FROM OUR ARCHIVES
25 YEARS AGO
February 14, 1993
The UN Security Council would take no further action over Israel’s expulsion of some 400 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists. In what was being hailed as a victory for Israel, the council also agreed to drop consideration of a PLO demand to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions on Israel. It also appeared unlikely that the council would debate Israel’s refusal to readmit all the deportees immediately. No Israeli concessions were demanded in return.
Tel Aviv chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a leading contender to be Israel’s next Ashkenazi chief rabbi, filed a NIS 500,000 libel suit against Talila Stern, an astrologer who had accused him of trying to kiss her in the mid1970s.
15 YEARS AGO
February 14, 2003
Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz said in a televised interview that his country lacked the means to launch a military operation against Israel if a conflict were to erupt in the Middle East. “We don’t have the means to attack Israel that we had in 1991,” he said. “We can’t talk of reprisals when we don’t have the means. We aren’t a threat to anyone.” Aziz dismissed talk of Iraq attacking Israel as a ploy to stir up support. “It’s one of the games played by Americans and Israelis to create terror and false alarms that we are a threat. Our long range missiles have all been destroyed.”
The Safed College disciplinary committee ruled to suspend Yaasra Bachri until the Safed Magistrate’s Court ruled on the indictment against her. Bachri, a student at the college, was on a bus heading for Safed on August 4, 2002, when a suicide bomber who recognized her warned her to get off the bus because “something bad is about to happen.” Bachri and a friend got off the bus and did not tell the police about the warning. The bus blew up several minutes later, killing or wounding most of the passengers. The executive committee of the college decided to suspend Bachri for fear that her presence in the college would attract disturbances by the families of the victims of the bus bombings and others.
10 YEARS AGO
February 14, 2008
The fate of dozens of immigrants from Venezuela hung in the balance as police revealed what they claimed was a large-scale attempt by a Jewish Agency representative to boost immigration numbers by allowing people with questionable conversions to make aliya. If, as detectives of the Immigration Authority believed, Ra’anana resident and Jewish Agency representative in South America Ilan Architechter aided dozens of people in circumventing Jewish Agency rules for aliya qualifications, those people could lose their citizenship, or at least their immigration benefits.
Israel’s nationwide sushi craze was being endangered by a wasabi-strength threat. The government, seeking to protect local jobs, wanted to send all foreign-born Asian chefs packing by January 2009. At the time, Asian restaurants employed 900 foreign chefs and kitchen workers. “We feel an Israeli can hold a wok as well as a Thai or a Chinese person,” said Shoshana Strauss, a lawyer at the Industry and Trade Ministry.