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Protests Continue to Mount Against Arab Terrorist Attack on El Al Airline

February 16, 1970
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Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was at Lydda Airport last night to greet his son, Assaf, who narrowly escaped injury when Arab terrorists attacked a bus load of El Al passengers at Munich Airport last Tuesday. The 24 year-old film actor arrived here from London. All he would say when asked to describe the attack was. “I’m glad its over.” (The terrorist assault which took the life of one passenger and wounded 23 others drew world-wide expressions of shock and outrage. At Cambridge, Mass, 520 students and faculty members at Harvard University signed a letter yesterday declaring that they were “provoked and repelled by the murder and maiming of civilians” by Arab terrorists. According to a Harvard instructor, Steve Cohen, copies of the letter were sent to United Nations Secretary U Thant, the U.S. State Department, the West German Embassy in Washington and the International Air Transport Association. The letter stated that “the assassination of defenseless civilians in international airports is an act of war against all humanity and it deserves universal condemnation.”)

(In Washington Thursday, acting Secretary of State Elliot L. Richardson declared that the United States cannot “disregard the tragic loss of live and injury to civilians resulting from renewed attacks by terrorists against civilian passengers travelling on international air transport far from the area of conflict.” Mr. Richardson’s statement on Munich was coupled with one deploring the Israeli bombing of a civilian metal works factory in Egypt with a heavy loss of life last Wednesday.)

(In Boon Friday leaders of the Christian Democratic Union, the chief opposition party, said they planned to ask Chancellor Willy Brandt in the Bundestag what representations his government has made to the Arab states to prevent the recurrence of such attacks. Jewish students in Munich organized a protest march Friday.)

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