FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
August 31, 1952
The request by the Arab village of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem for permission to slaughter 10 sheep ahead of the four-day Id el Adha festival was turned down by the Food Control authorities. The authorities reportedly asked that the villagers forgo their regular meat rations for three months if they wanted to slaughter for the feast. Due to Israel’s shortage of foreign currency, it was impossible to distribute the traditional special food ration. That year’s feast, however, coincided with a bountiful harvest which brought prosperity to many Israeli Arabs. Various Muslim groups would distribute cigarettes and sweets among the Arab prisoners in Jaffa, Tel Mond and Beisan prisons, and alms would be given to the poor and needy in memory of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, who Muslims believe was Ishmael and not Isaac.
Meir Zeltin, 22, of Jaffa, admitted to being the person who broke into four synagogues in Tel Aviv, defiling the ark in each one. After an attempt to break into the Great Synagogue on Allenby Street, he was caught by police and confessed after his shoes were found to match footprints left at the other vandalized synagogues. Zeltin reportedly told the police that he was “a Messiah” and that he had entered synagogues “to punish God for not revenging the Jewish blood spilled by the Germans.”
50 YEARS AGO
August 31, 1967
In something of an ironic twist, the body of George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, was cremated after his followers had to look elsewhere when the US Army refused to allow them to inter their commander at a national military cemetery for their refusal to remove their Nazi insignia for the burial ceremony.
American archeologist John Libi, defeated by the elements in his sixth attempt to climb Turkey’s Mount Ararat in search of Noah’s Ark, said he would not make further attempts to scale the mountain. “God has always been good to me, but I figured out that he does not wish men to find Noah’s Ark,” Libi said.
Israeli peace pilot Abie Nathan landed his own plane in Amsterdam to purchase a radio ship which would be called Shalom Group One. He said he would anchor it in the Mediterranean where it would transmit Arabic, Hebrew, English and French radio messages to counter the hostility campaign by Arab stations.
Plans by the military government and the Bank of Israel to change the Egyptian pounds in the hands of the Sinai Beduin were not going as well as expected. The local military governor told reporters that the Beduin were still uncertain whether Israelis were there to stay and were wary of committing themselves.
25 YEARS AGO
August 31, 1992 Observer
A London report that Israel was threatening to drop a neutron bomb on Iraq if attacked was “nonsense,” according to former science minister Yuval Ne’eman. Ne’eman, an internationally recognized expert in nuclear physics, said that Israel had never announced any nuclear weapons development program, adding that speculation about Israel’s nuclear capability was hardly new. Ne’eman added that British papers tended to relate to Israel’s security problems in the same manner as they related to the reports of adultery in the royal palace – with a stress on the sensational. – Daniel Kra