“It was murder for the sake of murder.” This was how Premier Golda Meir described the carnage in Kiryat Shemona. “The people who committed this latest crime have done it out of a mere desire to murder and not of any lofty ideas of liberation,” she declared as she reported the tragic events to the Knesset which was packed with legislators, guests and reporters. “This is not liberation but plain and calculated murder of innocent children, women, men and soldiers. It is our obligation to do everything in our power to protect the lives of our people in Kiryat Shemona and everywhere else, and this we shall do.”
Mrs. Meir warned Lebanon that Israel held her and her citizens responsible for the aid given to the terrorists who committed today’s atrocity. She added that the Jewish people have suffered a great deal “but we are here, in a Jewish independent State which knows how to defend herself and her citizens.” After she concluded her statement the Knesset members and those in the audience rose for a moment of silence in memory of the Kiryat Shemona victims.
Foreign Minister Abba Eban, in a statement issued here tonight, declared: “It is already plain that an immense brutality has been perpetrated in violation of every law of civilization and humanity. Every civilized man and woman in the world must be asking to what length this peril will go. The lesson must be an implacable resistance to the terrorists and an end to the deplorable indulgence with which these organizations have been surrounded in many places.”
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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.
