Israel

Golda Meir was Israel's first (and so far only) woman prime minister.

She signed Israel's declaration of independence in 1948.

Became a Member of the Knesset from 1949 - 74.

Minister of labour from 1949 - 56) and foreign minister from 1956 - 66)

She was prime minister from 1969 - 74.

Read more at: golda-meir

Answer 1

People who ask this are bothered that so few Israelis are dying. Plain and simple. Well, that's tough. We're not going to let ourselves be killed in order to satisfy you or the bleeding-heart liberals in their safe havens in Europe. In the Battle of Mogadishu (1993), between 1500 and 3000 Somalis died, including hundreds of civilians. How many Americans were killed? Eighteen. Did anyone accuse America for doing what it saw as necessary? During WW2, sixty seven Japanese cities were carpet-bombed with incendiaries. 300,000 dead. War reportage should not treat the casualty count as a moral scale in which (like golf) the higher the number, the lower is your rank. The fact that Japan suffered more than ten times the number of people killed than America did, does not change the war's moral barometer. America was fighting a just and necessary war against a heinous enemy.

In 2006, thousands of Hezbollah rockets rained down on us; the Iron Dome defense hadn't yet been perfected. Are you sad that now we, thank God, have an effective defense? The fact that Hamas doesn't have an Iron Dome is their bad fortune. Now why don't you turn the question around and ask why is it that the terrorists in Gaza aren't stopping? So far they've shot over two thousand rockets at us in one month.

You should be aware that almost all of the Palestinian deaths occurred as collateral damage while Israel was trying to defend its populace against these terrorist rocket attacks, and terrorist tunnelers and the like. Israel targets military objectives, warning nearby civilians in advance through phone calls and leaflets, while Israel's terrorist enemies target civilian objectives almost exclusively. As one witness, a journalist, said: "Israel uses its weapons to protect its women and children, while the cowardly Hamas uses women and children to protect its weapons" by putting them as a human shield near weapons caches and rocket launchers in Gaza. Thus Israel faces an impossible situation in which the terrorists are just waiting for their Palestinian brothers to be unintentionally killed so that they can seize the opportunity to internationally bash Israel in the gullible U.N. and the media. They shed false tears, which could have been prevented by laying down their Iran-supplied weapons and sitting down to negotiate. When Israeli civilians are killed, these same terrorists hand out candies and sing in the streets.

The Palestinian attacks violate one of the most basic rules of international humanitarian law, the rule of distinction. Article 48 of Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 states that "In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives." Since the rockets Hamas aims at Israeli towns are launched into civilian enclaves, each of the 12,000 or so rockets that have come into Israel from Gaza since 2005 (including over 2000 this month alone) represents a war crime. Where is all the outcry against Hamas? People are being duped into their insidious propaganda.

And incidentally, where is your outcry concerning Muslims killing thousands of Muslims in Syria? Or the fact that the last remaining Christians now have fled Mosul after Islamic State militants issued a medieval-style ultimatum threatening them with death if they stayed.

Certain facts you may not know:

1) Hamas's founding charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel.

2) Israel supplies Gaza with water, electricity, medicines and provisions. What does Hamas do? It even fires at the power station that supplies Gaza with electricity.

3) Hamas oppresses its own Palestinian population, treats women as inferior objects, and persecutes Christians while building an army of fighters dedicated to suicide and holy war.

4) Israel treats wounded Palestinians. All the time. A reporter writes: This week I saw a Palestinian girl from Gaza being evacuated in an IDF tank to a hospital in Israel. She and her mother were interviewed, from inside an Israeli hospital. They spoke of the fair treatment, the care they received, and described the soldiers who had saved them as "brave and fair." Their faces were covered, for fear of being harmed when they return to their homes in Gaza.

5) Hamas fired on the field hospital Israel established in Shejaia, a facility which only treats wounded Palestinians. Hamas did this in retaliation for the IDF's attack on Wafa Hospital in the same neighborhood. The only difference is that Wafa Hospital is used as a Hamas launching pad for missiles aimed at us. We have publicized this on film; and we also have shown footage of them concealing missiles in U.N. schools.

6) In recent years they have not built so much as a single bomb shelter in Gaza, shelters that could save the lives of many civilians. Instead, they built dozens of underground tunnels from which to attack Israel and try to destroy it.

7) During the first 10 days of this war, the IDF lost 10 soldiers. Some of them, like the three paratroopers, are dead because the Israeli Air Force refused to attack a specific target for fear of hurting civilians. Instead, the paratroopers entered a booby-trapped house and were blown up.

8) Israel withdrew completely Gaza in 2005. Israel gave peace a chance. Instead of peace, we got war and war again. Hamas has refused to join any cease-fire Israel agreed to. We agreed to a cease fire even though, under the current circumstances, this would have been touted as an Israeli defeat. Hamas seeks to wreak death, to terrorize, to continue to brainwash those whose brains are not already drenched with uncompromising hatred.

Answer 2

Your compassion is admirable. Did you speak out while next door, the Muslim president of Syria was responsible for killing 150,000 Muslim citizens of his own country, including 1700 this week?

During the Israeli air campaign, the Gaza Health Ministry reported 250 deaths, while Israel reported 1,300 air strikes against Hamas terrorist targets in Gaza. How is your math ? Can you see what that means ? It means AT LEAST 1,050 air strikes that produced NOT ONE SINGLE casualty. You need to ask yourself: "How is this possible ?" You may talk about being harsh on Palestinians. I can personally and confidently promise you that if Israel were out to kill Palestinians, in the same way that Hamas is out to kill Jews, then one Israeli pilot in one Israeli airplane could easily have killed 250 or 500 in a half hour ... it wouldn't take 1,300 missions. The Israeli air force and army have done MORE to PROTECT the rights and security of the Palestinian people than ANY military force in the history of warfare. Israel's fight is with Hamas, NOT with the Palestinian people, and Israel is far more concerned for the welfare of the Palestinian people than their own government is. You only need to think about a few simple questions:

==> Why would Hamas launch rockets from inside a crowded city, where people could get hurt, instead of from open fields?

==> Why would Hamas dig tunnels under the border and into Israel? What on Earth could they be planning to use them for?

==> Why would Hamas spend huge sums of money buying weapons and building tunnels, instead of building electric power, water purification, roads and rails for their own people?

==> What kind of a political party is it that feels the need to write into its constitution that it promises to destroy a neighboring country and its population?

Well.. I'm not too smart but ,

From the beginning of the year until the end of December, the sheqel (New Israeli Sheqel-NIS)

strengthened against the currency basket by 3.2 percent, and against the dollar by 0.2 percent.

The difference reflects the strengthening of the dollar against most other currencies in world

markets. Following the fluctuations and significant rise of the exchange rate in the last few

months of 1998 which took place against the background of the international financial crisis,

the foreign exchange market was relatively calm in 1999. In the first few months of the year

there was a trend of nominal appreciation of the NIS against the currency basket, with a

contraction of the distance from the lower limit of the exchange-rate band from 14 percent to

7.2 percent2. In the last few months of the year the sheqel depreciated against the currency

basket, to a level close to that at the beginning of the year (see Diagrams 1 and2). The band

widened from 31.8 percent at the beginning of the year to 35.5 percent at the end, the result of

the slopes of the upper and lower limits remaining the same as in 1998-6 percent and 2

percent respectively3.

In the first quarter of 1999, the NIS appreciated by 5.5 percent against the currency basket

despite the uncertainty caused by the announcement, at the end of 1998, of early elections for

the Knesset (Israel's parliament) and for Prime Minister. Even the crisis in Brazil in January

1999 did not cause pressure in the domestic foreign currency market. The renewed

strengthening of the NIS may be explained inter alia by the high differential between the

interest rate in Israel and those in other economies, and by expectations of relatively low

differences between their inflation rates. It can also be explained by the calm in foreign

currency and capital markets in emerging economies, which was maintained despite Brazil's

currency crisis, and by buoyant stock markets throughout the world, which gave rise to a

feeling of stability and attracted back to the domestic market foreign investors who had

reduced their activity as the global financial crisis worsened in August-October 1998. The

strength of the sheqel may also be due to a correction of the market's over-reaction to that

crisis. Against this background, and in the light of the reduction in inflation expectations to 5.5

percent in February and March, the Bank of Israel cut the rate of interest on its monetary loans

by 0.5 percentage points towards the end of February, and by another 0.5 percentage points at

the end of March. At the end of the first quarter, the rate of interest was still 3 percentage

points higher than in the last quarter of 1998, when the Bank raised interest by 4 percentage

points and thus prevented the steep rise in inflation expectations in that quarter from translating

into a rise in inflation.

From the second half of April till the middle of May, the NIS weakened against the currency

basket. This reversal was due to several factors, including greater political uncertainty due to

the approaching election on May 17. In the last week of April, foreign-currency-indexed

options traded on the stock exchange expired, a day after the Bank of Israel announced a

further reduction of half a percentage point in the rate of interest. As a result of the importance

attached to the price at which options are exercised (the representative exchange rate on the

date they expire), exchange-rate volatility can rise as the expiry date gets closer. Unlike other

occasions when options expired and the exchange rate remained stable, in this instance there

was depreciation during the morning of the expiry date, April 27.

Other factors which boosted demand for foreign currency in this period were the narrowing

of the differentials between the rate of interest in Israel and abroad (see Diagram3), and the

sale of some $ 90 million of bank shares to foreign investors. As the shares were a sheqel asset,

their purchase placed the investors in a position of currency exposure to the sheqel. To protect

themselves against this exposure, they bought dollars with NIS in forward transactions,

creating demand for foreign currency in the market. However, since payment was made in

foreign currency directly to the government, no counterweighing supply of foreign currency

appeared on the market.

From mid-May until mid-July, before the new government's economic policy had been

formulated, the NIS/dollar exchange rate remained stable. During this time the dollar

strengthened against the euro, reflected in the stronger trend of the NIS against the currency

basket; although this trend reversed in the run-up to the election, it strengthened again

thereafter, and the nominal exchange rate peaked on July 19, when the NIS was traded at a rate

7.2 percent above the lower limit of the band.

From the middle of July till the middle of October there was strong demand for foreign

currency, some of which was due to the uncertainty prevailing before the budget guidelines had

been determined, as well as falling prices in the capital markets of industrialized countries.

These declines were the result of expectations of monetary tightening in the US, expectations

which were realized, and of growing worldwide concern at the effects of the transition to the

year 2000. These considerations led various companies to bring forward their new financing,

and made investors switch to the most secure and liquid assets (this occurred mainly in the

months May-August). The rise in the rate of interest abroad on the one hand, and the lowering

of interest by the Bank of Israel (by 0.5 percentage points at the end of August) on the other,

narrowed the differential between domestic and foreign interest rates, which also contributed to

the strengthening of demand for foreign currency. The nominal exchange rate reached its

highest level of the year in the second half of October when the NIS was traded at between

12.2 percent and 13.7 percent above the band's lower limit.

Despite a cumulative rise of 6 percent in the average currency-basket exchange rate in

August and September, inflation expectations responded with a rise of only 1 percentage point,

from 4.8 percent in July to 5.8 percent in September. In contrast, depreciation by a similar

amount (6.7 percent) in August-September 1998 led to a 3.1 percentage point rise in inflation

expectations. This may indicate that the relation between exchange-rate fluctuations and

inflation expectations has become weaker than it was in the past, although there is still a clear

link between them. The loosening of the link between inflation and the exchange rate in a

floating-exchange-rate regime is a function of the central bank's commitment to achieving the

inflation target and the extent to which the public believe that the Bank will succeed in fulfilling

this commitment. In such a situation, a rise in the exchange rate beyond a rate consistent with

the inflation target will cause the public to sell foreign currency, in the knowledge that the

central bank will act-by raising the rate of interest-to achieve the inflation target. Sales of

foreign currency will lower the exchange rate, making a rise in the interest rate unnecessary.

From the second half of October until the end of December the trend of the currency-basket

exchange rate reversed, with the NIS appreciating by 4.4 percent in that period. This

development was affected by the buoyant trend in stock markets world wide, and specially in

the US, and the lessening of concern regarding the transition to the new millennium. Other

factors directly associated with Israel's economy also helped the strengthening of the NIS,

including the resumption of peace negotiations with Syria and improvements in Israel's credit

rating. The calm in the foreign currency market continued despite several events that could

have caused concern, such as the announcement in mid-November of the impending resignation

of the Governor of the Bank of Israel. Evidently the public expects the anti-inflation policy to

continue, in the light of the Prime Minister's declaration that the policy pursued by the Bank of

Israel in the last few years would be maintained. This assessment by the public encouraged

investment in the NIS. The confidence which the public has in the anti-inflation policy was also

reflected by the continued downward trend in inflation expectations and actual inflation in this

period. Against this background, and in the light of the calmer international financial situation,

the Bank of Israel reduced the interest rate further-by 0.3 percentage points at the end of

November, and by 0.5 percentage points at the end of December. The calm continued into the

new year as the fears regarding the millennium bug dissipated, and with the announcement of

the intention to appoint David Klein as the new Governor of the Bank.