FROM OUR ARCHIVES

50 YEARS AGO

On April 5, 1967, The Jerusalem Post reported that plowing at Kibbutz Ha’on was renewed. Work had been interrupted two days earlier after the Syrians fired heavy artillery and 75-mm. anti-tank cannon shells at a tractor in the field. Members of the kibbutz continued preparations to continue plowing, when the weather improves, bringing in new agricultural machinery, including an armored tractor. Meanwhile, UN observers completed their investigation into the latest Syrian shelling attacks.

The Post’s editorial stated that there was no threat in introducing TV in Israel. TV was like everything else: what you got was what you put in. As individuals, we might choose not to own a TV set, but Israelis were entitled that our TV should be as good and as efficiently run as we could afford to make it. We should welcome the advent of TV as a fair opportunity for the government to exhibit itself and its works to the public’s fair and critical appraisal, while the opposition would also have a fair opportunity of offering itself to the public as an alternative, if it is sufficiently persuasive.

25 YEARS AGO

On April 5, 1992, The Jerusalem Post reported that foreign minister and deputy prime minister David Levy intended to hand in his letter of resignation from the government to prime minister Yitzhak Shamir at the beginning of the weekly cabinet session. Levy was expected to say a few brief words of farewell, then make a dramatic exit to a planned demonstration by his supporters, waiting outside. This was the only part of the deepening crisis in the Likud which appeared to be a certainty, with the aftermath a matter of dispute. Levy’s side asserted that once the letter was delivered there could be no retreat.

Sixteen IDF sergeants who had deserted their posts the previous week in an organized protest against alleged mistreatment were to be court-martialed for going absent without leave, military sources announced.

Genetic material taken from the body thought to be that of Auschwitz concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele matched samples from living Mengele relatives, proving after a seven-year investigation that the longsought “angel of death” died in 1979, according to non-government sources familiar with the German investigation.

The UN Security Council rebuked Israel after a clash at a Gaza Strip refugee camp, during which at least four Palestinians were killed. The UN statement failed to note that Israeli troops were attacked and that the soldiers fired in self-defense.

10 YEARS AGO

On April 5, 2007, The Jerusalem Post reported that the Prime Minister’s Office had issued a rare “clarification” that, in gentle diplomatic terms, contradicted US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s statement in Damascus that she had brought a message from Israel about a willingness to engage in peace talks. According to the Israeli statement, prime minister Ehud Olmert emphasized in his meeting with Pelosi that although Israel was interested in peace with Syria, that country continued to be part of the “Axis of Evil” and a force that encouraged terror in the Middle East. The Foreign Affairs Ministry statement said that it had not communicated to Pelosi any change in Israeli policy on Damascus. – Alexander Zvielli