The New York Times · New York, New York · 8 February 1979

CP-1979-028

Israel Denies Torture of Arabs

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, Feb. 7 — The Israeli Government emphatically denied today that Arab political prisoners were being tortured in Jerusalem or in the West Bank. In a broadcast tonight, Justice Minister Shmuel Tamir invited international jurists and representatives of “fair and neutral countries” to see for themselves.

The Minister said that the International Red Cross was in constant touch with Israeli authorities and had access to administrative detainees here but that Amnesty International had not yet been invited to inspect conditions here.

He also said that United States Congressional committees, American judges, lawyers and “people of standing” would be welcome if they wanted to study prison conditions here. The American Consulate General here has been embroiled in controversy on earlier occasions because his jurisdiction covers East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Israeli politicians, officials and newspapers have accused the Consulate at times of pro-Arab bias and meddling in domestic Israeli affairs. The United States Consulate General here is in touch with United States citizens of Arab extraction who live in the occupied territories, and occasionally is in contact with mayors of West Bank towns and other local dignitaries.

“We are urging Arab notables to take part actively in the peace process in the spirit of Camp David,” an American official said.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead or date line, so its date and newspaper rest on the record it arrived with, not on anything visible in the scan.

Context added by this archive

Date check: No masthead or folio line on this clipping — it is a trimmed single column. Below the headline stands the credit line “Special to The New York Times”, which agrees with `pub`; at the foot, below a rule, runs the Times’s standing house line “DO NOT FORGET THE NEEDIEST!”, which is also characteristic of the paper.

The dateline reads “JERUSALEM, Feb. 7”, consistent with publication on 1979-02-08, but no year appears on the scan. Printed the day after a Honolulu paper published the State Department cable concluding that torture may be a widespread and even common practice. Both are in this archive, one day apart.

Cite this clipping

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