FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
February 13, 1953
The Soviet foreign minister, Andre Vishinsky, summoned the Israeli minister, Shmuel Eliashiv, to inform him that the Soviet Union was breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel. The pretext given was the bombing of the Soviet Legation in Tel Aviv, which Vishinsky said was provoked by the Israeli government and “connived at” by police. Vishinsky handed Eliashiv a note which accused the Israeli press and government officials “of openly instigating hostile activities” against the Soviet Union. Informed observers believed that the Soviet action was inevitable, and would have come sooner or later even without the pretext of the bombing. The move restored the status quo ante preceding the UN speech by Andrei Gromyko in 1947 in favor of an independent Jewish state. That speech had marked a sharp break in the Soviet attitude towards Zionism, which had always been hostile.
US president Dwight Eisenhower apparently doomed Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, convicted atomic spies, to death in the electric chair by bluntly rejecting their final appeal for clemency. Only last-minute intervention by the Supreme Court could prevent the New York couple from becoming the first Americans to die for peace-time espionage.
50 YEARS AGO
February 13, 1968
Defense minister Moshe Dayan told Arab notables in Hebron that he did not expect them to act as informers but that their task was to see that terrorists did not find refuge in their villages or operate from there. Terrorist activities formed the central theme of the discussion. Hebron mayor Sheikh Jabari told the gathering that it was clear to him that terror caused only marginal damage to Israel but serious harm to the Arabs. One of the mukhtars (village heads) announced that the mukhtars were responsible to the authorities for maintenance of peace, and that he was ready to guarantee that not one of them aided terrorists. Dayan told the audience that the responsibility for law and order rested on the IDF and the authorities alone. Dayan said that he himself had been a “terrorist” in the past and remembered how the Jewish mukhtars behaved then. He could not ask Arab mukhtars to behave otherwise. But Dayan agreed to a request to supply villages with arms for self-defense against robbers and vengeance-seekers.
15 YEARS AGO
February 13, 2003
Foreign minister Benjamin Netanyahu recalled ambassador to Belgium Yehuda Kenar back to Israel. The move was a response to the ruling by Belgium’s Supreme Court that Ariel Sharon could be tried for war crimes once he no longer enjoyed immunity as prime minister. The ruling opened the way for survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre to press their case in Belgian courts once Sharon left office.
Iraqi opposition leaders said they feared Washington was trying to sideline them by planning a two-year military occupation of Iraq after any war to topple president Saddam Hussein. Saddam’s opponents were trying to bury their bitter feuds before a US attack to ensure that they would have a role in postwar Iraq, but US officials dented their hopes, saying a military occupation could last two years before power was handed back to Iraqis. [The main departure of US troops from Iraq occurred in 2013 and there are still more than 5,000 US personnel there now.]