FROM OUR ARCHIVES

65 YEARS AGO

At a Mapai-sponsered public meeting, foreign minister Moshe Sharett said that the problem of immigration of American Jews could not be ignored by the state. American Jews didn’t need negative reasons to come to Israel, Sharett stressed, for they lived in a country where complete freedom and a high degree of prosperity prevailed; if they came, they would do so in order to share in the great creative work being done here. Settlement here of Western Jews would necessitate an individual approach to the new immigrant unlike the former “bulk approach” to immigration. Each American needed to feel welcome here and special attention needed to be paid to the problem of housing.

Two Arab boys were severely injured in the Beersheba area in a clash with a group of five marauders from Egypt. The boys were found lying In pools of blood and were brought to the local Hadassah hospital, where they told the police that the Arabs who shot at them were of their own tribe. They claimed that they were shot because of a long-standing blood feud.

50 YEARS AGO

The remains of 48 defenders of the Old City of Jerusalem, who fell in the War of Independence and were buried within the Jewish Quarter, were interred on the Mount of Olives. They were buried in a communal grave with full military honors. Army chaplains located the provisional burial site in the Jewish Quarter with the help of surviving defenders and photographs taken at the time. The Jordanians had built over the spot and used it as a garbage dump. A pathologist had to check all the remains before they were reinterred to see they did not include animal bones from the dump.

Israelis won 57 individual medals, as well as the world basketball title, at the Paraplegic Olympics in England. Among the winning events were relay swimming field events and table tennis. The next Paraplegic Olympics would take place in Israel in the summer of 1968.

25 YEARS AGO

The IDF began drafting the first classes of the August induction, the largest ever in the army’s history. Among the first draftees were dozens of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, many of whom expressed interest in professional units which would provide them with a profession later in life. For the first time, the IDF would actually turn down perfectly qualified draftees wishing to volunteer for combat units. This was also the first induction in which the army rejected in advance many potential draftees, after it set new criteria and formulated higher qualification requirements, some of which attracted public criticism for denying Israeli youths their “ticket to society.”

Municipal services in Druse village throughout the country were shut down as local council heads and hundreds of workers staged a mass demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. The protestors demanded the government honor commitments made by the former Likud-led coalition to give the Druse councils special development budgets, to bring the level of services in the village in line with those of similarly-sized Jewish settlements.