On November 4

On this day in ...
... 1995 (15 years ago today), Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, was fatally shot 3 times at close range as he was leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv. (credit for monument now at site of the shooting) Arrested at the scene was a founder of an illegal Jewish settlement on the West Bank; eventually he was convicted and received a life term, and his accomplices also were sentenced to prison. According to the BBC, the next Prime Minister, Shimon Peres -- who had won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize along with Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat -- "pushed on with" his predecessor's "efforts to make peace with the Palestinians. But in an election in 1996 he lost to Binyamin Netanyahu who campaigned against the Rabin-Peres peace programme." Netanyahu would serve till 1999, and then return to the office, which he now holds, in 2009.

(Prior November 4 posts are here, here, and here.)

On September 28

On this day in ...
... 1995 (15 years ago today), a 400-page agreement to give control over a significant portion of the West Bank to Palestinians was signed by the leaders of Israeli and the Palestine Liberation Organization at a ceremony in the White House, as U.S. President Bill Clinton, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and King Hussein of Jordan looked on. The signing leaders, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, then shook hands. Rabin would be assassinated in just 6 weeks; Arafat would die from natural causes 9 years later. As discussed in the press briefing at right by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and envoy George Mitchell, a new round of talks between current leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority was launched earlier this month.

(Prior September 28 posts are here, here, and here.)

On July 1

On this day in ...
... 1934 (75 years ago today), the United States' Roman Catholic bishops formed the Legion of Decency a lobbying group that issued ratings on movies. Films were categorized as "Class A: unobjectionable," "Class B: objectionable," or "Class C: condemned." An "objectionable" label would result if the film entailed suggestive dialogue, lack of moral compensation, lustful kissing, or acceptance of divorce. The lobby proved powerful, as film studios either pulled or altered projects in order to win the Legion's approval. For example, the plot of Belle of the Nineties (1934) was changed so that the lead actor, Mae West, was married by the end of the film. (image credit) Hollywood soon adjusted, adopting a more subtle but equally suggestive approach to “indecency.”
... 1994 (15 years ago today), Yasser Arafat (below left), Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman, returned to the Gaza Strip after 27 years in exile. Before boarding a helicopter from Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Arafat said: "Now I am returning to the first free Palestinian lands. You have to imagine how it is moving my heart, my feelings." His return followed the 1994 Israel-PLO pact known as the Cairo Agreement, which created self-rule for Palestinians in Gaza and Jericho in the West Bank. Arafat went on to become the elected president of the Palestinian National Authority in 1996. He would remain a symbolic figurehead for many years even after he lost prominence, and huge crowds would turn out for his funeral in November 2004.

(Prior July 1 posts are here and here. And a hat tip today to Rachel Prandini, 3L at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, for drafting these items!)

On December 7

On this day in ...

... 1873 (135 years ago today), Willa Cather (right) was born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, to a farming family that had ancestral roots in England, Ireland and Alsace. When she was 8 or 9 the family moved west, homesteading near Red Cloud, Nebraska. After graduation from the University of Nebraska, she worked as a newspaperwoman and began writing poetry and stories. Among her most noted works are My Ántonia (1918) and O Pioneers! (1913). Having won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923, in the 1930s she was ranked as 1 of the United States' 2 best novelists. Cather, who died in 1947, is best known "as a chronicler of the pioneer American West" whose stories evince grand themes such as "the universal story of the rise of civilizations in history" and "the drama of the immigrant in a new world."

... 1988 (20 years ago today), Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat (below left) issued the following statement respecting the PLO and Israel at a meeting in Stockholm, Sweden:

As its contribution to the search for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, assuming the role of the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine wishes to issue the following official statement:
1. That it is prepared to negotiate with Israel within the framework of the International Conference a comprehensive peace settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of U.N. resolutions 242 and 338.
2. That it undertakes to live in peace with Israel and other neighbours and to respect their right to exist in peace within secure and internationally recognized borders, as will the democratic Palestinian State which it seeks to establish in the Palestinian occupied territories since 1967.
3. That it condemns individual, group and State terrorism in all its forms, and will not resort to it.

On May 4

On this day in ...
... 1966, Dr. Jean Sutherland Boggs was named the 1st woman Director of the National Art Gallery of Canada, making her the 1st woman ever to head an agency with the status of deputy minister. Born in 1922 in Negritos, Peru, the art historian received a Ph.D. from Radcliffe College, and was a university professor before becoming a curator. She served at the National Art Gallery for a decade, and later as Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her works include Portraits by Degas (1962). "Miss Boggs" -- "as she preferred to be known" -- is at left, "shortly before her resignation in 1976, and wearing one of her eye-bending Op-Art dresses."
... 1994, the Gaza-Jericho Agreement was concluded by exchange of letters between Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, who, along with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, would go on to win that year's Nobel Peace Prize. The pact promised expanded autonomy for Palestinians and self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.