The body of Col, Yosef Alon, who was murdered Sunday at his home in Washington, where he had been an Air Attache of the Israel Embassy, was returned today to Israel by a U.S. Air Force jet. Four Israeli Mirage jets escorted the’ American plane to Lod Airport.
Awaiting the plane at the airport were Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Chief of Staff Gen. David Elazar, Air Force Commander Gen. Benjamin Peled, former Commander Ezer Weizmann, Yitzhak Rabin, former ambassador to the United States, and a large group of American Embassy officials When Mrs Alon and her three daughters alighted from the plane, accompanied by a U.S. Air Force colonel, Gen Dayan and the other Israeli military leaders hurried to the plane and helped lead them to the black-covered command car to which the coffin was brought by six soldiers. Six Cadet pilots also stood by the coffin as the army cantor recited El Mole Rachamim and a relative recited the prayer for the dead.
FUNERAL RITES TODAY
Officials said funeral services had been postponed until tomorrow in the hope that efforts would succeed to find Col. Alon’s only brother, a sole survivor of the family in the Nazi Holocaust, so that he could be present at the rites
Speaking to newsmen at the airport, Gen. Dayan, in an apparent belief that Arab terrorists were responsible for Alon’s murder, said that “the only way” to do what should be done is to hit the terrorists–not the members of the diplomatic missions in other countries–but the terrorists themselves. (In Washington, police officials and the Israel Embassy indicated today no evidence had yet been found to indicate either the identity or the motives of the killer.)
Gen. Dayan said also that the terrorists should be hit in their bases and camps “and everywhere they can be found. We have done that, and we shall go on doing this. We hope that the governments will do everything, not only after a murder is committed, to prevent it by various means.” He suggested one of these means would be action to prevent members of terrorist groups from moving about freely.
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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.
