Students, gradeschoolers scouts and members of leftwing political parties protested today outside the U.S. Embassy here and the American Consulate in Jerusalem, while rightwing members of the Betar youth movement held a protest demonstration outside the West German Embassy in Tel Aviv last night. All the demonstrations expressed opposition to President Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg cemetery today.
Among those demonstrating outside the German Embassy last night was Deputy Foreign Minister Ronnie Milo, who said in a television interview today that his action was “unusual and unprecedented.” But he said he thought the special circumstances of the President’s wreath-laying at a cemetery in which SS men were buried warranted his action.
Mapam’s political secretary, Knesset member Victor Shemtov, who headed the Mapam demonstration in Tel Aviv, handed in a letter to the U.S. Embassy, for transmission to Reagan, expressing regrets that he had given way to German pressure to go through with the visit.
“We are protesting that the U.S. President at one and the same time lays a wreath at the memorial to the victims of the Nazis, and also at the graves of their murderers,” Shemtov said later.
“We cannot agree to this balance. I would prefer that Reagan not visit Bergen-Belsen.”
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