FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO October 3, 1952
The East German parliament unanimously passed a law granting former Nazis and army officers the same rights as other East Germans.
The first independent smallholders’ settlement for immigrants from the US was dedicated near Be’er Tuviya. The project was sponsored by an American organization called Ha’ikar Ha’oved (the working farmer), whose aim was to induce Jewish farmers in America to move to Israel. Finance minister Levi Eshkol called for increased immigration from countries where Jews were not “threatened by the lash.” The American immigrants, who invested $5,000 for each housing unit, would not have to go through the transit camps waiting for their turn for housing. They would find waiting for them on their arrival prefabricated houses, a barn with a cow and a calf, a poultry run with 100 hens and 10 dunams of irrigated land for vegetable cultivation as well as seven dunams [0.7 hectares] of citrus orchards.
For insulting the Israeli flag, Mahmud Sefl, of Kafr Ba’aneh in Western Galilee, was sentenced by the Acre Magistrate’s Court to a year’s imprisonment. The accused seized an Israeli flag that some Boy Scouts had carried to an Arab wedding and proceeded to trample and dance upon it.
50 YEARS AGO October 3, 1967
The Agriculture Ministry faced a number of great challenges regarding Gazan farmers. One worry was that if cheap dates from Gaza were allowed into the Israeli market the Israeli farmers would suffer. One possible solution was to allow Gaza growers to sell their produce to Jordan. As to water, the Gaza Strip was in for a rude awakening. Most of its water came from privately owned artesian wells. According to Israeli experts, Gazans had been wasting water on an unimaginable scale and if they continued to do so they would soon be pumping sea water. “They just do not think about the future,” one Israeli expert said.
The American basketball star Tal Brody returned to Israel to rejoin the Maccabi Five and teach at the Wingate Institute. Brody said his draft board gave him another year’s deferment.
25 YEARS AGO October 3, 2002
Mossad agents were tracking some of the perpetrators of the September 11 terrorist attacks for an extended period of time and told the CIA and other government officials of their suspicions, but were ignored and expelled from the US according to an investigative report in the German weekly Die Zeit.
Prime minister Ariel Sharon met with relevant Israeli officials to discuss the possible collapse of the Temple Mount’s southern wall, officials said. A year of intermittent, discreet negotiations with the Wakf religious trust had failed to yield an agreement over who would fix the bulge in the wall. Israeli officials were increasingly concerned over a potential disaster during Ramadan the next month. Antiquities Authority director Shuki Dorfman said that Wakf officials had prevented Israeli archeologists and engineers from carrying out tests on the Temple Mount to survey the damage and plan repairs. Meanwhile, Wakf director Adnan Husseini blamed Israel for refusing to allow the Wakf to carry out the necessary repairs. “The Israelis are hampering the work in accordance with instructions from the highest echelons,” Husseini said.