FROM OUR ARCHIVES
NOVEMBER 7, 1952
Prime minister David Ben-Gurion cabled his congratulations to Dwight D. Eisenhower on winning the US presidency, “the highest task and responsibility in the world.” “You conducted with courage, wisdom and success the crusade against the most foul and criminal tyranny that ever darkened the annals of mankind,” the cable read. “When I had the privilege of meeting you in Frankfurt after your glorious victory in World War, I was deeply impressed by your profound humanity, by the penetrating insight you showed for the position of the displaced persons, victims of Nazi persecution, and by your sincere desire to help them to the utmost of your ability. I pray that in your new task it will be granted you to fulfill your noblest aspirations, to consolidate the peace of the world, to spread relations of trust and friendship among the nations, and to further the prosperity of your country and all mankind.”
“On the 35th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, I convey the best wishes of my government to your Excellency, to the Soviet Union and to its people,” prime minister Ben-Gurion said in a cable of congratulations to Marshal Joseph Stalin. He went on to say that “in this epic of historic development of our homeland we are profoundly conscious of the part played by the Soviet Union in the defeat of the Nazi enemy, and acknowledge with gratitude its support given to the State of Israel since its inception. May the Soviet peoples progress and flourish, and lasting peace be established in the world,” Ben-Gurion concluded.
NOVEMBER 7, 1967
The Iranian Immigrant Association in Israel held a gala reception and entertainment program in Jerusalem marking the coronation of the shah of Iran and Empress Farah. The program included a film of the royal family and performances of Persian music and dance.
Marc Chagall drank a toast of champagne with three French master weavers in Paris to mark the completion of the first tapestry of the biblical triptych which France was offering to the Knesset in Jerusalem. The 80-year-old Jewish artist snipped off threads hanging from a 27-square-meter work called The Creation which took two and a half years to weave at the famous French national Gobelin tapestry workshops. Weavers worked from a photocopy five times the size of Chagall’s original painting, and used a range of 160 specially dyed threads to reproduce his brilliant reds, oranges, pale blues and lemon greens on their looms.
NOVEMBER 7, 2002
Benjamin Netanyahu returned to the Foreign Ministry for a three-month stint some ministry officials expected would be used more for electioneering than diplomacy. After being confirmed by the Knesset, Netanyahu addressed his staff, saying that he intended to work on two planes: fighting Israel’s battles in the international arena and waging a campaign for the Likud leadership. He told the workers he intended to be in his current post for only 90 days. “If we have learned one thing in the 20th century, it is that it is impossible to tie down a military victory without getting a victory in the political sphere,” he said. – Daniel Kra