FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
April 26, 1953
The entire Samaritan community in Israel, which lived in Jaffa, crossed the Jordan-Israel lines to attend the traditional Samaritan Passover celebrations on Mount Gerizim near Nablus. The group consisted of 82 people, including children, and received Jordanian dinars for their expenses from the Israeli government. In previous years Jordan either refused to allow the crossing altogether or granted permission to a limited number only.
50 YEARS AGO
April 26, 1968
Prime minister Levi Eshkol branded the Polish regime as “an undemocratic, inhumane regime of persecution, which is exploiting the existence of a handful of Jews in their country in order to cover up the failure of a despicable policy of repression.” At the same time, he accused Soviet Russia of a “criminal policy” of supporting “with every political means, by providing modern weapons of aggression, by threats against Israel from those who aspire to war and murder.” Speaking at a Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day assembly, Eshkol declared: “How terrible that precisely the government of Poland, that land whose soil is soaked with the blood of our brethren more than any other land, has been swept along in the wave of recrudescent hatred.” He accused the Polish deputy minister of culture of “cynicism” when the latter said a week earlier, in a Warsaw Ghetto memorial meeting, that the Polish people had defended the Jews in the time of the Nazis while the rest of the Jewish people had abandoned their brethren.
Eleven east Jerusalem women were detained as 150 women marchers resisted police efforts to disperse an unlicensed demonstration called against holding the Independence Day Parade in the capital. Alerted only at the last minute, the police had to use force – pushing and slapping – before the women abandoned their planned march. Following their detention, each woman was personally driven home by the police.
Citing an upset in the balance of power in the Middle East and increased arms shipments to the Arabs, a group of US congressmen introduced a bill authorizing the US to supply Israel with Phantom jets. Meanwhile, Israeli hopes for the early lifting of the French embargo on the supply of Mirage planes were voiced by foreign minister Abba Eban at a meeting with the French ambassador.
Self-styled “Peace Pilot” Abie Nathan told the Tel Aviv District Court that he had “come to the conclusion that peace, which concerns every citizen, could not be left only to official bodies but also calls for private, individual initiative.” On trial for twice flying to Egypt in unsuccessful bids to see president Gamal Abdul Nasser, Nathan said in his defense brief that although he knew of no sure formula for achieving peace, he was “proud of having made some efforts to advance peace.” The Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office demanded that Nathan be found guilty under a section of the Prevention of Infiltration Law which provided a maximum sentence of four years’ imprisonment. Nathan’s lawyer pointed out that Nathan ran in the 1965 Knesset election on his one-man “Peace” ticket, whose platform expressly stated his intention to fly to Egypt. His ticket was never disqualified.