July 4, 1976:
Israeli commandos, in a daring raid under the command of Lt.-Col. Yonatan Netanyahu (brother of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), rescued 256 Jewish hostages from an Air France plane held by Palestinian and German terrorists at Uganda’s airport in Entebbe. The hostages included the flight crew, who chose to stay with the captives rather than be released. Unsurprisingly, the United Nations condemned Israel for violating Ugandan sovereignty. Yoni, as he was affectionately known, was killed during the operation.
July 5, 1950:
The Knesset passed the Law of Return, granting every Jew the absolute right to settle in Israel. The Citizenship Law, enacted in conjunction with the Law of Return, automatically entitles every Jewish immigrant to Israeli citizenship.
Tammuz 10, 3174 (586 BCE):
After rebelling against Babylonian rule, King Zedekiah was captured trying to escape through a tunnel leading out of the city during Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 39:4-5). He was forced to witness the slaughter of his sons, his eyes were then gouged out, and he was taken into captivity by the Babylonians.
July 7:
Birthdays of Gustav Mahler (1860), composer of nine symphonies and seven song cycles; Marc Chagall (1887), one of the most popular painters of the 20th century; and Academy Award-winning film director George Cukor (1899).
Tammuz 12, 5103 (1343):
Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher, author of the monumental Arba’ah Turim. This groundbreaking work organized all practical Jewish law into four major sections, subdivided into hundreds of chapters. This system served as the foundation for all later rabbinical works, such as Rabbi Yosef Karo’s Shulhan Aruch, the standard Code of Jewish Law.
July 9:
Birthdays of Friedrich Henle (1809), the first to contend that infectious diseases are transmitted by living organisms; Franz Boas (1858), known as the father of American anthropology; Ben Mottelson (1926), the 1975 Nobel Prize laureate in Physics; and Oliver Sacks (1933), neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and bestselling author.
July 10, 1969:
Egyptian commandos crossed the Suez Canal in dinghies and mounted an attack on the Israeli position on the East Bank, killing seven, wounding five, and taking prisoners. This marked the beginning of the escalation of the War of Attrition with Egypt, the aim of which was for Egypt to wear down Israel’s resolve to maintain its Six Day War positions and compel it to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, or at least from the Suez Canal.
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