FROM OUR ARCHIVES

65 YEARS AGO

On August 10, 1951, The Jerusalem Post reported that president Chaim Weizmann began a series of talks with leaders of the Knesset parties towards the formation of a new government. He received Zalman Shazar and Levi Eshkol, of Mapai at 11 o’clock, and Peretz Bernstein and Israel Rokach of the General Zionists at noon. According to the Central Election Committee 77 per cent of the electorate voted for the Second Knesset.

Maj.-Gen. Mordechai Makleff, deputy chief of staff, announced the beginning of large-scale autumn exercises. The IDF had taken serious note of the Egyptian declaration that it still considered itself to be at war with Israel, chief of staff Lt.Gen. Yigael Yadin told newsmen at an army base in Sarafand.

Britain had won US and French backing for a Middle Eastern defense system tied to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which included all Arab countries and Israel.

The delegations of Turkey, Brazil, Yugoslavia and Ecuador opened informal talks with Egyptian representatives in the hope of arriving at a compromise formula on the opening of the Suez Canal for Israeli shipping.

The conference of the World Confederation of World Zionists, after a noisy session in Jerusalem on the question of representation at the Zionist Congress, split into two separate meetings of the two contending parties: General Zionists and Progressives.

50 YEARS AGO

On August 10, 1966, The Jerusalem Post reported that according to observers in Jerusalem, the establishment of peace between Indonesia and Malaysia could have a beneficial influence on their relations with Israel. But any change was expected to take a lot of time as both countries concentrated on their internal affairs and consolidation.

Suez port authorities reaffirmed an order impounding a cargo of used trucks and excavating equipment shipped for Israel aboard the Dutch freighter Cornelius Vandecoot. The $100,000 shipment, addressed to the Swiss-Israel Trade Bank of Geneva, was currently being unloaded.

The Post’s editorial said that while talks within the government coalition continued in an attempt to work out a joint economic policy, the public was beginning to examine various proposals. Obviously, the support for a total wage freeze was growing, as it was increasingly realized that any further escalation of labor costs must bring in its wake progressive difficulties for the export industries on which the prospects hinged for absorbing the thousands left unemployed in the slump in the building trade, and to reduce the threatening gap in our foreign payments balance. Therefore, this newspaper opted for a wage freeze and advised that the government should not bow to doctrinaire pressure at the expense of sheer common sense and necessity.

10 YEARS AGO

On August 10, 2006, The Jerusalem Post reported that the IDF had suffered 15 fatalities, its heaviest toll to date in the war with Hezbollah, as tens of thousands of troops amassed along the northern border in preparation for the largest and deepest ground incursion in Lebanon since the beginning of Operation Change Direction. At least 190 rockets landed in northern Israel. An officer, a member of the General Staff, said that it would take four or six additional weeks to clear south Lebanon of Hezbollah and thousands of Katyusha rockets.

The Foreign Ministry was under pressure from Israeli citizens to resume its boycott of the BBC and to withdraw credentials from its reporters due to the “one-sided” reports on the war in Lebanon.

– Alexander Zvielli