FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
On November 13, 1951, The Jerusalem Post quoted a New York Times report from Paris, which claimed that the UN Palestine Conciliation Commission was preparing to concede defeat and would hand the Palestine problem back to the UN General Assembly. A whole series of PCC conferences had failed to bring Jews and Arabs together.
About 350 sailors signed off eight Israeli ships in the Haifa and Tel Aviv ports in accordance with a decision taken at a seamen’s conference. The crew of the s.s. Eilat walked off the ship, leaving it moored at the main breakwater with its boilers cold, but otherwise ready to sail. Neither the sailors nor the Histadrut had so far made any move to end the strike.
The Middle East Command, sponsored by the US, Britain, France and Turkey (SACME) established its headquarters in Cyprus. Egypt told the Arab states that it had intercepted a SACME note worded as to imply that Israel would receive as many arms from SACME as all Arab states together.
In Israel, foreign minister Abba Eban warned the Western powers against arming Arab nations to defend the Middle East. He disclosed Israel’s objections to SACME, stating “it is obvious that democracy cannot be defended by states which cherish no democratic ideal within their frontiers.”
50 YEARS AGO
On November 13, 1966, The Jerusalem Post reported that three soldiers were killed and six wounded, one seriously, when their command car ran over a mine on a patrol path near the Jordanian border, 11 km. north of Arad, early in the morning. Tracks of two men led to the Jordanian border. The force of the explosion threw the vehicle 10 meters. The cabinet dealt with this incident later in the day. “Sabotage and mining of border areas must not go unpunished,” Israel Galili, minister in charge of information, declared in Tel Aviv. “Punitive measures must be taken lest the situation deteriorate,” he said. Galili recalled the words of prime minister Levi Eshkol that Israel did not seek war, but could not remain idle in the face of provocations.
Syrian positions in the Korazim and Bnot Ya’acov Bridge [held by Syria until 1967], opened machinegun and anti-aircraft guns fire on an Israeli plane, flying within Israeli territory. The plane was not hit.
Syria and Egypt set up a team for military and economic coordination.
25 YEARS AGO
On November 13, 1991, The Jerusalem Post reported that US president George H.W. Bush would meet with Jewish leaders in New York, amid speculation whether he would begin negotiations over the terms for approving a $10 billion immigrant absorption loan guarantee for Israel. The discussion, however, was widely expected on the president’s agenda for the meeting, which the White House was referring to simply as “a roundtable discussion with Jewish leadership.”
The government was in trouble, as the vote on the first reading of the 1992 budget bill was again postponed, following a no-holds-barred ruckus between the National Religious Party and the three haredi parties over special allocations for religious institutions that had put a question mark on the stability of the coalition.
A list of Paris Jews, said to have been used in the arrest of tens of thousands of French citizens during the Second World War, had been found by Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld in a government ministry.
In Tel Aviv, South African president F.W. de Klerk cautioned journalists to stay away from drawing parallels between problems facing his country and Israel.