Hen dler/ JTA
Year In Reveiw from page 87
FEBRUARY 2005
Washington — Resolutions
praising Palestinian Authority
elections pass overwhelmingly in
the U.S. Senate and House of
Representatives.
Washington — In his State of
the Union address, President
Bush proposes $350 million in
U.S. aid for the Palestinians.
Egypt — Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon and Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas
declare an Israeli-Palestinian
cease-fire.
New York — The Artscroll
publishing house completes its
73-volume translation of the
Talmud, a $23 million project
that took more than 15 years.
Roxbury, Conn. — Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright Arthur
Miller, who is Jewish, best known
for Death of a Salesman and The
Crucible, dies at age 89.
MARCH 2005
New York — Tens of thou-
sands of Jews gather in Madison
Square Garden and other loca-
tions throughout the world to
mark the end of the Daf Yomi, a
seven-year cycle of Talmud study.
Washington — President Bush
nominates John Bolton as the
U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, sparking a contentious
political battle.
Washington — The U.S. House
of Representatives votes 389-43
to give $200 million in aid to the
Palestinians.
Paris — Attacks on French
Jews and Muslims and their
institutions have almost doubled
— from 833 in 2004 to 1,565 —
according to reports.
Jerusalem — The Knesset
votes down a bill that would have
authorized a referendum on the
Gaza Strip withdrawal plan.
Jerusalem — The Knesset
approves the 2005 state budget,
marking a major political victory
for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
and removing the last legislative
obstacle to his plans to withdraw
from the Gaza Strip.
New York — Columbia
University issues a report investi-
gating charges that pro-
Palestinian professors bullied
pro-Israel students.
Jerusalem — An Israeli-Arab
player scores a key goal in the
88
An Israeli settler cries out as he takes part in a farewell ceremony at the synagogue in Katif in the southern Gaza Strip on Aug. 21, 2005.
final minutes of a World Cup
qualifying match, helping Israel
advance to the next round.
APRIL 2005
Rome — Pope John Paul II,
who made positive Jewish-
Catholic relations a pillar of his
papacy, dies at age 84. Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger of Germany is
selected to succeed him.
Washington — Sandy Berger,
President Clinton's national secu-
rity adviser, pleads guilty to a
misdemeanor for removing clas-
sified documents from the
National Archives. He later is
fined $50,000 for the offense.
Brookline, Mass. — Nobel
Prize-winning author Saul
Bellow, who is Jewish, best
known for such novels as Herzog
and The Adventures of Augie
March, dies at age 89.
Crawford, Texas — Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon meets with
President Bush at his ranch. Bush
reportedly insists that Israel not
expand settlements without
negotiating with the Palestinians.
Washington — The American
Israel Public Affairs Committee
fires two top employees — poli-
cy director Steve Rosen and sen-
ior Iran analyst Keith Weissman
— due to allegations raised by
an FBI investigation that they
mishandled classified material.
New York — The United
Nations Commission on Human
Rights condemns anti-Semitism
in two separate resolutions.
Jerusalem — Former Israeli
President Ezer Weizman dies at
age 80.
Crawford, Texas — President
Bush meets with Saudi Crown
Prince Abdullah at Bush's ranch.
Bush reportedly stresses the need
for the Saudis to offer financial
support to the Palestinian
Authority.
Beirut — Syria formally with-
draws its troops from Lebanon,
ending its 29-year occupation.
London — Britain's
Association of University
Teachers votes to boycott two
Israeli universities over Israel's
treatment of the Palestinians.
The boycott, which sparks out-
rage in the Jewish world, is over-
turned in May.
MAY 2005
Jerusalem — Natan Sharansky
resigns from Israel's government
to protest the planned withdraw-
al from the Gaza Strip and north-
ern West Bank.
Jerusalem — Israel freezes the
hand-over of West Bank cities to
the Palestinians after they ignore
pledges to arrest wanted terror-
ists and disarm terrorist groups.
Moscow — Representatives of
the Quartet pursuing Middle
East peace — America, Russia,
the European Union and the
United Nations — emphasize the
need for a future Palestinian
state to have territorial contigui-
ty. The group also issues a state-
ment supporting Israel's plan to
withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
Krakow, Poland — Some
18,000 marchers mark the 60th
anniversary of the liberation of
the Nazi concentration camps.
Berlin — Germany dedicates
its new Holocaust memorial.
Paris — A French appeals
court finds Le Monde, the coun-
try's leading daily newspaper,
guilty of "racial defamation" for
an article on the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict that was
harshly critical of Jews.
Butner, N.C. — Israeli ambas-
sador Daniel Ayalon visits Israeli
spy Jonathan Pollard in a U.S.
prison for the first time.
Jerusalem — First lady Laura
Bush visits Jerusalem as part of a
Middle East tour.
New York — Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon comes to
New York, where he defends his
Gaza withdrawal plans.
Washington — Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas meets with President Bush
at the White House. Bush offers
$50 million in direct assistance.
Washington — The U.S.
Supreme Court upholds the con-
stitutional right to religious
accommodation for minorities in
prisons, declaring the Religious
Land Use and Institutionalized
Persons Act of 2000 to be consti-
tutional.
Moscow — A Russian court
sentences the Jewish oil magnate
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's
richest man, to nine years in jail
after finding him guilty of six
charges including tax evasion,
fraud and embezzlement.
JUNE 2005
New York — Hundreds of
thousands of people march down
Fifth Avenue in the annual Salute
to Israel parade.
Cordoba, Spain — The
Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe holds its
third annual Conference on Anti-
Semitism and Other Forms of
Intolerance.
Washington— Former Nazi
death-camp guard John
Demjanjuk is deemed eligible for
deportation from the United
States. Demjanjuk was acquitted
in Israel in 1993 of being "Ivan
the Terrible one of the most
notorious Nazi guards.
New York — Rabbi Ismar
Schorsch, the longtime chancel-
lor of the Jewish Theological
Seminary, the Conservative
movement's flagship institution,
announces his retirement.
Jerusalem — Israel apologizes
to the United States after a dis-
pute over Israeli arms sales to
China.
Boca Raton, Fla. — Rabbi
Nahum Sarna, a leading Bible
scholar at Brandeis University,
dies at age 82.
Washington — The U.S.
Supreme Court rules that dis-
plays of the Ten Commandments
are permissible on state grounds
but not in courthouses.
Jerusalem — Israel and Egypt
ink a $2.5 billion deal for Egypt
to supply natural gas to the
Jewish state.
JULY 2005
Atlanta — The United Church
of Christ calls on members to
employ "economic leverage"
against Israel.
London — Four suicide
September 29 2005 ITN