FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
On May 14, 1950, The Jerusalem Post reported from Cairo that Jordanian foreign minister Mohammed Shureiki Pasha walked out of the Arab League Political Committee which was considering the problem of annexation of Arab Palestine. The entire meeting was devoted to enumerating Jordan’s alleged contraventions of Arab League resolutions. The League was now waiting for a reply from King Abdullah on its memorandum inquiring whether Jordan was prepared to regard itself as merely “the trustee” over Arab Palestine until a solution could be determined.
Israel announced the appointment of Eliahu Elath, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, as the new minister to the Court of St. James in London. His successor as ambassador to the US was not yet named.
In Washington, Democratic representative Anthony Tauriello accused secretary of state Dean Acheson of making a “misleading statement” in reply to the letter from 51 Congressmen on the British arms shipment to the Middle East. In a statement published in the official Congressional Record Tauriello wrote that “there is a conflict between the declared policy of the US relative to peace between Israel and the Arab States and the disproportionally large shipments of arms by England to the Arab States”. He added that the US’s behavior was “cruel to the State of Israel whose very life was being imperiled by this unwarranted delivery of arms to the Arab States by England with the blessing of the US State Department.” Also governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York State declared that Israel “must be armed so that it can defend its frontiers against aggression.” Following his inspection of the two American vessels recently purchased by Egypt, Representative Jacob Javits recommended that the US.State Department observe the ships’ movements to determine whether they were used for naval or commercial purposes.
50 YEARS AGO
On May 14, 1965, The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israel-West German joint communiqué on the establishment of diplomatic relations and the exchange of letters between prime minister Levi Eshkol and chancellor Ludwig Erhard were released for publication in Jerusalem and Bonn.
Egypt and seven Arab countries severed diplomatic relations with West Germany. Bonn announced that the establishment of relations with Israel was directed “against none.”
Damascus Radio stated that Israeli heavy guns and tanks fired on the site of its Jordan River diversion scheme four km. east of the Israel-Syrian border at Bnot Ya’acov Bridge. Syria had lodged a strong protest with the joint Israeli-Syrian Armistice Commission. There were no Israeli casualties, while Syria reported “one wounded and one bulldozer hit in the scene of operations of the Arab project to divert
Jordan River’s tributaries.”
25 YEARS AGO
On May 14, 1990, The Jerusalem Post reported that the Justice Ministry was ready to prosecute 21 banks and bank executives following the previous week’s High Court of Justice ruling that ordered attorney-general Yosef Harish to reconsider his decision to drop the matter.
All 12,000 doctors in the government, Kupat Holim Clalit, and voluntary hospitals and health-fund clinics held a 24-hour “warning strike” to protest the Health and Finance ministries’ plans to lower wages of Clalit doctors to the level of their counterparts in government facilities.
The crisis over housing for new immigrants worsened as sharp conflict emerged in ministerial proposals submitted to the cabinet for building thousands of residential units for an expected 150,000 immigrants that year. The conflict was believed to have already delayed building starts. The opposing plans were submitted by interior minister Arye Deri and the housing and finance ministers, which put forward their scheme in the name of prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who held the finance portfolio in the transition government.
A 41-year-old Jewish man, described by police as an “eccentric,” was arrested following the desecration of two Haifa cemeteries.
– Alexander Zvielli