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Wilner, Israel Communist Leader, Attacked by Critic of Pro-soviet Line

October 17, 1967
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Meir Wilner, Communist M.K. and head of Israel’s New Communist Party, was stabbed in the back near his home here last night. His assailant, who did not resist arrest, was identified as 47-year-old Abraham Ben Moshe, a Russian-born Israeli who said he had spent two years in a Soviet prison in Siberia because of his Zionist sympathies.

Wilner, who was hospitalized but out of danger, was attacked from behind as he left his home accompanied by his wife who grabbed the unresisting attacker. A taxi took them to the police station where Wilner received first aid and Ben Moshe was questioned.

He gave as his reason for the assault, Wilner’s parroting of Soviet anti-Israel propaganda which he read in the press. “I didn’t intend to kill him but I wanted to teach him a lesson” Ben Moshe told police.

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