FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
S. Hoofien, chairman of the board of directors of the Bank Leumi Le’Israel, told the first annual general meeting of shareholders that the impending economic dislocation could be averted only by a drastic cut in living standards. The brunt of the cuts, he said, had to be borne by the working class because they were the most numerous. According to Hoofien, the so-called “moneyed class” in Israel, on the other hand, had a relative lower standard of living than similar classes abroad. He claimed that linking wages to the cost of living index should have been discontinued however cruel it might have been for the wage earner.
50 YEARS AGO
Egypt agreed to the stationing of UN observers along the Suez Canal to supervise the cease-fire with Israel.
Israel would begin pumping oil “in the next few days” from Italian-Egyptian wells in the Sinai Peninsula. A spokesman for Italy’s stateowned oil group Eni, 50% owner of the Sinai wells, said the company was not collaborating in the Israel pumping operations but neither was it protesting. ”The matter is out of our hands,” the spokesman said. It was assumed in Italian oil circles that Israel would pay for the oil eventually, though Eni officials denied that any arrangement had been made.
Israel’s information services lagged behind events and did not present Israel’s case adequately, according to the Israel Advertising Association. A number of representatives, who returned from an advertising conference in London, said Israel had failed to provide enough up-to-date background material and photographs to foreign outlets. They said that Fleet Street, London’s publishing hub, was unaware that Israeli vessels could not use the Suez Canal. Even more important than political articles were human interest descriptions and photographs of Israel and its people. They called for the launching of a large-scale information campaign.
A big parking lot built by the Jordanians some years before on part of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was officially closed and fenced off by the Religious Affairs Ministry. Remains of gravestones could still be seen on the parking lot, where famous rabbis such as “Pri Hadash” and “Or Hahayim” were buried.
10 YEARS AGO
Jerusalem police arrested three Arab youths for allegedly badly beating a haredi man who told them not to flirt with Jewish girls on an Egged No. 1 bus in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem City Council opposition leader Nir Barkat appealed for the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into the serious delays in the city’s light rail project, which he called a “national crime.” “The whole city has become enslaved to the needs of the light rail project, which have become truly megalomanic,” Barkat said. The opening of the system’s first line which had been expected in February 2009 was then slated for the middle of 2010. [Service began August 19, 2011.]
Almost every member of the US Congress had received from the United Jewish Communities a replica set of dog tags of the three IDF soldiers kidnapped the year before. In a trip to the Middle East in April, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi presented her set to Syrian leader Bashar Assad in Damascus, to pressure him to work for their return.