Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations
(Reuters) - Israel marks the anniversary of its founding on Thursday, 60 years by the Jewish calendar since the declaration of statehood on May 14, 1948. Following is a list of key elements of planned public celebrations:
* At 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) on May 6, sirens and state ceremonies mark start of Remembrance Day for Israelis killed in conflicts. Sirens sound for further two minutes at 11 a.m. on May 7
* On the evening of May 7, displays combining light, music, lasers and special effects held simultaneously across Israel
* On May 8, a public holiday, Israelis will attend picnics and barbecues, the traditional way of marking Independence Day
* Air force aerobatic display over 10 cities on May 8, along with naval review off the Mediterranean coast, mass parachute drops and an international gathering of military bands at Haifa
* On May 11, Israelis turning 60 on Independence Day will attend a birthday party with President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem
* U.S. President George W. Bush visits May 14-16. He will meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to review progress on peace talks with the Palestinians, address Israeli parliament on May 15 and also attend conference on "The Future of the Jewish People" hosted by President Peres that runs May 13-15
* Twelve other heads of state are officially listed to attend. They are from Albania, Burkina Faso, Croatia, Georgia, Latvia, Mongolia, Poland, Rwanda, Slovenia, Togo, Ukraine and the Pacific island of Palau. Other notable guests include media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Google Inc co-founder Sergey Brin and former Cold War statesmen Mikhail Gorbachev and Henry Kissinger.
* Last week's launch of Israel's Amos-3 satellite was made part of the celebrations -- it bears a 60th anniversary logo.
* Israeli children are collecting 1.5 million marbles -- for the number of Jewish children who died in the Holocaust.
* On May 8, voting ends to choose a national bird. President Peres will announce the winning emblem on May 29.
* Other anniversary events will be held later in the year. These include mass dancing on streets of Jerusalem, a mass wedding for new immigrants, restoring 60 war memorials, building a 60-km path round the Sea of Galilee, building 60 playgrounds, launching a children's theatre in Jerusalem and a march by some 45,000 youngsters that will pass through key battle sites.
* On May 15, Palestinians will mark the 60th anniversary of what they call the "nakba", or catastrophe when 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes at the creation of Israel. Public employees and students will stop work at 11 a.m. to join rallies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Sirens at noon start two minutes' silence.
(Reporting by Avida Landau, Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Samia Nakhoul)
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1 comment:
Who has heard that in the 1930's Bagdad every 3rd citizen was a native Jew? The Sefardi (Safrati) Jews have a 400 year old history and the Mizrahi Jews over 2,500 year old history in the Middle East - outside the location of the state of Israel (Palestine).
Here's the statistics regarding not ONLY the expelsion of Jews from various Moslim countries in the last 60 years that Israel has been an independent state, but also numbers expelled from the Europe in a longer time interval. The Jews are no settlers of colonialism:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-Jews-statistics.htm
60 years of survival. This is statistics, not Zionism. When the military means have lacked the power, it is now a time of a media war to spit on the Jews and curse the Jewish Scriptures. Both the Old and New Testament were written by Jews. Although Jasser Arafat in his books claimed that there never was any Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and that Jesus was not a Jew, he could not deceive the honest spectator
As a matter of fact, the population of Arabs (my beloved friends and brothers, just like the Jews, our common fathers) under the Israeli government was increased ten-fold (10X) in only 57 years. The Palestinian life expectancy increased from 48 to 72 years in 1967-1995. The death rate decreased by over 2/3 in 1970-1090 and the Israeli medical campaigns decreased the child deat rate from a level of 60 per 1000 in 1968 to 15 per 1000 in 2000. (An analogous figure was 64 in Iraq, 40 in Egypt, 23 in Jordan, and 22 in Syria in 2000). During 1967-1988 the amount of comprehensive schoold and second level polytechnic institutes for the Arabs was increased by 35%. During 1970-1986 the proportion of Palestinian women at the West Bank and Gaza not having gone to school decreased from 67 % to 32 %. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in West Bank and Gaza increased in 1968-1991 BKT from 165 US dollars to 1715 dollars (compare with 1630$ in Turkey, 1440$ in Tunis, 1050$ in Jordan, 800$ in Syria, 600$ in Egypt. and 400$ in Yemen).
One-fourth of the judgements of the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations strike Israel. Out of the incidences dealt in the Security Counsil one-third is having to do with Israel. I think this resembles the hysteria seen in the Black Plague in Europe, when the European Jews were accused of the pandemia and burned alive. The phobic mob was really scared and saw the peculiar Jews as a threat.
Pauli.Ojala@gmail.com
Helsinki, Finland
PS. Statistics of the beneficial impact of Jewish population to the host country in terms of inventions, science and technology:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Indicator.html
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