June 21, 1990 — Diplomat Eliahu Eilat Dies
Truman Presidential Library
Eliahu Eilat presents a Torah to President Harry S. Truman on Oct. 26, 1949.
Eliahu Eilat, who won President Harry Truman’s U.S. recognition of Israel in May 1948 and served as Israel’s first ambassador to the United States, dies in Jerusalem at age 86. Born Eliahu Epstein in Ukraine in 1903, he was drawn to Zionism as a university student and made aliyah in 1924. He became Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1952 and served as the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
June 22, 1939 — Nobel Laureate Ada Yonath Is Born
By Frida Westholm, Nobel Foundation
Ada Yonath receives the Nobel Prize in chemistry Dec. 10, 2009. She shared the award with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz.
Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Ada Yonath is born in Jerusalem. After her military service, she studies at the Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute and MIT before teaching chemistry at Weizmann beginning in 1970. She studies ribosomes, which manufacture proteins in cells, and in 2000 determines the three-dimensional structure of two ribosomal subunits. She shares the 2009 Nobel for chemistry for that work.
June 23, 2011 — Israel Promotes 1st Female Major General
Israeli Government Press Office, CC BY-SA 3.0
Maj. Gen. Orna Barbivai, who oversees personnel, attends a meeting of the IDF General Staff in 2012.
Orna Barbivai is officially promoted to major general, becoming the first woman to hold the second-highest rank in the Israel Defense Forces. The 30-year IDF veteran and mother of three heads the Personnel Directorate. Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced the appointment four weeks earlier, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the promotion “a big step for Israeli society” that “sends a message to nations worldwide.”
June 24, 2007 — Israel Holds 1st Pro Baseball Game
Players participate in the Israel Baseball League All-Star Game in July 2007.
The Israel Baseball League launches with a 9-1 win by the Modi’in Miracle over the Petach Tikvah Pioneers in front of more than 3,000 fans at Yarkon Field in Petach Tikvah. The six-team professional league features players recruited from the United States and Latin America, has former U.S. diplomat Dan Kurtzer as commissioner, and includes Jewish former major-leaguers Ron Blomberg, Art Shamsky and Ken Holtzman as managers.
June 25, 2006 — Hamas Abducts Gilad Shalit
By Moshe Milner, Israeli Government Press Office, CC BY-SA 3.0
Noam Shalit welcomes home his missing son, Gilad, after his release by Hamas on Oct. 18, 2011.
Palestinian militants entering Israel through a tunnel from Gaza disable a patrolling tank, kill two soldiers and capture a third, Gilad Shalit. Hamas offers information about Shalit’s whereabouts if Israel releases Palestinian prisoners, but the government refuses to negotiate. Shalit remains a captive without access by the Red Cross until his release Oct. 18, 2011, in exchange for Yahya Sinwar and 1,026 other Palestinians, many of whom had murdered Israelis.
June 26, 1944 — GOP Platform Supports Jewish State
Republican presidential nominee Thomas Dewey’s support for a Jewish state pushed both political parties to support Zionism in their 1944 national platforms.
The Republican National Convention in Chicago for the first time in its platform supports the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, who heads the American Zionist Emergency Council, delivers the invocation at the convention and calls for the Democrats to likewise endorse Zionism. The Democratic National Convention in July does back unlimited Jewish immigration to Palestine and, ultimately, a Jewish state.
June 27, 1967 — Israel Annexes East Jerusalem
By Meir Froiudlch, Israeli National Photo Collection, CC BY-SA 3.0
Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Col. Chaim Herzog, a future president, visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem a week after the Knesset’s formal unification of the city.
After capturing the roughly 2.3 square miles known as East Jerusalem from Jordan during the war in early June, Israel formally annexes that area and some surrounding West Bank land — a total of 27 square miles — into an expanded, unified Jerusalem municipality with protected access to all holy sites. Israel offers the residents of the annexed areas the option of becoming Israeli citizens, but most decline.
Items are provided by the Center for Israel Education (israeled.org), where you can find more details.
