A terrorist scare at a school-in Kfar Shalem, a suburb of Tel Aviv, touched off a panic there this afternoon and forced Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to travel to Ben Gurion Airport by helicopter instead of by car as planned.
The terrorist alarm was sounded when children in Kfar Shalem claimed they saw armed men enter a local school building. The report spread like wildfire as fearful parents rushed to schools and kindergartens to bring their children home. Police and border patrol units converged on the area. They found no terrorists but the local population was in turmoil and it took several hours to calm them down. An investigating committee was set up immediately to find out how the terrorist rumor originated and how teachers and principals reacted.
Kissinger, who was about to fly to Ankara to tackle the Greek-Turkish crisis over Cyprus in the midst of his current Israeli-Egyptian negotiations, had planned to drive to the airport with Foreign Minister Yigal Allon. Israeli security authorities decided to take no chances lest the terrorist alarm south of Tel Aviv proved to be the real thing. An army helicopter was summoned and Kissinger and his party, accompanied by Allon, left Jerusalem by air. (See separate story about Kissinger.)
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.
