The Israeli Government today accused the United Nations truce commission of bias in reporting truce breaches and of attempting to show the world that the Jews are equally guilty with the Arabs in disregarding the truce.
An Israeli Foreign Office spokesman charged the mission with “a very decided tendency to minimize the gravity of Arab breaches and exaggerate Jewish breaches of the truce.” The U.N. mission, he added, delays reports on grave Arab violations so as to be able to couple their release with charges of Jewish breaches, thus striking a balance which “tends to be weighted on the side of the Arabs and against the Jews.”
The observers working with U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, the spokesman said, seek to find Justification for the Arabs in each breach, as in blaming irregulars for the Gaza murder of two French observers, even though the mediator had announced that each side would be held responsible for the actions of its irregulars.
It was also charged that observers tend to accept at face value the statements of Arabs in laying violations at the Jewish door while the Jewish version is frequently not sought and the Jews are accused without an opportunity to offer refutation. Israeli authorities have long been angered by the mission’s failure to observe adequately on the Arab side and to control Arab troop and supply movements.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
