Pages

Sunday, November 11, 2007

November 11, 1947: State Dept. hedges on partition

As we continue to go through the Palestine Post archives from sixty years ago, there were four notable article on the front page that once again seem to come from today's headlines.

Firstly, the US State Department, even then tilting towards the Arab viewpoint, was showing more public resistance to the idea of partition:


I mentioned that at that time there was a terrible cholera epidemic in Egypt (and it was now starting to spread through the rest of the Middle East.) Even so, Egypt has refused to accept help from Hebrew University in the early stages of the epidemic. The Times of London noticed that Egypt instead waited to get vaccines from the Haffkine Institute in Bombay, and it mentioned a fact that the Egyptians probably didn't realize: Dr. Haffikine was a Jewish Zionist.

Meanwhile, the Post made fun of Egyptians and their Zion-phobia:


And yet another Muslim country pledged to help Arab Palestine by killing all the Jews - this time, Iraq:

The deja vu continues...