FEBRUARY

MAY

Massive street

San Francisco approves a

protests drive

ballot measure for November

Egyptian

to outlaw circumcision of

President Hosni

minors in the city. A judge

Mubarak from

later strikes the ban from

power.

the ballot, saying the city

lacks authority to ban

Hama d A lma kt/ Flas h90/J

circumcision.

V

JUNE

One of the most hawkish

pro-Israel Democrats in

Congress, New Yorker

Anthony Weiner, is engulfed

in scandal over lying about

illicit messages sent on

Twitter. Eventually he

resigns.

C

A

MARCH

0

Thousands of

Arabs storm

Israel's borders

from Syria

to mark the

Nakba — the

anniversary of

the "catastrophe"

of Israel's

A

founding. Caught

MARCH

A

MAY

Netanyahu receives

multiple ovations during

remarks to a joint

session of Congress on

May 24.

A

JUNE

Protests in Israel broaden

and focus on the shortage

unprepared,

of affordable housing in

In a terrorist attack in the

Israeli forces hold

the country, with mass

West Bank Jewish settlement

the crowds back.

demonstrations and tent

of Itamar, five members

cities popping up in Tel Aviv

of the Fogel family are

and elsewhere.

massacred as they sleep.

Year In Review from page 76

Israel is concerned at the prospect of a
tectonic shift in the regional balance.

February
Massive street protests drive Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak, an ally of Israel
and the United States, from power. Coming
on the heels of a similar turn of events in
Tunisia, Mubarak's fall raises hopes that
a wave of democracy has been unleashed
and fears — especially in Israel — that
what is being called the Arab Spring will
end with radical Islamic forces in power.
U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, a tough-talking
Jewish Democrat from California, sud-
denly decides to quit Congress in a sign of
the precarious position of the Democratic
Party's centrist bloc.
An annual survey from the Chronicle
of Philanthropy finds that America's most
generous citizens gave less in 2010 than
they have over the past decade, with Jews
remaining among the top givers.
At the Academy Awards, Jewish winners
included Israel-born Natalie Portman for
her portrayal of a tortured ballerina in
Black Swan and 73 - year - old The King's
Speech screenwriter David Seidler, himself
a stutterer whose paternal grandparents
perished in the Holocaust. Oscars were

76

September 22 2011

IN

%

handed out as well to American filmmak-
ers Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman for
Strangers No More, a short documentary
on the Bialik-Rogozin School in south Tel
Aviv, and Susanne Bier, the Danish direc-
tor-writer din a Better World who studied
for two years at the Hebrew University and
the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.
An Israeli backpacker is among the
dead after an earthquake hits Christchurch
on New Zealand's South Island. The city's
Chabad house is destroyed.
Actor Charlie Sheen's rant against his
Jewish boss is called borderline anti-Sem-
itism by the Anti-Defamation League and,
after some additional outbursts by Sheen,
results in his eventual firing from the
popular CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men.

March
The fashion house Dior fires acclaimed
designer John Galliano after a video sur-
faces of him praising Hitler.
In a terrorist attack in the West Bank
Jewish settlement of Itamar, five members
of the Fogel family are massacred as they
sleep. Two Palestinians in their late teens
are arrested; one is found guilty by an
Israeli military court. The other suspect is
awaiting trial.
Israel's Navy intercepts a ship laden
with weapons bound for Gaza.

Jewish and Israel groups begin sending
aid to Japan as it struggles to respond to a
massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear
crisis.
American Jewish contractor Alan Gross
is sentenced to 15 years in prison in Cuba
for subversive activities. The United States
says Gross was in the country to help
Cuba's Jews.
A car bomb explodes in central
Jerusalem, killing one.
Groups on the Jewish left express
outrage after a Knesset subcommittee
votes to convene hearings on J Street, the
Washington-based lobby that calls itself
"pro-Israel, pro-peace NGOs condemn
the hearing as part of an Israeli govern-
ment campaign to target NGOs critical of
Israel.
Academy Award-winning actress
Elizabeth Taylor, who maintained a sup-
port for Israel after converting to Judaism
in the late 1950s, dies.
Protests sweeping the Arab world
spread to Syria.

April
Richard Goldstone, author of the contro-
versial U.N. report on the 2009 Gaza War
that accused Israel of war crimes, with-
draws the central tenet of that report in an
op-ed piece in the Washington Post. That

prompts an unsuccessful drive by Israel
and its supporters to void the report for-
mally in the United Nations.
A bomb explodes outside a Chabad
center in Southern California. The suspect
turns out to be Jewish.
Obama picks Rep. Debbie Wasserman
Schultz, a Jewish Democrat from Florida,
to chair the Democratic National
Committee.
The Union for Reform Judaism names
Rabbi Rick Jacobs as its choice to suc-
ceed Rabbi Eric Yoffie at the helm of the
movement. Jacobs comes under fire for his
affiliations with J Street and the New Israel
Fund. He is later confirmed by the union's
board.
The Palestinian Hamas and Fatah fac-
tions announce that they are reconciling,
prompting calls for the U.S. government
to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority.
However, a Hamas-Fatah unity govern-
ment fails to materialize.

May
Osama bin Laden is killed in Pakistan by
U.S. forces, prompting questions about
whether the liquidation of al-Qaida's lead-
er makes a follow-up attack more or less
likely and whether Jews could be a target.

Year In Review on page 78