux, French minister of state for cultural affairs, opens at the Petit Palais Museum in Paris.

Artur London, one of the three survivors of the Slansky trial of the 1950s, writes "The Confession", which describes his experiences as a Czech Communist party official forced to confess to crimes he did not commit.