FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
On July 26, 1951, The Jerusalem Post reported from Cairo that the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, called on heads of Arab states to intervene in Jordan to check the “brutal campaign of terror” against Palestinian Arabs, following the assassination of King Abdullah. The Egyptian daily Al Ahram suggested that Jordan might become a federation with a separated and autonomous Arab-held Palestine.
The Army Command and the Defense Ministry were “following with great attention” developments in Jordan and along the Israeli border, a government spokesman declared after the cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
The UN Security Council was expected to open its debate on the Egyptian blockade the following evening. In Washington, president Harry Truman stressed the importance of reopening the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping.
Both Iraqi and Iranian airlifts were limping along because of an insufficient number of aircraft. Planes from Iraq were arriving at an average of about one every two days, while no greater tempo was reached with the Iranian operation.
The Civil Service Commissioner started negotiations to give state employees another advance payment on an increase in salaries, since the public committee which was appointed on April 13, 1951, to make recommendations on the improvement of salaries had not yet published its report.
50 YEARS AGO
On July 26, 1966, The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel had solemnly assured the UN Security Council that its government “had no wish to engage in armed clashes or military actions on the border” and was ready in response to a UN appeal to reestablish an unconditional ceasefire on the northern border with Syria. These pledges were made by ambassador Michael Comay when the council met to consider charges and counter-charges of aggression filed by Israel and Syria. Comay suggested that the UN make efforts to effect a settlement of Syrian-Israel border questions.
A 45-year-old fruit-picker, Nadia Birnbaum, 45, was seriously wounded when a booby-trapped crate exploded in a field, a few hundred meters south of Metulla.
Respect for the territorial integrity of all nations and the need for a peaceful solution of international problems were stressed in the talks between president Zalman Shazar and Brazilian president Humberto Castelo Branco. This was stated in a joint communiqué released simultaneously in Jerusalem and Rio de Janeiro, as Shazar wound up his official seven-day visit to Brazil.
25 YEARS AGO
On July 26, 1991, The Jerusalem Post was told by foreign minister David Levy that US secretary of state James Baker was likely to return to Israel to nail down the Palestinian delegation for a Middle East peace conference. Levy, on the eve of his visit to Egypt, said he was waiting for Baker to bring to Jerusalem a completed list of Palestinian delegates as such as agreed-upon list was essential before Israel could give a favorable reply to enter the peace talks.
Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose stories in Yiddish recreated a world of East European Jewry that disappeared in the ashes of the Holocaust, died in a Miami nursing home at 87. Singer won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978.
– Alexander Zvielli