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Chairman
of the Jewish Agency.
Louis A. Pincus and Arie
Dulzin.
Alternate
Chairman of the Executive of the WZO - Jewish Agency, American
Section: Charlotte Jacobson.
Treasurer
of the Jewish Agency: Arie
Dulzin.
Chairman
Settlement Department: Raanan Weitz.
Chairman
Youth Aliyah Department:Yosef Klarman.
Chairman
Immigration and Absorption: Louis Arie Pincus, Mordechai Kirshblum.
January
1:Fatah-Black September claims responsibility for a
bomb found outside the Jewish Agency building in Paris which
explodes but causes little damage and no casualties.
September
28 : In Austria, three armed Arab terrorists seize
Soviet Jewish emigrants on a Soviet train en route to Vienna
for transshipment to Israel. The Austrian Chancellor, Bruno
Kreisky, announces that he will close the Jewish Agency
transit center at Schönau. With the closing down of the
camp, the hostages are released and the terrorists disappear.
Many Israelis are outraged as what they see as a craven submission
to terrorism.
October
3: Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir tries unsuccessfully
to persuade Kreisky to change his decision. Golda Meir returns
to Israel: "Kreisky did not even offer me a glass of water."
Louis
A. Pincus dies.
New
immigrants in 1973: 54,886 |
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January
8: The Syrians shell Israeli fortifications and settlements
on the Golan Heights. Israel responds with artillery attacks.
Six Syrian planes are shot down. Army camps deep in Syrian territory
are bombed.
January
15 : Prime Minister Golda
Meir and Pope
Paul VI hold a meeting at the Vatican. Meir is the first
Israeli prime minister to visit the Vatican.
February
21-22: IDF forces attack seven Palestinian terrorist
bases in the Tripoli area in northern Lebanon.
February
21 : A Libyan airliner strays over the Israeli-held
Sinai. It ignores signals of Israeli interceptors to land and
makes maneuvers that alarm the Israelis, who had received warnings
of an Arab terrorist plan to fly an explosives-laden plane into
an Israeli city. The Israelis down the airliner, with the loss
of 106 lives. Israel is condemned by the international civil
aviation organization, Israel, while not acknowledging legal
liability, makes payments to the families of the victims.
March:
Egypt's Anwar
al-Sadat sends emissaries to Syria to propose a joint military
action against Israel. Syria's Hafez
al-Assad declares readiness to go to war against Israel.
April
9: Simha
Dinitz succeeds Yitzhak
Rabin as Israel's ambassador to the U.S. Returning home,
Rabin writes: "The Israel I came home to had a self-confident,
almost smug aura to it, as befits a country far removed from
the possibility of war."
April
9 : An attempt by Arab terrorists to hijack an Israeli
El Al passenger plane at Nicosia, Cyprus, is thwarted by Israeli
security forces. The residence of the Israeli ambassador is
also attacked. Israeli commandos raid Beirut, Lebanon, and kill
three Palestinian terrorist leaders.
April
9-10: The IDF carries out daring raids on the main
offices of the Palestinian terrorist organizations in Beirut
and Sidon.
April:
Speaking to army graduates on Masada, Moshe Dayan states "the
superiority of our forces over our enemies, which holds promise
of peace for us and our neighbors."
May
7: Israel celebrates its 25th anniversary. Walter Eytan
writes a special anniversary article.
May
14: In a BBC television interview Moshe Dayan states:
I do think that Israel should stay for ever and ever and ever
and ever in the West Bank, because this is Judea and Samaria.
This is our homeland."
May
18: Abie
Natan opens his Voice of Peace radio station on a ship in
the Mediterranean outside Israeli territorial waters.
May
24 : Ephraim
Katzir, professor at the Weizmann Institute, is elected
the fourth president of Israel, succeeding Zalman
Shazar, who is ineligible by law to serve a third term.
May:
In the second half of may, fears if an Egyptian-Syrian attack
are raised. The IDF is on the alert, but nothing happens. Moshe
Dayan, however, warns the senior command of a forthcoming
war with Syria and Egypt by the end of summer.
May:
In May and again in June, Anwar
al-Sadat visits Syria to confirm arrangements for war against
Israel.
Egypt puts its army on high alert. Israeli Chief of Staff, David
Elazar,
responds by a partial mobilization of the reserves. He is widely
thought to have reacted with undue panic, wasting public money.
After the Egyptian alert is called off, the High Command in
Tel Aviv is told by one of the Intelligence sources that a planned
Suez Canal crossing has been put off until October. The information
is discounted and filed away.
June
3: In a POW exchange with Syria, three Israeli pilots
are released in exchange for 46 Syrian soldiers and officers.
June:
Willy
Brandt, chancellor of West Germany, is the first West German
head of state to visit Israel.
July
1 : Yosef Allon, assistant air attaché assigned
to Israel's Washington embassy, is murdered outside his Washington
home.
July:
The U.S. vetoes a UN Security Council resolution, sponsored
by Egypt, calling for the Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories
and for a Palestinian homeland. The U.S. states the resolution
would have fundamentally changed Resolution
242 of 1967.
July
13: The new head of the Israeli Air Force, General
Benjamin Peled, expresses his concern to Dayan that without
a pre-emptive strike in the event of an Arab war plan, Israel
would be at a serious disadvantage.
July
15: The IDF plans to shorten the military service for
men from 36 to 33 months. The service for women remains 20 months
long. Reserve duty will be cut from 60 days a year to 30. Defense
spending, which had been 40% of the national budget in 1970,
and has dropped to 32% in 1973, is planned to fall to 14.6%
in the budget of 1977.
July
15: General Ariel
Sharon hands over command of the Southern Front to General
Shmuel Gonen. Sharon decides to go into politics and to join
the ranks of the opposition. (Dayan replies to Sharon's concerns:
"Arik, we aren't going to have any war this year. Maybe
Gonen is too inexperienced. But he'll have plenty of time to
learn.")
July
27 : Israeli agents at Lillehammer, Norway, kill the
wrong man (a waiter of Moroccan origin, Ahmed Bushiki) in their
hunt for the Black September leader Hassan Ali Salameh. The
agents are arrested and relations with Norway are strained.
August
10 : Israeli warplanes intercept a Lebanese commercial
airliner and force it to land in Israel, mistakenly believing
that George Habash and other terrorist leaders are aboard. The
UN Security Council unanimously condemns
Israel.
August
23: Minister without Portfolio, Israel Galili, publishes
a document in order to maintain the unity
in the Labor Party.
August:
Anwar al-Sadat visits Saudi Arabia and obtains the assurance
of a Saudi oil embargo in the event the renewed fighting against
Israel goes badly.
August:
The Soviets accelerate the shipment of arms to Syria and begin
anew to supply Egypt with the latest ground and anti-aircraft
missiles.
September
11: The Likud
movement is established, made up of the Herut-Liberal bloc (Gahal),
the State List, the Free Center Party and activists from the
Greater Land of Israel movement.
September:
Syrian president Hafez al-Assad and Jordan's King
Hussein meet Anwar al-Sadat in Cairo and reach a tactical
agreement on an impending attack on Israel.
September
13 : Israeli jet fighters down 13 Syrian MiGs in an
air battle over the Mediterranean Sea. One Israeli Mirage jet
is lost, but the pilot is rescued.
September:
Syria mobilizes armed forces and begins to increase the number
of troops on the Golan Heights. The Israeli Intelligence interprets
this as a reaction to the air battle and not as anything presaging
war. Egyptian troop exercises on the western bank of the Suez
Canal are interpreted as exercises with the intent to keep the
Egyptian army in a state of readiness for defense.
September
25: The Civil Rights Movement - Ratz - is established.
October:
The Egyptian war minister, General Ahmad Ismail Ali, flies to
Damascus to inform president Assad that the "zero hour"
for the attack on Israel would be 2 PM on October 6, which is
Yom Kippur.
October
3: In a meeting with Prime Minister Golda Meir Dayan
says that recent Egyptian and Syrian military concentrations
on the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights are "unusual".
But there is no sense that war is imminent.
October
4-5: The Soviets evacuate families of advisers to Egypt
and Syria, launch satellites into orbit to photograph Israeli
defenses, and dispatch an electronic surveillance ship toward
Egypt. Dayan orders the air force on full alert. The army is
placed on a "C" alert, the highest alert short of
calling up the reserves.
October
5: The division manning the Israeli defenses along
the Suez Canal request reinforcement.
October
5: Yom Kippur Eve. Chief of Military Intelligence,
General Eli
Zeira , tells Cabinet Ministers that it will be possible
for Egypt and Syria to open hostilities against Israel without
any further warning. Chief of Staff, General David Elazar, disagrees.
Moshe Dayan suggests that, in the event of fighting breaking
out the next day, Golda Meir shall be authorized to mobilize
the reserve on her own.
October
6:The
Yom
Kippur War starts.
October:
Jewish artists from abroad volunteer their services for Israel's
war effort. Danny
Kaye arrives to entertain war-wounded soldiers, performing
at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv.
October
27: Israeli General Aharon Yariv and Egyptian General
Abd al-Ghani al-Gamazi begin disengagement talks at Kilometer
101 on the Suez Canal's west bank. Israel agrees to allow the
resupply of Egypt's Third Army.
October
27: A UN Security Council resolution
establishes a 7,000 man peace-keeping force to enforce the cease-fire
in the Golan and the Sinai. No U.S. or Soviet troops would participate
in the force.
October:
Most of the African states break off diplomatic relations with
Israel in the aftermath of the war.
November
6: The IDF holds 8,000 Egyptians and Syrian POWs, 643
of whom are officers.
November
11 : Egyptian and Israeli military representatives
at Kilometer 101 agree on a prisoner-of-war exchange, involving
241 Israelis and 8,031 Egyptians.
November
15: POWs exchange begins between Israel and Egypt.
Israel returns over 8,000 prisoners and receives 233 including
nine who were taken captive during the War of Attrition.
November
18 : The Israeli government appoints a commission to
investigate events connected with the Yom
Kippur War, headed by Shimon Agranat,
president of Israel's Supreme Court.
November:
European Economic Council foreign ministers release a statement
aimed at placating the Arabs. It calls for Israel to return
the territories occupied since 1967 and to take into account
the rights of the Palestinians.
December
1 : David
Ben Gurion dies.
December
21: The Geneva Peace Conference is convened under UN
auspices. Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the U.S., and the Soviet Union
attend. Syria boycotts it. The Palestinian Liberation Organization
is not invited. No real progress is made, and Henry
Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy replaces the Geneva talks.
December
31 : Israel holds elections for the Eighth
Knesset, with 1,601,098 votes cast. The Alignment (Labor-Mapam)
wins 51 seats; Likud (Herut-Liberals), 39 seats; National Religious
party 10 seats.
The
Israel Museum holds an exhibition dealing with all aspects of
Jewish life in Morocco.
Inflation
in 1973 spirals to 20%.
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The
Bolivian Supreme Court denies a French request to extradite
the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.
June:
Marc Chagall visits Moscow and Leningrad after a 50-year absence.
He is reunited with two of his sisters. He refuses to go to
Vitebsk. "I would have been afraid not to recognize my
town, and in any event I have carried it forever in my heart."
December:
U.S. Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role
in the negotiations leading to the end of the U.S. involvement
in Vietnam.
December:
In London, an Arab terrorist assassination attempt on Joseph
Edward Sieff, president of Marks and Spencer Ltd. and Zionist
leader, fails.
December
11 : The US House of Representatives passes the "Jackson
Amendment" to the 1972 Trade Reform Act, by a vote
of 319 to 80. The Trade Reform Act embodies the Soviet-American
Trade Agreement of October 1972 and opens up the possibility
of vastly increased trade between the US and the Eastern-bloc
countries. The amendment, sponsored by 78 Senators headed by
Henry
M. "Scoop" Jackson, makes these trade concessions
conditional on "respect for the right to emigrate."
Max
Weinreich's "History of the Yiddish Language: Concepts,
Facts, Methods" is posthumously published in Yiddish in
four volumes.
Philip
Roth writes "Reading Myself and Others", a collection
of articles, interviews, and essays, among which he responds
to criticism of his attitude toward Jews and Jewishness.
Gershom
Sholem's biography of the pseudo-Messiah, "Sabbatai Zvi:
The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676" is published in an English
translation of the Hebrew original.
Leonard
Baskin, U.S. artist, illustrates the new official Reform
Passover Haggadah.
Brian
David Josephson, British physicist, is awarded the Nobel
Prize in physics for his work on conductors and semiconductors.
Wassily
Leontief is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
The
National
Museum of the Biblical Message of Marc Chagall is inaugurated
in Nice, France.
Claude
Lanzmann, French film director, produces "Why Israel?"
a documentary on Israel that receives acclaim for its artistic
film technique and approach.
The
State Museum in Göttingen, West Germany, holds an exhibition
on the 700-year history of the Jews in South Lower Saxony. |