Jan. 17, 1930 — High Commissioner Calls for End of Jewish Home
Sir John Chancellor, the British high commissioner in Palestine from 1928 to 1931, expresses his growing anti-Zionist views in a 90-page dispatch to the Colonial Office, the longest known dispatch from a British official to enumerate Arab grievances in Palestine. Chancellor calls for an end to efforts to establish a Jewish national home. Instead, the British enact dozens of laws and regulations to keep Arab peasants on the land.
Jan. 18, 1991 — Iraqi Scuds Strike Israel
The morning after U.S.-led allied forces launch airstrikes on Iraq at the start of the Persian Gulf War, eight Iraqi Scud missiles hit Israel in the predawn hours. Seven people are wounded, and several residential buildings are damaged in Haifa and Tel Aviv. The Scuds are the first of nearly 40 missiles Iraq fires at Israel in an effort to spur retaliation and thus fracture the coalition against Saddam Hussein, but Israel holds its fire.
Jan. 19, 2010 — Hamas Military Leader Is Assassinated
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas military commander and the founder of its Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, is suffocated in his hotel room shortly after his arrival in Dubai. A police report blames a “professional criminal gang” that flees before the body is discovered. The killing is widely attributed to the Mossad, and investigators identify more than two dozen people who are involved after traveling to and from Dubai on forged passports.
Jan. 20, 2014 — Israel, Kazakhstan Sign Defense Pact
Israel signs a security cooperation accord with Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic with a Sunni Muslim majority, during a meeting between Defense Ministers Moshe Ya’alon and Adilbek Dzhaksbekov in Tel Aviv. Aiming to boost Kazakh security while increasing Israeli defense sales, the agreement builds on pacts covering telecommunications, technology and science signed over two decades of strengthening ties.
Jan. 21, 1968 — Merger Forms Israeli Labor Party
Mapai, the dominant political party during Israel’s first two decades, joins with two smaller left-leaning parties, Ahdut Ha’avoda and Rafi, to form the Labor Party at a conference chaired by Mapai’s secretary-general, Golda Meir. David Ben-Gurion, who helped found Ahdut Ha’avoda in 1919, served as the first prime minister while Mapai’s leader and formed Rafi in 1965 as a breakaway from Mapai, decides not to join Labor.
Jan. 22, 1979 — Munich Mastermind Is Killed
Ali Hassan Salameh, the flamboyant chief of operations for the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, is killed by a Mossad car bomb in Beirut in revenge for the killing of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Israel’s Operation Wrath of God, launched to eliminate the terrorists responsible for Munich, had failed in an attempt on Salameh in Norway in 1973, mistakenly killing a Moroccan waiter instead.
Jan. 23, 1922 — Nazi-Hunter Tuviah Friedman Is Born
Tuviah Samuel Friedman, a Holocaust survivor and Nazi-hunter involved in the search for Adolf Eichmann, is born in Poland. In the months after World War II, he and other survivors roam the Polish countryside, capturing and torturing Nazis, and he gathers evidence of atrocities for Soviet and Polish authorities. He works with the Haganah in hunting Nazis across Europe, then carries on the work alone after moving to Israel in 1952.
Items are provided by the Center for Israel Education (israeled.org), where you can find more details.
