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ISRAEL DAY PARADE

The Nation’s Largest JEWISH CLASSIFIEDS (PAGE 45)

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ewish Voice J Deuteronomy 32:1

M AY T H E E A RT H H E A R T H E WO R D S O F M Y M O U TH

May, 21 2010 | 8 Sivan 5770

Israel Unveils Benefits for Returning Citizens

Vol. 6, Iss. 21

SUNDAY, MAY 23RD www.JewishVoiceNY.com

JERUSALEM DAY: KNESSET MEMBERS DIG INTO HISTORY

Prime Minister of Israel Binyamin Netanyahu

BY MAAYANA MISKIN Israeli citizens who have emigrated will soon have a number of new incentives to return. The cabinet voted Sunday to approve a plan that will provide new benefits to returning Israelis, putting them on equal footing with new immigrants when it comes to personal income tax. he proposal was submitted by Minister of Immigration and Absorption Sofa Landver and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Returning Israelis are particularly beneficial to the country, Netanyahu said. They tend to undergo a more rapid cultural and economic integration, as they are generally familiar with the culture and language, he said. However, they are also familiar with other cultures, “the creativity and work standards of which we are sometimes interested in adopting here,” he added. The Immigration Ministry aims to bring back 15,000 Israeli citizens per year. An estimated 750,000 Israelis currently live abroad. 10,900 Israelis returned in 2009. The majority of returning Israelis are of working age, and their income is roughly 30% higher than the national average. There is an increasing number of Israeli

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Binyamin Netanyahu Named World’s Most Influential Jew

Before Jerusalem Day some of the members of the Knesset joined in the search of the Temple Mount Salvage Operation. BY ABE SELIG In advance of Jerusalem Day, members of the Knesset’s Land of Israel Lobby spent the day sifting through more than 2,000 years of history inside a large tent at the Temple Mount Antiquities Salvage Operation. he ongoing archeological project is located in the capital’s Tzurim Valley National Park, where workers have spent the last f ive years carefully combing through thousands of tons of debris removed from the Temple Mount nearly 10 years ago. In 1999, the Wakf Islamic trust, which is in charge of the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount, requested permission from the government to construct emergency exits for a series of underground mosques that had been opened inside the compound during the late 1990s. Upon receiving permission,

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Wakf off icials constructed an entrance to the underground el-Marwani mosque in the area known as Solomon’s Stables. During the exits’ construction, the Wakf removed some 10,000 tons, or 400 truckloads, of ancient debris, which was then dumped in the nearby Kidron Valley and the Jerusalem municipal dump – some of it lost forever among the trash and other rubble. Enter Gabriel Barkay of Bar-Ilan University, who applied for and eventually received a license from the Israel Antiquities Authority to sort through the discarded piles in search of antiquities. Joined by his former student Zachi Zweig, Barkay now oversees the sorting. Using a process known as “wet sifting,” which is similar to panning for gold, the efforts have turned up a rich bounty of First and Second Temple-era artifacts. On Tuesday afternoon, Knesset

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The off ice of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has welcomed his selection as No. 1 in The Jerusalem Post’s first annual list of “The 50 most influential Jews in the world,” which is being published on Tuesday in the Jerusalem Post, Shavuot supplement. he fact that the prime minister of the State of Israel is viewed today as being the world’s most influential Jew demonstrates the historic change that Zionism has brought about in the condition of the Jewish people,” the Prime Ministers office said. “A scattered, powerless people has been able to reassert its national life in its own sovereign state, in its ancestral homeland,” it added. “From being mere spectators on the international stage, today the Jews control their own destiny and have returned as a people to the family of nations.” Netanyahu's off ice noted that when Israel was established in 1948, “only some 5% of the world’s Jewish population lived in the new state. Today, Israel contains the largest Jewish community in the world.” His position at the top of the Jerusalem Post top 50, the PMO said, was an honor that testif ied to “the

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