Ambassador Yosef Tekoah sent a letter Thursday night to Secretary General Kurt Waldheim declaring that Israel held Lebanon responsible for allowing Arab killers to murder 18 residents of Kiryat Shemona. Tekoah declared that the “government of Lebanon bears full responsibility for this situation which permits terror attacks to be initiated and carried out from its territory against Israel.”
But he told newsmen Israel did not intend to ask a meeting of the Security Council where the Soviet Union and China could veto any action helpful to Israel. Tekoah said in the letter, that Arab terror organizations had freedom of movement and operation in Lebanon where, he said, they maintained their headquarters and training centers and published newspapers and issued communiques. He stated that members of the same gang ambushed a school bus on May 22, 1970 near the Lebanese border in the Avivim area in which seven children. two teachers and the bus driver were killed and 23 children wounded.
Tekoah said “the savage carnage at Kiryat Shemona” was a demonstration of “the fundamental truth about Israel’s struggle which remains a struggle for the right to life of Jewish men, women and children and of the people of Israel as a whole.” Tekoah stated that the terrorist carnage Thursday morning was of the same horrendous nature” as the Lod Airport massacre on May 30, 1972, in which 26 people were killed “by agents of an Arab terrorist organization,” the murder of 11 Israeli athletes during the Olympic Games in Munich on Sept. 5. 1972, “and the sanguinary attacks against civil aircraft and their passengers.”
GOVERNMENTS ARE CALLOUSLY INDULGENT
The Israeli diplomat assailed governments that “have displayed an attitude of callous Indulgence toward the Arab terrorist organizations, all of which are affiliated with the so-called Palestine Liberation Organization.” The release of most of the terrorists detained by various countries after murderous attacks against innocent civilians, the permission granted to the PLO to maintain offices in a number of cities outside the Middle East, the invitations given to PLO leaders to participate in international conferences, “the failure of the United Nations to take firm and concrete measures against this scourge, have all encouraged and given succor to these assassins,” Tekoah said.
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.
