Foreign Minister Abba Eban said-today that there was no justification in re-opening the Arlosoroff murder investigation although the affair might be reviewed in the context of history. Eban was referring to the murder 40 years ago of the Zionist labor leader, Haim Arlosoroff in Tel Aviv. The case has never been solved but interest in it has been revived recently as has some of the inter-party strife it engendered.
Two members of the Zionist Revisionist movement were tried for the crime and acquitted. The failure to bring anyone to Justice left a pall of suspicion that clouded Jewish politics in Palestine for years afterwards.
Members of Herut, the ideological successors of the Revisionist movement, are seeking to reopen the case. Herut leader Menachem Beigin made a formal request for a judicial inquiry eight years ago which the Knesset rejected. It was revived last month on the 40th anniversary of the murder.
Eban said there was historical value in reviewing the case. He said one question that might be raised was why internal conflicts among rival political groups reached such a high pitch of hatred that some groups described Dr. Chaim Weizmann as Flavius’s brother and the Jewish Agency as the Jewish Wakf (the Moslem institute). Arlosoroff, who was 34 when he was killed, headed the political department of the Jewish Agency and was one of the leading figures of the Mapai faction, forerunner of Israel’s Labor Party.
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