The streets here were filled with song, dances and colorful parades last Wednesday as 30,000 participants in the annual Succoth season march entered the city at the end of their day-long trek over hills and dales–an event sponsored by the army to inculcate love of the land and just plain fun. The march, previously a three-day affair, was reduced to a day for budgetary and security reasons. Among the marchers was a contingent from Finland in their national costumes and a group of “New Zionists” from Japan who sang Israeli songs in flawless Hebrew to rousing applause from the throngs.
Tel Aviv was not to be outdone as tens of thousands of local citizens and visitors lined the beach front last Tuesday spell-bound by the daring of sky-diving paratroopers who descended into the Mediterranean to be picked up by hundreds of flag-bedecked small craft cruising off shore. The occasion was Paratroopers Day, a tribute to battle-hardened airborne infantry who played a major role in every Israeli battle from the 1956 Sinai campaign to the Yom Kippur War. In the evening the paratroopers were feted at a pageant and light show in the Ramat Gan stadium.
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.
