The Jerusalem Post

FROM OUR ARCHIVES

- – Daniel Kra

50 YEARS AGO

April 25, 1968

The dots would still alternate with the dashes, but they would represent Hebrew letters, as the Post Office’s marine radio station would start accepting telegrams from Israeli ships in Hebrew Morse code. It was being introduced more for prestige reasons than necessity, as the station received telegrams in Hebrew, though in Latin characters coded into Morse. “But the Egyptian stations take messages in Arabic Morse, the Greeks and the Russians dot and dash in their own scripts and so we felt that after 20 years of statehood the time has come for us to receive Morse messages in Hebrew too,” a Post Office official said. He went on to say that some passengers on Zim ships and crew members of merchant vessels had asked for the service to save them the bother of transcribi­ng their Hebrew messages home in Latin characters.

All Gaza Strip farmers who owned at least one dunam of land were asked to sign up for farming instructio­n. The Agricultur­e Ministry sent out teams of Arab employees to register the farmers. The scheme was part of the ministry’s plan to map out farming in the Strip and to help the Gaza farmers earn a better living.

Jordan instructed its UN ambassador to ask for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to prevent the holding of Israel’s Independen­ce Day parade in Jerusalem on May 2. However, ambassador Muhammad Hussain el-Farra contented himself with filing a letter with the council accusing Israel of following a “Goebbels propaganda pattern” to distract attention from the parade. The Foreign Ministry would neither confirm nor deny a report of a note from UN Secretary-General U Thant alleging the Jerusalem parade to be a violation of the 1949 Armistice Agreement with Jordan.

Rep. Jack McDonald of Michigan told the House of Representa­tives that if South Africa was barred from the Olympics because of its policies toward nonwhites, Russia should be kept out because of its treatment of Jews.

The Health Council reported that health services in the territorie­s were restored to their pre-Six Day War level and in some instances had been improved considerab­ly beyond what they were before the war. Measures included extensive inoculatio­n and vaccinatio­n operations and sanitation measures. Arrangemen­ts were also made to enable patients in the territorie­s to go to Israeli government institutio­ns for special treatment.

10 YEARS AGO

April 25, 2008

The Prime Minister’s Office remained completely mum on whether Israel had told Syria via Turkey that it was willing to withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace, even as Syrian President Bashar Assad confirmed Turkish mediation on the issue.

Prime minister Ehud Olmert was weighing whether to support a new bill that would compensate West Bank settlers who voluntaril­y left their homes. The idea was to get a head start on the evacuation of West Bank settlement­s that would have to be dismantled anyway in a final deal with the Palestinia­ns. Getting settlers to move of their own accord, some politician­s thought, might help Israel avoid the violence and anguish that accompanie­d the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

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