FROM OUR ARCHIVES
50 YEARS AGO
December 5, 1967
Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek informed the Municipal Names Committee of his insistence on retaining the Arab names of all streets in east Jerusalem. The committee had already adopted new names for streets which were located in the former no-man’s-land and on the border.
Tel Aviv’s three major hotels, the Dan, Hilton and Sheraton, were under pressure from the Religious Council to do away with their Friday evening interview programs on the grounds that they desecrated Shabbat. The programs consisted mainly of interviews with personalities in public life and drew crowds of 500 to 800 people. The council denied that any threat had been made to withdraw kashrut certification from the hotels if they refused to cancel the interview evenings. But he indicated that all other pressure would be used to end the programs. The council had not complained about nightclubs and hotel pools open on Saturdays, presumably on the assumption that those services were primarily for tourists.
25 YEARS AGO
December 5, 2002
Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard turned down MK Michael Kleiner’s invitation to run for the Knesset atop the Herut list, after his lawyers advised him a run could harm his chances of obtaining a retrial. Pollard was due to receive a hearing in two months to determine whether he was eligible for a retrial, and his attorneys said running for the Knesset could be interpreted as an attempt to bypass the judicial system. Kleiner, who chaired the Pollard caucus in the Knesset, hoped that giving Pollard the diplomatic immunity of an MK would result in his release. But Kleiner said that, after consulting with Pollard’s attorney, it would be better if Pollard was unaffiliated with any political party and remained part of the national consensus.
Jerusalem entrepreneur Nir Barkat became the first non-politician to announce he was running for mayor, whether or not mayor Ehud Olmert sought a third term in the next year’s vote. “For too long Jerusalem has been on the altar of political struggles and competitions,” said Barkat, who served as the managing director of the BRM Capital Fund. “Jerusalem is being trampled under the feet of political wheeling and dealing, and its residents are the ones who are paying the price.” Little known outside the city’s business and hi-tech community, he said the city needed a “new, good manager who can save the city from fiscal disaster,” adding that he saw Jerusalem “crumbling before my very eyes.” [Though he lost the race to Uri Lupolianski, Barkat served as head of the opposition on the city council until his election as mayor in 2008.]
10 YEARS AGO
December 5, 2007
The entrance to Jerusalem would soon be getting a multimillion-shekel municipal face-lift. Over the previous few weeks, municipal bulldozers were at work at the city’s main entrance, destroying the grounds of the infamous hilltop surrounded by synthetic grass and the word “welcome” in Hebrew. The project, along with a towering 25-meter clock informing motorists of when Shabbat begins and ends each week, was the crux of the city’s NIS 2m. “gardening and lighting project” for the capital’s western entrance. Jerusalem opposition leader Nir Barkat blasted the project as superficial “makeup” that, he said, failed to plaster over the city’s real problems.