FROM OUR ARCHIVES

50 YEARS AGO

April 11, 1968

There were a good number of dogs in attendance throughout the three-day Jerusalem route march, but one dog stood apart from the rest. At the end of the march, this dog was spotted with a yellow identification card attached to its collar. The card, distributed to all marchers, was punched periodically at stations along the way as a guarantee that the individual had actually marched the complete route. The dog was moving along with the crowd at a sensible pace although no master was in view. A close look at his card indicated that he had stopped off at all the checkpoints and was properly punched. Other four-legged marchers included a long-haired white dog that appeared not to mind the marching but barked furiously any time the procession stopped, and a donkey draped in red, a study in patience.

A group of “flower children” who had been cavorting with guitars for the first two days of the march completed the route in tandem with a contingent from Bank Leumi, of all groups. A boy with a guitar walked out in front of the bank unit while girls in blouses with flower prints kept in step on each flank, the youths assuming bankclerk dignity.

25 YEARS AGO

April 11, 1993

Investigators from the San Francisco police and district attorney’s office were sifting through hundreds of documents seized in extensive searches of Anti-Defamation League offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The investigators sought evidence that the ADL had been using illegally obtained law-enforcement information in a nationwide intelligence network which monitored more than 950 organizations and as many as 12,000 individuals. Simultaneously, the district attorney’s office released voluminous documents alleging that the ADL “spy network” surreptitiously paid off undercover operatives to gather political intelligence in at least seven American cities and infiltrated Arab-American, right-wing and so called “pinko” groups. The alleged ADL intelligence network stood accused of, among other things, maintaining files on Arab American groups and other organizations ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the NAACP, Greenpeace, the United Farm Workers and the Jewish Defense League.

15 YEARS AGO

April 11, 2003

Leaders of various Palestinian groups said they would escalate the fight against Israel following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The threats came as many Palestinians continued to express deep disappointment at the defeat of the Iraqi army, saying they still didn’t understand what had gone wrong in Baghdad. In some places, Palestinians were seen removing posters of Saddam Hussein from the streets and public buildings. In Ramallah, a shopkeeper wept as he spat on a colorful photograph of the deposed Iraqi president. Saddam had long styled himself the patron of the Palestinians. During the first Gulf War in 1991, he fired 39 Scud missiles on Israeli cities, and despite crippling UN sanctions on Iraq, he sent a 40-truck convoy with food and medicine to the territories in 2000.Iraq also donated some $30 million to the families of Palestinian suicide terrorists. Bu the spigot had been turned off on the cash flow.