FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
March 19, 1953 The West German Bundestag (Lower House) passed the Reparations Agreement by an overwhelming majority, the first step in making the legislation a reality. Dr. Eugene Gerstenmeier, a member of chancellor Adenaur’s Christian Democratic Union, said in supporting the bill that “enough Germans risked their necks against Nazi cruelty for us to be able to reject any collective guilt for all Germans.” Under the agreement West Germany promised to deliver to Israel 3,450 million marks’ worth of goods, including oil and steel, during a period of 12 to 14 years, as partial reparations for Nazi crimes against Jews. Israel undertook to pay out 450 million marks’ worth of goods to world Jewry outside of Israel as compensation for the expenses incurred in aiding Jewish refugees.
Two arrests were made in Tel Aviv in connection with the attempted arson in two butcher shops selling pork. Police announced that they would patrol the vicinity of all butcher shops selling pork in Tel Aviv.
50 YEARS AGO
March 19, 1968 Negotiations were under way with the remaining occupants of the Moghrabi Quarter south of the Western Wall for the evacuation of the houses, which were not demolished with the rest of the quarter after the Six Day War. The Religious Affairs Ministry deposited 200,000 lirot into an account for compensation payments for about 20 families. After the demolition, a causeway or staircase would then be built to the Moghrabi Gate, the only access to the Temple Mount which was under Jewish control.
The Ministerial Committee on the Holy Places was scheduled to meet to discuss the objections of chief rabbi Yitzhak Nissim to archeological excavations anywhere near the Old City walls, and of chief rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman to excavations along the West Wall. In statements to the committee, the two chief rabbis stressed the primacy of the entire Western Wall – and not only the part of it traditionally known as the Western or Wailing Wall – as a place of prayer, and objected to turning it into a “mere” archeological or historical site. The chief rabbis were not expected to get any support for their positions in the committee. However, a face-saving formula was being tossed around whereby excavations in the area would be formally described not as archeological but as being carried out for the purpose of exposing the ancient stones and revealing the Western Wall in all its grandeur.
15 YEARS AGO
March 19, 2003 Saddam Hussein defied a US ultimatum to leave Iraq with his sons or face war, appearing on television in military uniform for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War and warning his commanders to prepare for battle. The UN pulled its weapons inspectors out of the country, ending the second effort in a dozen years to verify that Iraq had ended its programs to build weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, hundreds of Arab residents of Jerusalem were selling their gas masks to Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian sources. While Jerusalem’s Arab residents were entitled to gas masks like any Israeli citizen, Palestinians living in the West Bank had not received gas masks and the Palestinian Authority had done nothing to prepare them for the expected war in Iraq.