November 5, 2004
100 YEARS AGO
• We are pleased to report that the strikes in progress at Kaplan and Markovitzs and Meyer and Shifrims sweatshops are going well. The bosses have had two strikers arrested in a failed attempt to break the rest of them. It is clear that eventually the bosses will have to settle with the courageous strikers. The bosses of the shops put advertisements for new workers in Kasriel Sarasohn’s scab-ridden newspaper, the Tageblat, but then the Union went to Sarasohn and demanded that he remove them. Many of the workers know about this strike, and even the child-workers are refusing to scab.
75 YEARS AGO
• As investigations continue into who bears responsibility for the recent pogroms in Palestine, a letter, written by the grand mufti, Haji Amin al-Husseini, has come to light in which he plainly called on the Arabs of Nablus to come to Jerusalem to attack the Jews. In addition, an Arab policeman, one Sergeant Subhi, wrote down some of the discourse that took place in the Mosque of Omar on the first day of attacks on Jews.
“The Jews are attempting to take over the Temple Mount,” Sheikh Hassan said. “If no one else will stand in their way, we will protect your rights.” Those assembled in the mosque responded with cries of “Down with the Jews! Down with the Balfour Declaration!”
An Arab from the town of Lifta said, “We must kill the Jews today and annihilate anyone that stands in our way!”
Sergeant Subhi also reported that communists handed out flyers in Arabic and Hebrew in the Mosque of Omar just before the attacks took place.
Interestingly, despite the previously mentioned letter he wrote to the Arabs of Nablus, Sergeant Subhi reported that the grand mufti tried to calm the Arabs that day in the mosque and warned them not to attack the Jews.
50 YEARS AGO
• The United Nations Security Council was forced to suspend debate after the Egyptian delegate, Dr. Mahmud Azmi, suffered a heart attack during his speech. Azmi was in the middle of assailing Israel when he reached for a glass of water and suddenly collapsed. Ironically, the only medical doctor at the meeting was a member of the Israeli delegation to the Security Council, Dr. Moshe Tov, who gave Azmi first aid on the spot. Azmi, who suffered from diabetes and a weak heart, never regained consciousness and died later in the hospital. Although the meeting was halted, debate continued later that night on the Bat Galim incident, in which the Egyptian navy captured an Israeli ship of the same name.
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