FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
April 16, 1953
Apprehensive of failing their finals in English, highschool students throughout the country began crusading to lower the standard of the examination. Their teachers, with the exception of the English teachers, supported them. Teachers said that some 25% of the students failed in English, causing endless difficulties for them and their schools. Many foreign observers considered the standard of knowledge of English required in Israel to be too high. The study of English classics or the meticulous study of the involved grammar was considered to be “too much of a good thing.”
25 YEARS AGO
April 16, 1993
Housing minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that radical elements in the territories were trying to prevent Palestinians from working in Israel. He told construction industry leaders that over the previous few days those elements had begun threatening the lives of those workers who had been issued permits to work in Israel. Ben-Eliezer confirmed that the vast majority of the estimated 70,000 Palestinians working in construction before the closure were illegal laborers, whose employers both underpaid them and did not pay the required taxes and social benefits. He urged the contractors to join the Housing and Labor ministries in helping recruit and train thousands of Israelis to work in the building trades. He stressed that the process begun with the closure of the territories was “irreversible.” The pattern of employing unorganized Arabs from the territories which had developed over the previous 25 years was over and done with. Ben-Eliezer also said he would consider the contractors’ request to bring in a few thousand foreign workers. Finance minister Avraham Shohat, however, objected to bringing in foreign workers while 150,000 Israelis were unemployed.
10 YEARS AGO
April 16, 2008
A group of 100 former US officials, Jewish activists and academics launched a new lobby and Political Action Committee to push a “pro-Israel, pro-peace agenda in Washington, charging that the major Israel-oriented lobbies were out of step with American Jews. Organizers said that the effort, called J Street, would provide money in political races and lobby for policies that sought a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that pressed for active diplomatic American engagement in the region and that downgraded the role of military confrontation. “For too long, the loudest ‘pro-Israel’ voices in this country have been those on the far right,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, a former Clinton White House official who was the PAC’s executive director. “The term ‘pro-Israel’ has been hijacked by those who hold views that a majority of Americans – that Jews and non-Jews alike – oppose, whether supporting the war in Iraq, beating the drums for war with Iran or putting obstacles in the path to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The PAC, whose name is a play on “K Street,” a term used to refer to Washington’s locus of lobbying firms, also had a list of Israeli supporters who included Dalia Rabin (the daughter of Yitzhak Rabin), and former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg. There was still a question of how much influence J Street would have. The group was reported to have had an annual budget of $1.5 million, a small share of the approximately $50 million that AIPAC spent each year.