Year
 
Jewish Agency for Israel
 
Israel
 
Jewish History & Culture
1973            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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

 

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%.

 

 

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.

 
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12 Nov 2007 / 2 Kislev 5768 0