Dec. 15, 2016 — Trump Picks Friedman as Ambassador
U.S. Ambassador David Friedman (right) joins Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aboard a U.S. Navy warship making a port call in Ashdod on Oct. 11, 2018.
President-elect Donald Trump announces that he will nominate New York bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman, a longtime Trump adviser who worked with the presidential campaign on Israel policy, owns a home in Israel, has raised money for the West Bank settlement movement, and has said a two-state solution is neither a Trump priority nor the only path to Middle East peace.
Dec. 16, 1922 — Modern Hebrew Advocate Ben-Yehuda Dies
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, credited with advancing modern Hebrew, dies of tuberculosis at 64 in Jerusalem. In 1879 he called for a spiritual center in the Land of Israel as the anchor of Jewish nationalism. He and his wife made aliyah in 1881 and spoke only Hebrew at home. He founded the Va’ad ha-Lashon, the forerunner of the Academy of Hebrew Language, and was working on a Hebrew dictionary, which his second wife, Hemda, finished after he died.
Dec. 17, 1993 — Rabbi Urges Soldiers Not to Remove Settlements
Rabbi Shlomo Goren, shown in 1949, served as a military chaplain and qualified as a paratrooper during the War of Independence. He eventually reached the rank of major general in the IDF.
Shlomo Goren, the first head of the IDF’s Military Rabbinate and the Ashkenazi chief rabbi from 1973 to 1983, calls in a written statement for soldiers to disobey orders to remove Jewish settlers from the West Bank, Gaza Strip or Golan Heights. An opponent of the Oslo Accords, Goren sees any such order as illegal because it would conflict with the Torah commandment to settle the land promised to the Jewish people.
Dec. 18, 1947 — Trans Pioneer Gila Goldstein Is Born
Gila Goldstein, who in the 1960s is among the first Israelis to have sex reassignment surgery, is born as Abraham in Turin, Italy. The family immigrates to Israel a few years later, and Goldstein begins identifying as a girl and using the name Gila by 1960. She becomes a dancer, a singer and an actress. She is a leading LGBT activist and in 1975 helps found Aguda, Israel’s first support organization for LGBT youths.
Dec. 19, 1903 — Nordau Survives Assassination Attempt
Max Nordau, who founded the World Zionist Organization with Theodor Herzl, escapes unharmed when two shots are fired at him at close range during a Chanukah party in Paris. The would-be assassin, Russian student Chaim Zelig Luban, 27, is angry at Nordau’s support for the Uganda Plan, which would establish a temporary Jewish homeland in East Africa. Luban is found to be mentally ill and is not prosecuted.
Dec. 20, 1976 — Rabin’s First Government Collapses
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (center) attends the opening of the World Chess Olympiad in Haifa with Education Minister Aharon Yadlin and Haifa Mayor Yeruham Zeisel on Oct. 24, 1976, less than two months before the collapse of his governing coalition.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor-led coalition falls apart as he fires two members of the National Religious Party, Religious Affairs Minister Yitzhak Rafael and Welfare Minister Zevulum Hammer, from his Cabinet and sees a third, Interior Minister Yosef Burg, resign. Rabin drops the NRP’s 10 Knesset members from the government, leaving him with 57 of 120 seats, and he calls for an election in the spring.
Dec. 21, 1973 — Peace Conference Begins in Geneva
Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban addresses the opening session of the Geneva peace conference Dec. 21, 1973.
A Middle East peace conference opens in Geneva under the auspices of the United States and the Soviet Union, although U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger keeps the Soviets in the dark about progress made by Israel and Egypt toward their 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Syria skips the conference because Israel refuses to recognize the PLO as the Palestinians’ representative. The conference ends Dec. 29 and never reconvenes.
Items are provided by the Center for Israel Education (israeled.org), where you can find more details.