While Israel’s Cabinet was in session here today, receiving detailed reports about the weekend’s attacks by Syria and Israel’s air reply to those attacks, funeral services were held for some of Israel’s casualties, while the severely bombed Israel’s settlements in the North were already beginning to rebuild their shattered kibbutzim.
Friday’s heavy fighting of more than two-and-a-half hours, which ended only after the Israeli jets smashed some of the Syrian gun posts and tanks, was continued in the air yesterday. Four Syrian MIG-21 planes had gone up over Israel’s northern border near Lake Tiberias. Israeli Mirage jets drove them away, and one Syrian MIG-21 was reported hit by fire from one of the Israeli planes. In Friday’s Air Force operation against the Syrians, an Israeli defense forces spokesman said, Israel used four different types of planes–Voutours, Mysteres, Supermysteres and Mirages.
The three Israeli dead were George Lazar, whose family had come here from Hungary during the exodus of many Hungarians following the 1956 revolt in that country; Yehuda Porat, whose origin was Persia; and Major Louis Bronstein, whose mother and sister still live in England. Lazar was the fourth member of his family killed; three children of the Lazar family had been murdered by the Nazis during World War II.
Lasar was laid to rest today in the military section of the Haifa cemetery, while Porat’s remains were interred at Petach Tikvah. Funeral services for Bronstein will take place tomorrow, after the arrival of his relatives from England.
Delegations of settlers from Dan and Shear Yashuv, the kibbutzim hardest hit in Friday’s attack, met here today with Deputy Minister of Defense Shimon Peres, who promised that the Government would aid them toward “total rehabilitation” of the settlements.
1-Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent, who visited the stricken settlements early yesterday, when Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s Chief of Staff, were there, reported that he had seen the settlers at Dan and Shear Yashuv already working on repairs. They were removing debris, he said, repairing damages to their electricity plants, and making sure their air-raid shelters were secure for their children, Most of the children, as well as some of the women, had spent all Friday night in the shelters.
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.
