Year brings pope’s Israel visit, breakdown in talks Lebanon withdrawal and Lieberman nomination

September 1999

JERUSALEM -- The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial breaks ground for a Hall of Names that will house millions of pages of testimony about Shoah victims.

October 1999

JERUSALEM -- Former South African President Nelson Mandela visits Israel for the first time. Mandela had canceled previously scheduled visits to the Jewish state because of his criticism of Israeli policies.

JERUSALEM -- An Israeli court gives a 24-year prison sentence to Samuel Sheinbein, a Maryland teenager who fled to Israel after a 1997 murder.

JERUSALEM -- Israel opens a safe-passage route for Palestinians between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

JERUSALEM -- News emerges that since 1995, some 400 Jews have arrived from Cuba with the assistance of the Jewish Agency for Israel, a quasi-governmental agency responsible for immigration to Israel. Cuban leader Fidel Castro apparently gave his blessing to the exodus, code-named "Operation Cigar."

November 1999

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives passes a bill to fund a special aid package to help implement the 1998 Wye agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican shelves plans to beatify Pope Pius XII, instead beatifying Pope John XXII. Some Jewish groups had protested Pius XII's proposed beatification because of his silence during the Holocaust. Newly discovered documents reveal that Pius XII told the United States in 1942 that he believed reports of German atrocities against Jews were exaggerated and did not think the Allies would win the war.

JERUSALEM -- Visiting First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton fails to respond immediately to allegations made by Suha Arafat, wife of the Palestinian Authority president, that Israel poisoned the Palestinian population's water supply. Clinton later said she did not receive a proper translation of Arafat's remarks.

December 1999

WASHINGTON -- Israel and Syria sit down for high-level peace talks, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa do not shake hands for the cameras. The talks later collapse after the two sides become deadlocked.

MOSCOW -- The Russian government returns 10 Torah scrolls, looted by the Nazis or confiscated by the state during the Soviet era, to the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations of Russia. The government originally promised to return 61 scrolls but lowered the number after arguments within the Russian Jewish community.

NEW YORK -- The Reform movement announces the creation of a new prayerbook, to be published in 2005.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli courts sentence travel agent Shlomo Nour to 16 years in prison for raping the former Miss Israel, Linor Abargil, last year in Italy, seven weeks before Abargil was crowned Miss World.

WASHINGTON -- A number of countries reach agreements or issue reports concerning the compensation of Holocaust survivors and their families, including France, Germany and Switzerland.

January 2000

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Sigal Gilboa gives birth to twins born in different millennia. Dr. Yinon Gilboa, an obstetrician, assists in his wife's cesarean section as she gives birth New Year's Eve to a daughter two minutes before midnight and a son born just after midnight.

JERUSALEM -- Leading fervently religious rabbis issue a ruling banning their followers from using the Internet out of concern it could lead to "sin" and "destruction," and lead the young astray.

STOCKHOLM -- Sweden's prime minister, Goran Persson, admits that his country acted wrongly during World War II, dropping the defense that Sweden was a neutral nation during the war.

MIAMI -- Attorney Spencer Eig, an Orthodox Jew, heads the 10-member team of lawyers representing 6-year old Cuban boy Elian Gonzales.

February 2000

VIENNA -- Austria's far-right Freedom Party, led by Jorg Haider, forges an agreement to join the country's government, in a pact with conservative People's Party leader Wolfgang Schuessel, despite U.S. threats to join the European Union in isolating Austria. Haider, whose anti-immigrant platform and past praise for Nazi employment policies worry many, later steps down as official leader of the party.

JERUSALEM -- Months of meetings involving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and their negotiators end amid Palestinian declarations that the talks have reached a crisis.

LOS ANGELES -- Federal prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against Buford Furrow Jr., the white supremacist accused of killing a Filipino-American mail carrier after wounding five people at a Jewish community center in August 1999.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's interior minister, Natan Sharansky, says his ministry will recognize civil marriages performed in foreign consulates based in Israel.

March 2000

JERUSALEM -- Pope John Paul II arrives in Israel, the first papal visit in 36 years.

NEW YORK -- The Reform movement passes a resolution affirming the right of its movement's rabbis to officiate at gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies.

JERUSALEM -- The Knesset passes a law granting equal rights to women, including equality in the workplace and the military, the right of women over their bodies, and protection from violence and sexual exploitation.

PRAGUE -- A compromise is reached involving the Prague Jewish community, the Czech government and the country's biggest insurance company that will allow for the construction of an office complex above one of Europe's oldest Jewish burial sites. But Orthodox Jews from abroad continue to protest the planned building.

April 2000

LONDON -- Holocaust denier David Irving loses his libel lawsuit against American academic Deborah Lipstadt and publisher Penguin Books.

NEW YORK -- After the U.S. Justice Department contends that alleged Nazi war criminal Aleksandras Lileikis, 92, was faking illness to avoid trial, Lithuania plans to restart the previously adjourned trial. The nation's laws are changed to let the elderly defendant monitor proceedings from outside the court.

WASHINGTON -- Receiving the Most Valuable Player award at the 27th annual Reebok Classic basketball game, Orthodox Jewish high school student Tamir Goodman is slated to play for Towson University in Maryland in the fall. He had turned down the University of Maryland's offer, in part because of friction over his refusal to play basketball on Shabbat.

JERUSALEM -- In a reversal of an earlier decision allowing women to serve in combat units, the Israeli army announces it will not open its air force rescue unit to women until it can be determined whether women can meet the unit's physical demands.

PITTSBURGH -- Richard Scott Baumhammers goes on a shooting spree, killing five minorities, including one Jewish woman.

May 2000

JERUSALEM -- The Jewish Agency for Israel flies 100 Falash Mura -- Ethiopians whose ancestors converted from Judaism to Christianity -- from Ethiopia to Israel. The group is the first to arrive since Interior Minister Natan Sharansky visited Ethiopia a month before to assess the situation of the thousands of Falash Mura who have amassed in transit camps hoping to emigrate to Israel.

WASHINGTON -- Members of synagogues, Jewish organizations and Jewish mothers join the Million Mom March in Washington, Oakland and in other U.S. cities to press for gun-control legislation.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's Supreme Court rules that women can pray at the Western Wall while wearing prayer shawls, marking a victory in an 11-year effort by the group Women of the Wall.

JERSALEM -- Israel's Supreme Court rules that former Bay Area resident Nicole Berner-Kadish, a lesbian, can legally register as 4-year-old Matan Berner Kadish's mother. Nicole's partner, Ruti Berner-Kadish, is Matan's biological mother. The decision was hailed by both Israeli and international gay rights groups.

JERUSALEM -- After formally notifying the United Nations of its intention to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon by July, Israel accelerates its withdrawal when it becomes evident that its ally in the region, the South Lebanon Army, has collapsed. More than 5,000 South Lebanon Army members and their families are granted asylum in Israel.

June 2000 JERUSALEM -- A Tel Aviv court sentences four of five defendants to up to 21 months in jail for their role in the bridge collapse at the 1997 Maccabiah Games, which killed four Australian athletes. CAIRO -- Syrian President Hafez Assad dies at age 69. His son, Bashar Assad, succeeds him, and vows to pursue his father's policies toward Israel, including a hard line on a return of the Golan Heights.

MOSCOW -- Authorities arrest Vladimir Goussinsky, a media tycoon who also serves as the president of the Russian Jewish Congress. He is later released, saying that pressure from the international Jewish community helped secure his freedom.

NEW YORK -- Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, pulls out of the American Zionist Movement, saying that the group "no longer serves the best interests of Hadassah's Zionist goals or the future of American Zionism."

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court rules that students cannot lead prayers at high school football games, prompted by a lawsuit from Mormon and Catholic students in Santa Fe, Texas. Earlier in the year, the House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution backing school prayer at school sporting events.

NEW YORK -- The Orthodox Union creates an independent commission to investigate how the organization handled complaints that high-ranking Rabbi Baruch Lanner sexually harassed and molested teenagers in the O.U.'s youth group.

NEW YORK -- New Jersey Rabbi Fred Neulander could face the death penalty after a grand jury indictment accuses him of having contracted to murder his wife, Carol, who died in November 1994.

July 2000

IRAN -- Ten Iranian Jews held in Iran since the beginning of 1999 are convicted of spying for Israel and sentenced to prison terms of four to 13 years. Three others are acquitted.

JERUSALEM -- President Clinton and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat meet at Camp David for a new round of Middle East peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The talks break down after two weeks, without an agreement.

August 2000

JERUSALEM -- The Knesset elects Moshe Katsav Israel's eighth president in a surprise victory over former Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The victory by the Sephardi politician is seen as a rebuke to Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

LOS ANGELES -- Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore names Joseph Lieberman as his running mate, making the Connecticut senator the first Jew to run on a major party ticket in the United States. Lieberman, an observant Jew, makes religion a central part of his campaign.

JERUSALEM --Three Israeli soldiers are killed and another wounded by "friendly fire" in the West Bank. The troops were on a mission to capture Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, an alleged Hamas terrorist who is later captured and sentenced by the Palestinians to 12 years in prison.

NEW YORK -- The Anti-Defamation League sends a letter to Sen. Joseph Lieberman calling on the U.S. Democratic vice presidential candidate to keep religion out of the presidential campaign. The Connecticut senator says, "I respect the ADL, but I respectfully disagree."

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