Israel is a country located east of the Mediterranean Sea surrounded by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the Northeast, Jordan to the east and Egypt to the southwest. It’s a fairly small, landlocked country in the Middle East that has several unique geographical features. To the north of Israel are majestic mountain ranges such as Galilee, Carmel, and Golan. To the south is the Negev Desert which covers more than half of the country’s land area.

The weather tends to be erratic. Summers are long, hot and rainless. Winters, on the other hand, tend to be short, rainy, and cold. During the rainy season, thunderstorms and hail are common. In an environment like this, growing beautiful and export-quality flowers would indeed be a very challenging task. Good thing is that the Israelis are up to the challenge.

Growing flowers in Israel demands a lot of work and dedication from all the people involved. Flowers are grown in a moshav, which is a sort of cooperative agricultural community consisting of farmers. All members are levied a tax in order to pay for a more efficient production of goods, in this case, flowers. Labor and resources are pooled together in order to produce better products.  The moshav also receives help from researchers so that their technology is up-to-date, making for a better harvest.

The Philippines and Israel are very similar when it comes to cultivating flowers. For one, both countries have extreme weather conditions; the temperature can shoot up to very high and rain is unpredictable and severe. In the Philippines, the summers can be very hot and the wet season usually brings catastrophic typhoons and floods. Thus, both the Philippines and israel makes use of greenhouse technology in order to produce beautiful and high-quality flowers. Using greenhouses counteracts the extreme and unpredictable weather of both countries.

Flowers are enduring symbols of love and peace all over the world. It doesn’t matter where or how they are grown—they will grow, and more beautifully than ever. However, a bit of help from ingenious human hands wouldn’t hurt, especially in extreme conditions.

Timothy Spencer
http://www.articlesbase.com/gardening-articles/growing-flowers-in-israel-716986.html

What do American Jews think about Israel’s negotiations with the Palestinians? A late September survey of 800 self-identified Jewish voters from around the United States, carried out by John McLaughlin and Associates, produced interesting results with important implications.

By an almost 3-to-1 margin (60 to 22 percent, with an accuracy of ± 3.5% at a 95% confidence interval), American Jews say that Israel should not sign a treaty with the Palestinians if this requires an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Then, given a choice – whether the Arab world sincerely accepts Israel’s right to exist, or whether it seeks the eventual destruction of Israel – the respondents by a similar 3-to-1 margin (60 to 19%) find that the Arabs still want to eliminate Israel. After a quarter-century of Israel turning land over to the Arabs, this is a very significant number, one resulting from a deep-seated Arab reluctance to accept Israel’s permanence.

By an overwhelming 6-to-1 margin (76 to 13%), American Jews say that President obama promise of $900 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority over five years should be paid only if the PA removes all antisemitic and anti-Israel statements from its school books. An even larger 8-to-1 margin (78 to 10%) wants to hold back on the money until Yasser Arafat fulfills his Oslo obligations to outlaw and disarm terrorist groups and to extradite terrorists to Israel.

In contrast to these decisive stands, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem has less backing. Asked whether they agree with the Congressional legislation to move the embassy (in recognition of Israel’s claim that Jerusalem is its capital) or with President obama’s opposition to the legislation (on the grounds that the city’s status should be negotiated between israel and the Palestinians), the respondents by a nearly 2-to-1 margin (57 to 30%) agree with Congress. The sample also strongly endorses the prime ministry of Ehud Barak: asked if he is headed in the right direction or is off track, it approved of him by an 8-to-1 margin (63 to 8%).

Finally, the poll finds that American Jews are not much focused on Israel. In a question asking about the issues that most concern them, an overwhelming 87% pointed to domestic issues and only 5% to foreign policy ones. This helps explain the not very high level of interest about Israel and the Middle East, with 34% saying they read a “great deal” on these subjects and 58% saying “only somewhat” about them.

This profusion of opinions has four major implications. First, it confirms polling done by the American Jewish Committee since 1993 that points to a toughening of attitudes on the question of the palestinians. As Yale Zussman concluded in his Middle East Quarterly study of six years of AJC polling, “American Jewry is increasingly wary of a negotiation process that it worries may be a trap for Israel.” Second, there is a seeming contradiction between the overwhelming support for Barak himself and for positions that he does not endorse (such as withholding money to the PA). This suggests that while American Jews have high regard for the Israeli prime minister, they are generally not aware of the steps he is taking quite contrary to their own views – a conclusion supported by the fact that only one third of them say they are well-informed about Israel.

Third, these results raise questions about an Israel Policy Forum poll commissioned in July 1999 that found American Jews “supporting] the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” by a 11-to-1 margin (88 to 8%). Well, yes, they do strongly support in principle the idea of Israel finding a way to end Palestinian hostilities against it, but our survey shows they also have strong ideas about how this should be done – and these ideas are much more skeptical than those promoted by the current Israeli leadership.

Fourth, American Jews appear to be less engaged with Israel. Yes, a committed minority continues to follow the news intensely, travel to Israel, lobby Congress, and give money, but growing numbers of American Jews have other things on their minds.

For Israel, this has the utmost importance, given the vital role American Jews have had in the formulation of US policy toward the Middle East. This decline in interest has particular importance at a time when – as shown by the recent Burger King, Sprint, and Disney episodes – Arab and Moslem groups in the United States are finding their voice.

tatar job
http://www.articlesbase.com/politics-articles/american-jews-thinks-about-the-future-of-israel-and-palestine-as-in-president-office-barack-obama-waits-681776.html