Some 10,000 persons–members and supporters of the Mapam and Communist Parties in Israel–this week-end staged a protest demonstration here against the proposed rearming of Western Germany by the North Atlantic Pact powers.
Israel Bar-Yehuda, Mapam leader and Knesset deputy, told the throng in Mograbi Square that the Government of Israel should express immediately its condemnation of the proposed rearming of the U.S., British and French zones of Germany. Yaacov Riftin, also a Mapam deputy in Parliament, emphasized that thousands of the demonstrators had lost close relatives in Germany during the Nazi reign of terror.
Esther Wilensha, leading Communist, denounced the use of the atom bomb and urged Israelis to prevent the country from becoming “a battlefield for the imperialists.” The rally drew the fire of the Mapai for denouncing the rearmament of Western Germany while disregarding Soviet Russia’s rearmament of East Germany.
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