Quick facts about Israel: > Israel has the highest number of companies listed on the U.S. Stock exchange after the US and Canada
> Israel leads the world in the numbers of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000
> Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in the number of trees
> Over the past 25 years agricultural output has increased sevenfold with hardly any increase in the amount of water used
> Many bus stops in busy areas have tzedaka (charity) boxes
> Almost 1/3 of all Israelis are volunteers
Learn more about Israeli innovation and humanitarian aid by watching this week-long FREE stream of new hit PBS film ISRAEL INSIDE and also enter to win a free flight to Israel!Israel Inside: How a Small Nation Makes a Big Difference is a new feature-length documentary that explores the positive characteristics of Israeli society from a humanistic, psychological, and emotional perspective.
The film is hosted by Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, who gave up the unique distinction of being Harvard University’s most popular lecturer to return to his native country, Israel. In the film, Ben Shahar explores the core character strengths – called “actualizers” – that enable Israelis to succeed against incredible odds. Through Tal’s eyes we explore the deep-seated values such as education, family, and responsibility for the world (a Jewish concept known as “tikkun olam”), which directly contribute to Israel’s accomplishments in the economic, technological and humanitarian spheres.
From what I've read the Zionists who emigrated to Israel bought tonnes of land and rejuvenated a region that had been a sh*thole for a long time. That would explain the massive Arab migration there in the early 20th century.
Watch and learn.
The Rothschilds funded the early settlers from Europe to relocate in post-war Palestine and they also funded and armed the terrorist groups, like Irgun, which bombed and terrorised Israel into existence in 1948, a campaign which forced 800,000 Palestinians to leave the land of their birth.
Israel is simply the State of Rothschild and how appropriate that they paid for the construction of the Israeli parliament building, the Knesset, and the Israel Supreme Court. The name Rothschild means Red-shield and it originates with the red shield 'Star of David' symbol (not a Jewish symbol before the Rothschilds) which they displayed on their house in Frankfurt ...
The very flag of Israel tells you who owns it. There are many reasons why the Rothschilds and their allies wanted to hijack Palestine and one was to keep the Middle East in a state of disruption and turmoil from which a global war can eventually be triggered to usher in the New World Order of world government dictatorship.
The creation of Israel is a means not an end and the Rothschilds will be quite happy to leave the Jewish population to their fate if it suits them. After all, they've done it before.
and maybe he believed that i believed those lies !!!!???
This year Israel is celebrating . . . a series of accomplishments that have surely exceeded the expectations of its most visionary founders. It is one of the most powerful small nations in history. . . . [It] has tamed an arid wilderness [and] welcomed 1.25 million immigrants. . . . The Israelis themselves did the fighting, the struggling, the sacrificing in order to perform the greatest feat of all—forging a new society . . . in which pride and confidence have replaced the despair engendered by age-long suffering and persecution.
So Life magazine described Israel on the occasion of its 25th birthday in May 1973. In a 92-page special issue, "The Spirit of Israel," the magazine extolled the Jewish state as enlightened, robustly democratic and hip, a land of "astonishing achievement" that dared "to dream the dream and make that dream come alive."
Life told the story of Israel's birth from the Bible through the Holocaust and the battle for independence. "The Arabs' bloodthirsty threats," the editors wrote, "lend a deadly seriousness to the vow: Never Again." Four pages documented "Arab terr...
This year Israel is celebrating . . . a series of accomplishments that have surely exceeded the expectations of its most visionary founders. It is one of the most powerful small nations in history. . . . [It] has tamed an arid wilderness [and] welcomed 1.25 million immigrants. . . . The Israelis themselves did the fighting, the struggling, the sacrificing in order to perform the greatest feat of all—forging a new society . . . in which pride and confidence have replaced the despair engendered by age-long suffering and persecution.
So Life magazine described Israel on the occasion of its 25th birthday in May 1973. In a 92-page special issue, "The Spirit of Israel," the magazine extolled the Jewish state as enlightened, robustly democratic and hip, a land of "astonishing achievement" that dared "to dream the dream and make that dream come alive."
Life told the story of Israel's birth from the Bible through the Holocaust and the battle for independence. "The Arabs' bloodthirsty threats," the editors wrote, "lend a deadly seriousness to the vow: Never Again." Four pages documented "Arab terrorist attacks" and the three paragraphs on the West Bank commended Israeli administrators for respecting "Arab community leaders" and hiring "tens of thousands of Arabs." The word "Palestinian" scarcely appeared.
There was a panoramic portrayal of Jerusalem, described as "the focus of Jewish prayers for 2,000 years" and the nucleus of new Jewish neighborhoods. Life emphasized that in its pre-1967 borders, Israel was "a tiny, parched, scarcely defensible toe-hold." The edition's opening photo shows a father embracing his Israeli-born daughter on an early "settlement," a testament to Israel's birthright to the land.
Would a mainstream magazine depict the Jewish state like this today, during the week of its 64th birthday?
Unlikely. Rather, readers would learn about Israel's overwhelming military might, brutal conduct in warfare and eroding democratic values—plus the Palestinians' plight and Israeli intransigence. The photographs would show not cool students and cutting-edge artists but soldiers at checkpoints and religious radicals.
Why has Israel's image deteriorated? After all, Israel today is more democratic and—despite all the threats it faces—even more committed to peace.
Some claim that Israel today is a Middle Eastern power that threatens its neighbors, and that conservative immigrants and extremists have pushed Israel rightward. Most damaging, they contend, are Israel's policies toward the territories it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, toward the peace process and the Palestinians, and toward the construction of settlements.
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oren
oren
AFP/Getty Images
Planes perform in Tel Aviv during a military parade marking Israel's 64th anniversary this year.
Israel may seem like Goliath vis-à-vis the Palestinians, but in a regional context it is David. Gaza is host to 10,000 rockets, many of which can hit Tel Aviv, and Hezbollah in Lebanon has 50,000 missiles that place all of Israel within range. Throughout the Middle East, countries with massive arsenals are in upheaval. And Iran, which regularly pledges to wipe Israel off the map, is developing nuclear weapons. Israel remains the world's only state that is threatened with annihilation.
Whether in Lebanon, the West Bank or Gaza, Israel has acted in self-defense after suffering thousands of rocket and suicide attacks against our civilians. Few countries have fought with clearer justification, fewer still with greater restraint, and none with a lower civilian-to-militant casualty ratio. Israel withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza to advance peace only to receive war in return.
Whereas Israelis in 1973 viewed the creation of a Palestinian state as a mortal threat, it is now the official policy of the Israeli government. Jewish men of European backgrounds once dominated Israel, but today Sephardic Jews, Arabs and women are prominent in every facet of society. This is a country where a Supreme Court panel of two women and an Arab convicted a former president of sexual offenses. It is the sole Middle Eastern country with a growing Christian population. Even in the face of immense security pressures, Israel has never known a second of nondemocratic rule.
In 1967, Israel offered to exchange newly captured territories for peace treaties with Egypt and Syria. The Arab states refused. Israel later evacuated the Sinai, an area 3.5 times its size, for peace with Egypt, and it conceded land and water resources for peace with Jordan.
In 1993, Israel recognized the Palestinian people ignored by Life magazine, along with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the perpetrator of those "Arab terrorist attacks." Israel facilitated the creation of a Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza and armed its security forces. Twice, in 2000 and 2008, Israel offered the Palestinians a state in Gaza, virtually all of the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. In both cases, the Palestinians refused. Astonishingly, in spite of the Palestinian Authority's praise for terror, a solid majority of Israelis still support the two-state solution.
Israel has built settlements (some before 1973), and it has removed some to promote peace, including 7,000 settlers to fulfill the treaty with Egypt. Palestinians have rebuffed Israel's peace offers not because of the settlements—most of which would have remained in Israel anyway, and which account for less than 2% of the West Bank—but because they reject the Jewish state. When Israel removed all settlements from Gaza, including their 9,000 residents, the result was a terrorist ministate run by Hamas, an organization dedicated to killing Jews world-wide.
Nevertheless, Israeli governments have transferred large areas to the Palestinian Authority and much security responsibility to Palestinian police. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has removed hundreds of checkpoints, eased the Gaza land blockade and joined President Obama in calling for the resumption of direct peace talks without preconditions. Addressing Congress, Mr. Netanyahu declared that the emergence of a Palestinian state would leave some settlements beyond Israel's borders and that "with creativity and with good will a solution can be found" for Jerusalem.
Given all this, why have anti-Israel libels once consigned to hate groups become media mainstays? How can we explain the assertion that an insidious "Israel Lobby" purchases votes in Congress, or that Israel oppresses Christians? Why is Israel's record on gay rights dismissed as camouflage for discrimination against others?
The answer lies in the systematic delegitimization of the Jewish state. Having failed to destroy Israel by conventional arms and terrorism, Israel's enemies alit on a subtler and more sinister tactic that hampers Israel's ability to defend itself, even to justify its existence.
It began with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's 1974 speech to the U.N., when he received a standing ovation for equating Zionism with racism—a view the U.N. General Assembly endorsed the following year. It gained credibility on college campuses through anti-Israel courses and "Israel Apartheid Weeks." It burgeoned through the boycott of Israeli scholars, artists and athletes, and the embargo of Israeli products. It was perpetuated by journalists who published doctored photos and false Palestinian accounts of Israeli massacres.
Israel must confront the acute dangers of delegitimization as it did armies and bombers in the past. Along with celebrating our technology, pioneering science and medicine, we need to stand by the facts of our past. "The Spirit of Israel" has not diminished since 1973—on the contrary, it has flourished. The state that Life once lionized lives even more vibrantly today.
Mr. Oren is Israel's ambassador to the United States.
A version of this article appeared May 15, 2012, on page A17 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: What Happened to Israel's Reputation?.
It had its own currency which means it was recognized as Palestine!!!!
You are freaking smoking something that has got to be illegal. :-))))
IS= Isis...Egyptian Goddess.
RA=RA.Egyptian God
EL=Elder.
Israel has re-ignited an inconclused argument started 35 centuries ago by Abraham and his Ladies. After 3 religions and lots of dead, hopefully we will undertand, this time around, that all humans are equal. None is better or inferior than the other.
Of course, I don't expect much agreement on that, which is fine.
I myself would displace millions of South of The Border immigrants who were granted amnesty and their children if I could. I do not much care one way or another way about the U.N. Israel or any other Nations save my own kind of America.
Israel seems to abuse its Arabic and Muslim and other people it has connected to it, I do not think it is wise to do so. I does not want the nation Iran and others to have Nuclear Weapons like they do and it will not be able to stop this from happening in the future.
They are not wise to leave the traditions of Abraham and return to the True God of Israel, he will be angered and send fire against the whole lot of them all I think. I like the work Israel has done in growing fruit and vegetables in the more desert type environment.
I myself believe that my God has his Israel in him in me and so I have the entire nation of all Israel from Abraham for Adam from God Almighty in my person by faith. You see I carry many many souls in me by the power of this one true God I have in me.
-shame , i reallly feel a shame that this bunkrupcy is happening in holly land where jesus lived and other prophets ?
-shame that these devil worshipper came to this pure land and pulluted it
-shame that these people claiming to be jews , yet , they do not believe in anything !!! - atheists-
do you call this civilisation
Would you rather see them fornicating with each other?
1- are you atheist?
2- would you like to see this nudity in a holly land , this is holly land !!!!! religious place !!!!! we are not talking here something similar to what is going on in florida beach for example
i repeat , this is holly land
what holly land suppose to mean to you ?
promoting sex ?
look how those who are covered being treated while others are dancing naked ?- shame really in our modern time
1.-Nope, I am not an atheist but my God is like my parents, sweet and tolerant; my God adores the human body and revels on seing it and our enjoyment of that body.
2.-Holly land is a land where your feet and my feet dwel or thread. It does not have to be any particular place. You are sacred and so Am I, hence, wherever we are is holly.
no colour , no shape , no taste, no size , no personality, no religion , no race , no gender , no principals, no boundaries ,!!!!!
but just bunch of anarchists and consumer -desire- behavior animality being set free , that's all !!!!
1. There was never a country called Palestine it was a name of a region.
2. Land changes hands : Romans, Ottomans, British, UN, creation of Israel.
3. Jews were the people that were known as "Palestinians" Arabs self-identified as part of the wider Arab nation, Southern Syrian etc.
4. Most Arabs were not land owners it belonged to absentee landowners.
5. The land pre-1948 was bought by the Jews.
6. Jewish people are not a race - there are Chinese Jews, Indian Jews, Black Jews, Arab Jews and European Jews meaning that Jews are a people, most are part of an ethno-religious group and many Jews are atheists.
7. Most so called "Palestinians" are a collection of Arabs from countries surrounding Israel mainly Jordan which as about 80% of its population that are Palestinian, Egypt, Saudi, Syria, Lebanon. Yassir Arafat the "Palestinian" leader was born in Egypt.
8. Only until about 1967 Arabs started defining themselves as Palestinian.
9. Arab/"Palestinian" Israeli citizens have better rights in Israel than they do in any of the 22 Arab states.
10. The Palestinians outside Israel are not governed by Israel but by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
Will be nice to have more of those. thanks.
All that comes out in the news and papers have an ax to grind from either side. Thanks again.
If you dont mind, I will be checking on your post related to this topict occasionaly; you have a lot to offer in here.
800,000-900,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab lands between $3-300 billion of their property seized until this very day.
The difference is that Israel absorbed our people whilst the Palestinians in Arab lands are denied full democratic rights and citizenship, have been massacred ( Black September 20,000 killed alone) and expelled from Arab countries.
The Arabs fought with the Jews some fled and others told to leave by their Arab brothers. They lost.
http://www.ynetnews.com/artic...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...
http://blogs.timesofisrael.co...
http://jewishrefugees.blogspo...
http://www.jewishvirtuallibra...
"The Palestinians left their homes in 1947–49 for a variety of reasons. Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders’ calls to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of a battle.
Many Arabs claim that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians became refugees in 1947–49. The last census taken by the British in 1945 found approximately 1.2 million permanent Arab residents in all of Palestine. A 1949 census conducted by the government of Israel counted 160,000 Arabs living in the new state afte...
800,000-900,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab lands between $3-300 billion of their property seized until this very day.
The difference is that Israel absorbed our people whilst the Palestinians in Arab lands are denied full democratic rights and citizenship, have been massacred ( Black September 20,000 killed alone) and expelled from Arab countries.
The Arabs fought with the Jews some fled and others told to leave by their Arab brothers. They lost.
http://www.ynetnews.com/artic...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...
http://blogs.timesofisrael.co...
http://jewishrefugees.blogspo...
http://www.jewishvirtuallibra...
"The Palestinians left their homes in 1947–49 for a variety of reasons. Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders’ calls to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of a battle.
Many Arabs claim that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians became refugees in 1947–49. The last census taken by the British in 1945 found approximately 1.2 million permanent Arab residents in all of Palestine. A 1949 census conducted by the government of Israel counted 160,000 Arabs living in the new state after the war. In 1947, a total of 809,100 Arabs lived in the same area.1 This meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become refugees. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine arrived at an even lower refugee figure—472,000. 2"
"In numerous instances, Jewish leaders urged the Arabs to remain in Palestine and become citizens of Israel. The Assembly of Palestine Jewry issued this appeal on October 2, 1947:
We will do everything in our power to maintain peace, and establish a cooperation gainful to both [Jews and Arabs]. It is now, here and now, from Jerusalem itself, that a call must go out to the Arab nations to join forces with Jewry and the destined Jewish State and work shoulder to shoulder for our common good, for the peace and progress of sovereign equals. 6
On November 30, the day after the UN partition vote, the Jewish Agency announced: “The main theme behind the spontaneous celebrations we are witnessing today is our community’s desire to seek peace and its determination to achieve fruitful cooperation with the Arabs. . . .” 7
Israel’s Proclamation of Independence, issued May 14, 1948, also invited the Palestinians to remain in their homes and become equal citizens in the new state:
In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions. . . . We extend our hand in peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all.
"Had the Arabs accepted the 1947 UN resolution, not a single Palestinian would have become a refugee. An independent Arab state would now exist beside Israel. The responsibility for the refugee problem rests with the Arabs.
The beginning of the Arab exodus can be traced to the weeks immediately following the announcement of the UN partition resolution. The first to leave were roughly 30,000 wealthy Arabs who anticipated the upcoming war and fled to neighboring Arab countries to await its end. Less affluent Arabs from the mixed cities of Palestine moved to all-Arab towns to stay with relatives or friends. 8 By the end of January 1948, the exodus was so alarming the Palestine Arab Higher Committee asked neighboring Arab countries to refuse visas to these refugees and to seal their borders against them. 9
On January 30, 1948, the Jaffa newspaper, Ash Sha’ab, reported: “The first of our fifth-column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere. . . . At the first signs of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle.” 10
Another Jaffa paper, As Sarih (March 30, 1948) excoriated Arab villagers near Tel Aviv for “bringing down disgrace on us all by ‘abandoning the villages.’ ” "