FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
On July 19, 1951, The Jerusalem Post reported that the Suez Canal blockade, negotiations for a US grant-inaid, and the Hula situation were among topics covered by foreign minister Moshe Sharett at the cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. No details of the report were revealed. The cabinet empowered the finance minister to make the necessary arrangements for the establishment of a state antibiotics factory. At present Israel was spending about $1 million yearly for these drugs.
Agriculture minister Pinhas Lavon told the cabinet that he initially knew nothing about his inclusion in a group of government officials who had obtained land for housing from the Custodian of Abandoned Property. Lavon said that he had been registered without his knowledge by his brother Zelig Lavon, who had later withdrawn his membership.
Israel’s four kadis decided, at their annual Jerusalem conference, that Israeli Arab women whose husbands were abroad and unable to return would be able to remarry if they wished to press divorce proceedings.
Somewhere in Israel, the first Nahal contingent to end its year of service in that corps met before passing on to further service in different formations. The contingent was addressed by prime minister Ben-Gurion and the chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Yigael Yadin.
50 YEARS AGO
On July 19, 1966, The Jerusalem Post reported that Syria had submitted a complaint to the UN Security Council over the latest Israeli air raid. But the note did not ask for any action by the Security Council on the matter. In Jerusalem, Gen. Odd Bull, UNTSO Chief of Staff, was expected to meet with Foreign Ministry officials following his visit to Damascus over the previous week’s violence on the Syrian border.
President Zalman Shazar arrived in Brasilia, accompanied by his wife and a six-member official party. The president and his party were met by Brazilian prresident Humberto Castello Branco and his daughter, Antonieta Castello Branco Diniz, who filled in as an official hostess for her widowed father.
A labor dispute with a small group of operators at Ashdod power station had been causing sporadic electricity cuts in all parts of the country. They acted without the backing of the Ashdod Labor Council and the Histadrut. The Electric Corporation management negotiated with the national staff council the terms of a new agreement. Asked whether the operators could be prosecuted for criminal sabotage and willful damage to public property, the spokesman for the Electric Corporation refused to answer.
25 YEARS AGO
On July19, 1991, The Jerusalem Post reported that the US and Syria agreed on the terms for holding a Middle East peace conference and thereby put the burden on Israel to make up its mind. The announcement was made after US secretary of state James Baker met with Syrian president Hafez Assad.
Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Judge Ezra Kama ruled that there was insufficient evidence to press criminal charges against any of the policemen or border policemen involved in the October 1990 Temple Mount riots, but several of them had been guilty of irregular behavior. Police minister Ronni Milo issued a statement saying the police felt “satisfaction” over the contents of the 54-page report issued by Kama, who headed the inquest into the incident in which 17 Arabs involved in the riot were killed and more than 100 wounded.
– Alexander Zvielli