FROM OUR ARCHIVES

65 YEARS AGO

The seven-day suspension of the Communist party organ Kol Ha’am was tacitly approved by the Knesset when it voted down a parliamentary inquiry. The paper had been suspended for publishing a report about the establishment in Israel of “an air base for American atomic bombers.” Esther Wilenska, a Communist MK, who was editor of the paper, told the Knesset that the item had been published from patriotic motives, “because the American bases constituted a danger to the public and the security of the state”. The Newspaper Editors Committee found that Kol Ha’am in publishing the item about the airfield without submitting it for censorship had committed a “most grave breach by disclosing military secrets which might endanger the security of the State.”

A plan to compensate people who suffered damage during the War of Independence was being formulated, the Finance Ministry announced. Compensation would cover only damage to property, not to household items.

Shoe production would stop for three weeks so factory stocks could be depleted. Considerable quantities of leather, which had been allocated for repairs, would bear special markings to preclude their use for the manufacture of black-market shoes.

50 YEARS AGO

Five Israeli soldiers were killed and 31 wounded, while Egypt lost one MiG-21 and a substantial number of casualties in a day-long exchange of artillery fire and air skirmishes, reportedly initiated by Egyptian artillery over the Suez Canal area. The clashes were the second flareup of hostilities between the two countries since the end of the Six Day War. Many observers said the Egyptian artillery bombardment could serve no practical military purpose. Jerusalem sources felt that Egypt’s aim in fomenting a clash along the Suez Canal was to achieve a meeting of the Security Council, and demonstrate that the UN could not rest satisfactorily with the failure of the General Assembly to pass a resolution forcing Israel to withdraw its troops.

25 YEARS AGO

In an address to the World Jewish Congress, prime minister-designate Yitzhak Rabin said Israel could fight antisemitism worldwide through fair treatment of its Arab minority and of Palestinians in occupied land. In reply to a question on how hostility against Jews could be fought, Rabin said, “I believe that first and foremost, by the very existence of Israel and by setting certain moral standards of behavior within our own country and vis-à-vis the non-Jewish population in Israel and, to the extent that it is possible, vis-àvis the Palestinians in the territories, short of our security needs.”

Around 70,000 haredim took part in the funeral procession for the Gerer Rebbe, Simcha Bunim Alter, from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Geula to his grave on the Mount of Olives. The procession wound through haredi and Arab sections of the capital and tied up traffic for hours. Police said some Arabs threw stones at mourners as they passed the Intercontinental Hotel on the Mount of Olives after the funeral, though no one was hurt. Alter, the fifth of his line, was 96.

Residents of Haifa’s Naveh Sha’anan neighborhood were angered to learn that the city had installed 14 toilets for dogs in the area, where there were no public toilets in the neighborhood for people.

— Daniel Kra