FROM OUR ARCHIVES
50 YEARS AGO
April 29, 1968
Demonstrations in most major American cities against the Vietnam War and racism finished with at least 160 individuals arrested in New York and a violent clash with police in Chicago. In New York City, the biggest rally of the day saw about 100,000 gathered in Central Park to hear a speech by Coretta King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had planned to speak there. The coordinated anti-war demonstrations throughout the country were timed to coincide with “Loyalty Day” parades being held in support for the Vietnam War, and outnumbered them nearly everywhere.
According to informed military observers in Israel, the bolstering of the Arab arsenal to its pre-Six Day War strength was virtually completed and the armies lined up against Israel appeared to be, at least numerically and as far as their equipment was concerned, back to their old strength. The Russians also appeared to have gained de facto naval bases in Syria and Egypt as well as in Somalia and Yemen and had a definite and permanent naval presence in this part of the world.
The transmitters that would be used in Israel’s first live television broadcast, of the Independence Day parade, became fully operational. Eighty percent of the population would be able to see the broadcast, with Beersheba southwards being out of range.
25 YEARS AGO
April 29, 1993
Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was expected to approve the Housing and Labor ministries’ recommendation to permit the import of thousands of foreign workers, to save the construction industry from collapse. Sources said the number of foreign workers would be between 10,000 and 15,000. Meanwhile, only a few of the 5,000 Palestinian workers who received permits to cross the Green Line to work in construction showed up. Contractors said the majority of the workers were being threatened by radical elements and could not arrive. Some contractors reported that Jewish workers, fearing for their security, were refusing to work on construction sites where Palestinians were employed. On the other hand, Palestinian workers, who feared losing their jobs to Jewish workers, had been known to sabotage the work done by Jewish laborers. One contractor said that after a group of Israeli workers completed a few days’ work of tiling a building’s floors, the Palestinian workers next door took a drill and drilled around the building until all the laid tiles fell out.
10 YEARS AGO
April 29, 2008
The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, better known as the Claims Conference, sent a letter to YES and Reshet TV stations, demanding that a documentary critiquing the organization not be shown. The film, The Morality of Payments – The Battle Continues, accused the conference’s leadership of self-dealing and withholding funds from elderly, sick Holocaust survivors in order to ensure its own existence after those survivors died. Many of the film’s accusations had been raised before. Among them was the charge that the conference paid overly high salaries to a small group of senior staff, with the conference’s director earning over $400,000 after benefits.