December 26, 1968 — El Al Flight Is Attacked in Athens
An engine on El Al Flight 253 shows damage from the terrorist attack at the Athens airport Dec. 26, 1968. El Al.
Two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine attack an El Al flight during a layover in Athens between Tel Aviv and New York. One terrorist fires more than 80 rounds from a submachine gun, while the other hurls several grenades at the Boeing 707’s engines. One of the 41 passengers, Israeli maritime engineer Leon Shirdan, 50, is fatally shot, and at least two others are wounded. The terrorists are captured.
December 27, 1925 — Defense Minister, Ambassador Moshe Arens Is Born
Defense Minister Moshe Arens holds an F-15 model during a visit to the Boeing factory in St. Louis in April 1999. By Amos Ben Gershom, Israeli Government Press Office, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Moshe Arens, who serves as Israel’s defense minister three times and foreign minister once as a Likud member, is born in Lithuania. He immigrates to the United States in 1939 and is studying at MIT when he enlists in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1944. He makes aliyah in 1948 and is a founding member of Herut, Likud’s predecessor. He is first elected to the Knesset in 1973. He is the ambassador to the U.S. in the early 1980s.
December 28, 1907 — Linguist Ze’ev Ben-Chaim Is Born
Ze’ev Ben-Chaim served as the second president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. Hebrew Language Academy.
Ze’ev Ben-Chaim is born in Galicia in present-day Ukraine. He is regarded as one of the greatest scholars of Hebrew and Aramaic. His research reveals that the Samaritans maintain a tradition of reading Hebrew texts that dates to the Second Temple period, and he publishes five volumes of translations of ancient Samaritan texts into Hebrew and Aramaic. He receives the Israel Prize for Jewish studies in 1964.
December 29, 1946 — Irgun Flogs British Soldiers
An Irgun poster from 1946 warns that British soldiers will be whipped 18 times in retribution if a Jewish soldier is flogged.
Angry that the British government administered 18 lashes to Irgun member Benjamin Kimkhi the previous day for his role in a bank robbery, the Irgun underground abducts British soldiers in Netanya, Rishon LeZion and Tel Aviv and flogs them 18 times each in the streets. The operation is known as the Night of the Beatings. Three Irgun members captured in the subsequent manhunt are hanged in April 1947.
December 30, 1990 — Weizman Is Fired Over PLO Contacts
Science Minister Ezer Weizman addresses the Knesset in November 1990. By Ya’acov Sa’ar, Israeli Government Press Office, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir drops Science Minister Ezer Weizman from the Cabinet after accusing him of meeting with a senior PLO official in 1989 and corresponding with PLO head Yasser Arafat through an intermediary. The move threatens the unity government because Shamir is from Likud and Weizman is from Labor. Within three years, Weizman is elected president, and Arafat signs the Oslo Accords with Israel.
December 31, 1898 — Israel Museum Founder Is Born
Eliyahu Dobkin and Henrietta Szold visit the Atlit transit camp in 1943 to meet child refugees being brought to Palestine from Europe via Iran. By Zoltan Kluger, National Photo Collection of Israel.
Eliyahu Dobkin, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who founds the Israel Museum, is born in Belarus. He immigrates to Palestine in 1932. He works with the Jewish Agency’s immigration department from the 1930s to the 1950s, increases the organization’s fundraising and helps organize illegal immigration after World War II. After founding the Israel Museum in 1965, he serves on the advisory board until his death in 1976.
January 1, 1837 — Earthquake Devastates Safed
The 1837 earthquake badly damaged but did not destroy Safed, as seen in 1943. By Hans Pinn, National Photo Collection of Israel.
An earthquake estimated at 6.8 on the Richter scale starts a landslide that kills thousands and causes extensive damage in the Jewish and Arab sections of the Upper Galilee mountain city of Safed (Tzfat). Most of the Jewish quarter and the synagogues are destroyed, and most of the Jewish survivors flee one of Judaism’s four holy cities, leaving only a dedicated few to rebuild the center of the practice of Kabbalah.
Items are provided by the Center for Israel Education (israeled.org), where you can find more details.