The Mapam Party today demanded that the Paris newspaper Le Monde retract a statement attributed to Israel’s Minister of Health, Israel Barzilai, who was quoted assaying that two fellow members of the Cabinet, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Labor Minister Yigal Allon, were “expansionists.” Mapam, of which Mr. Barzilai is a member, said that the Le Monde correspondent had drawn erroneous conclusions from a statement by the Health Minister that he opposed those circles who refused to countenance by any withdrawal by Israel from territory occupied in the June war.
The dispatch, which construed this as an attack on Dayan and Allon by one of their colleagues was featured on page one of Le Monde, a newspaper known to reflect Gaullist views. It drew considerable comment from political and diplomatic circles in the French capital, some of whom saw in it a confirmation of at least part of the charges leveled against Israel by President de Gaulle at his press conference of Nov. 27.
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