FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
November 9, 1952
A reception in honor of the 35th anniversary of the October Revolution was held by the Soviet minister to Israel at the Soviet Legation. At a separate meeting, Adolf Berman (Mapam) announced that “The Jewish worker will never raise his hand against the Soviet Union.” He said that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had occurred mainly because of Soviet victories at Stalingrad. In Hadera, Yisrael Galilee (Mapam) said that when his political colleagues asserted that “we would not participate in any war against the Soviet Union, we meant that we could not fight against our own cause, against a socialist world, and against ourselves.” Communist Party leader Yona Temkin stated that it was the job of the party to spread information about the economic accomplishments of the Soviet Union among the people in an effort to counteract the “lies spread about by those who fear the truth and aim at starting a war with the USSR.”
At a meeting for the Industrial and Commercial Club, its vice-president, Hillel Hillman said that efficiency in industry was handicapped because under the prevailing conditions it was practically impossible to sack an unsatisfactory worker. He took up a theme in his description of American labor conditions that the labor unions were not concerned with engaging or discharging workers, and intervened only to maintain suitable salaries and labor conditions.
50 YEARS AGO
November 9, 1967
Defense minister Moshe Dayan visited the Gaza Strip and heard requests and complaints from civic leaders. “Everything is in a temporary state,” Dayan said. “When peace comes it will be easy to find a solution to all your problems. Until then we must find interim solutions.” Dayan asked the local notables how the Israeli soldiers were behaving. Reply: “They behave correctly in general, but are sometimes rough when conducting searches for arms in private homes.” Dayan: “If there were no mines there’d be no searches.” Reply: “We are not speaking of the searches, but how they are conducted.” Dayan: “To me the reason for the searches is important.”
Dayan also spoke to 3,000 students in Technion City where he told them that “The Arab armies have replaced the equipment they lost in the Six Day War.” In the long run, however, Dayan said that the critical issue was how two and a half million Jews would live together with a million and a half Arabs in the area west of the Jordan River. In his view the two peoples could find a way of living together in peace and good neighborliness as the experience of the previous five months had proven.
25 YEARS AGO
November 9, 1992
The head of the Jerusalem Aids Project, Inon Schenker, denounced the government decision to test for the Aids virus all tourists and foreign workers applying for stays longer than three months, and for requiring potential immigrants to declare they were not carriers. Schenker said that the rules put Israel in the “good company” of Syria, Albania, Libya, Iraq, Cuba and Turkey. He said that personal behavior – “safe sex” – was the way to prevent the spread of Aids. Testing foreigners and potential immigrants would have no appreciable effect on prevention, he insisted, since there were already enough HIV carriers in Israel for the carriers to multiply.