April 25, 1920:
The San Remo Resolution was adopted at the international meeting of the Allied Supreme Council, allocating League of Nations mandates for the administration of three then-undefined Ottoman territories: “Palestine,” “Syria” and “Mesopotamia.”
The resolution made Britain responsible “for putting into effect the [Balfour] declaration... in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” with Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations as the basis for the British Mandate.
This resolution transformed the Balfour Declaration from a letter of intent into a legally binding document under international law. It also laid the political foundation for the creation of the 22 Arab League States, none of which existed as an independent country previously. The original mandate for the Jewish state was for all of mandatory Palestine, but in 1921 Winston Churchill severed about 78% of it to establish the Emirate of Transjordan.
Nisan 28, 2488 (1273 BCE):
After circling the walls of Jericho once a day for the previous six days, Joshua and his army marched around Jericho seven times, accompanied by the Holy Ark. After the blowing of the shofar, the walls miraculously crumbled, leaving the city open and unprotected. Jericho was easily conquered, becoming the first fortified Canaanite city to fall to the Children of Israel in their conquest of the Promised Land (Joshua: Chapter 6).
April 27, 1945:
Birthday of Lee Felsenstein, an American computer engineer who played a central role in the development of the personal computer. He was the designer of the Osborne 1, the first mass-produced portable computer, as well as the shared-memory video display module board, which was widely copied and became the basis for the standard display architecture of all personal computers.
Nisan 30, 5380 (1620):
Death of Rabbi Chaim Vital, author of Etz Chaim, Kabbalist, and primary disciple of the Arizal (Isaac Luria) and the transcriber of his teachings, which form the basis of all subsequent study of Lurianic Kabbalah.
April 29, 1945:
The US 7th Army liberated Dachau, the first concentration camp built by the Nazis after they assumed power in 1933. Some 32,000 inmates were liberated, days after an additional 10,000 had been forced on a death march. Some 31,951 men, women, and children were murdered there. After the war, Dachau was used as a prison camp for Nazi war criminals.
April 30, 1925:
The Zionist Revisionist Party was founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky. He demanded a more aggressive policy toward the British, believing that only worldwide pressure would force them to abide by the Mandate. His followers, which included Menachem Begin, became the founders and leaders of the Herut and Likud parties.
May 1, 1921:
Twenty-seven Jews were murdered, and more than 100 were wounded during savage Arab rioting that broke out in Jaffa. The riots spread to other parts of the country, and an additional 20 Jews were killed, among them author Yosef Haim Brenner. As Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote, the “massive violence of 1921 left an ineradicable impression on the Zionists, driving home the precariousness of their enterprise.”
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