If you’re feeding your new baby formula milk, this should be done every 3 to 5 hours. Breastfeeding needs to more frequent, and you may feel that you are doing this all day and night. Now you can empathise with cows. You will be changing a lot of nappies until you get used to their pattern. A good time to do it is shortly after being fed, which can be once an hour to start off with. You can check them every so often.

Whilst they still have their umbilical cord, it is best to sponge bath every few days, but the bottom should be washed daily. By using a soft washcloth rinsed in warm water you can clean your baby every day – wipe the face, neck, hands and bottom gently. After a few weeks, you will be able to bath your baby daily which will prevent nappy rash, but do watch your baby’s skin especially if it is sensitive. See that the skin doesn’t get too dry so monitor and see what is best for your baby.

You will find that your baby’s finger and toes nails soon grow and will need to be trimmed so that they don’t scratch themselves. The nails can even be long at birth, so take care by pushing the fingerpad away from the nail and using nail clippers clip away. It is easier to do this when your baby is asleep, as they may try to jerk their fingers and toes away from you.

For the first month, you will be working 24/7 caring for your baby. Try to get as much as help as possible so that you can get enough rest and sleep as you can. It is exhausting being a mother, but also one of the most precious moments of your life.

As with many of the other destinations in the world, Israel is not unique with it’s variety of diverse attractions from the Desert and the saltiest sea on earth, the Dead Sea to the snow covered peaks of Mount Hermon. It only takes a few hours to experience the extreme differences.

Israel offers some very unique attractions that are suitable for all the whole family. A must is Jerusalem’s Time Elevator, the new Kings City in Eilat, Mini Israel, and the Haganah Museum to name but a few.

A few of Israel’s historical places have earned the right to be members on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Jerusalem also known as the “City of Gold” is one of those places which as a place is very religious and historical. This sacred place is located high in the Judean Hills, and is the Capital of Israel. It is a city which embraces the ancient with the modern, it is both holy and secular and displays pure natural beauty and stunning architecture which together creates a wonderful experience for the senses.

With it’s magnificent golden limestone and stunning scenery it is hardly surprising that it has earned the name of the City of Gold.

Because of Tel Aviv’s Mediterranean location you can experience the amazing beach life, which is not the first thing that springs to mind when planning a trip to these sacred lands, if you know what I mean? For other beaches there is Ashkelon’s and the Caesarea beach equally beautiful and offering something new to see.

Nazareth is the largest Arab city in Israel where the Christians and half Moslems live together harmoniously. It is one of the most important Christian holy sites in the world and this is why it has become a haven for Christians and pilgrims around the world. The stunningly beautiful Churches and Monasteries are places of tranquillity and peace that even those of you who are not religious will not fail to notice.

Another popular and famous destination for Christians is Galilee because it is believed to be where Jesus spent much of his life and performed many of his miracles.

Galilee is one of the greener regions as in the spring the valleys become an array of colourful wild flowers and trees that are full of bloom.

Bethlehem is considered the most important Christian Holy place due to the belief that Jesus Christ was born here and is situated five and half miles from Jerusalem. Millions of Christians have travelled to Bethlehem over the years to deepen their faith.

Nowhere else in the world will you find a place such as the Living Dead Sea. People from all walks of life and nationalities flock here to receive healing from the natural resources. Considering the climate, 330 days a year of sun, and the mineral qualities, predominantly sulphur, that are found here means that it is the ideal place for therapeutic treatments. All this combined with the amazingly dry air which cleanses the respiratory system adds to the whole experience. More famously the Dead Sea is known for its ability to cradle you in a reclining position with the security of knowing that you are not going to sink beneath its waters.

One of the best ways to learn about these issues is to take an Alternative Tour of Israel and the West Bank and examine the situation on the ground.

During the Ottoman Era the region was not even known as Palestine by the governing authorities, but was divided into administrative regions known as ‘Vilayets’, then subdivided into smaller administrative units known as ‘Sanjaks’. The term Palestine was used loosely by the inhabitants, Jews, Christians and Muslims to describe their affinity for the region. during the first world war the European powers conquered the region and assumed control. The region designated for British Administration was termed ‘Palestine’ and all inhabitants, regardless of religion were issued identity cards labeling their nationality as Palestinians.

It was during this period that conflict arose between Palestinian Arabs and the Zionist settlers who were arriving from Eastern Europe and Russia. Israel had not yet been created but the desire of the European settlers to create exclusive Jewish communities gave rise to conflict with Palestinian Arabs. In addition European Zionist funds were used to purchase land from absentee landowners and the Arab residents of the land were often evicted by the new owners. This process exasperated the conflict with often violent results.

During 1947 and 1948 when the state of Israel was formed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were evicted or fled from their homes in the land that became Israel and never allowed to return. These people and their descendants became the Palestinian Refugees of today and their plight is the root and cause of the Israel Palestine conflict.

There are a number of new alternative tour companies that specialize in study tours, and justice tours.

What classes do

They will help explain a lot of the choices available before, during, and after the birth and will tell you about labor, birth, and baby care. You’ll also meet other expectant parents with due dates near yours.

Where to find classes

If you’re planning a hospital delivery, hospital based classes can be useful, they’ll help familiarize you with procedures and will include a tour of the labor ward. Child birth educators generally offer classes in hospitals as well as birthing centers, but some communities offer other local venues as well. Ask friends who have young babies to recommend a good class that’s easy to get to. Most child birth classes include guidance on preparing your self for an active birth, in which your partner or birth coach is also involved.

There’s now a huge choice in maternity care, although how wide the choice is will depend on what’s available in your area. Look into your prenatal options also means looking at your birth options.

Who Can Deliver Care?

Once you know you’re pregnant, your first call will probably be to your family doctor or gynecologist. He or she may confirm the pregnancy with another test, take your blood pressure, and ask when your last period was to work out the due date. Your doctor will tell you the different options for prenatal care available in your area, and you can also talk through where the baby will be born, since these are often linked. Don’t feel you have to make your mind up on any of these issues immediately go away and think about the possibilities before finalizing details.

Hospital care

You’ll be cared for by hospital based doctors, your obstetrician and or midwife. The prenatal care may lack the informality of other options, but if you have any complications, have an existing medical condition, or are having twins, it’s probably the wisest choice to have your pregnancy monitored by professionals in this setting.

Midwives

In many places, prenatal care is given almost entirely by midwives who are based either in a free standing site dedicated to prenatal care labor and delivery or in a hospital. The comfortable, home like feeling of midwife centers is a comfort to many women who would like to have a natural birth out side of a hospital setting. Many women benefit from building a relationship with the midwives who will also deliver their babies.

Your doctor or obstetrician’s office

You’ll have consultations, checkups, and tests through out your pregnancy to make sure you and your baby are doing fine. Most pregnancies are perfectly normal, but its vital to have these check up to make sure all is well and to spot possible problems early, before any harm is done. Here, too, you will have many opportunities to get to know and bond with the professional who will be on hand to deliver your baby when the time comes.

2000 BCE Patriarchs and Matriarchs: settlement of the Land of Israel

1250 BCE Moses, desert wanderings; receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai; conquest of Land of Israel by Joshua; rule by Judges

1st TEMPLE PERIOD

1000 BCE Jerusalem becomes King David’s capital; Solomon builds First Temple; division of kingdom into Israel and Judah

586 BCE Destruction of First Temple; Babylonian Exile

2ND TEMPLE PERIOD

Return to Zion; Ezra and Nechemia; construction of Second Temple

332 BCE Jerusalem comes under Greek domination

166 BCE Maccabean Revolt; restoration of Jewish autonomy;
Hasmonean Empire

63 BCE Roman invasion of Israel [Kingdom of Herod; Hillel and Shammai leaders of rabbinic thought]

70 CE Destruction of Jerusalem and Second Temple

EXILE AND DIASPORA (Beginning of rabbinic period)

73 CE Destruction of Masada

132 CE Bar Kochba Revolt; compilation of Mishna by Rabbi Yehuda
Hanassi

324 CE Talmudic period; decline of Israel as Jewish center; rise of Jewish academies in Babylonia

638 CE Arab conquest of Jerusalem; construction of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa mosques; renewal of Jewish settling

1100 CE Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099); in France, Rashi writes commentary on the Bible; Ramban’s settlement marks return of Jews to Jerusalem and worship at the

Western Wall (1267)
1492 CE Jews expelled from Spain
1517 CE Ottoman Empire rules Jerusalem; Sephardic synagogues established; Shulchan Aruch published in Zfat
1789 CE Napoleon In Eretz Yisrael
1860 CE Yemin Moshe was founded as first settlement outside Old City walls
1880 CE Pogroms in Russia; Dreyfus trial; Theodore Herzl; First Aliyah; First Zionist Congress; Tel Aviv founded
1917 CE British Mandate in Palestine; Jewish population increases; rise of Arab nationalism
1938 CE Kristallnacht; British White paper restricts Jewish immigration to Palestine; beginning of Holocaust

MODERN STATE OF ISRAEL

1947 CE Partition Plan

1948 CE State of Israel proclaimed; War of Independence; beginning of waves of immigration from Europe, Yemen and Iraq

1967 CE Six Day War; reunification of Jerusalem

In the last 30 years, we have seen the Yom Kippur war and the War in Lebanon, peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians, terrorist attacks, the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin. You will learn about these events on your trip. Which of these might appear on the timeline 500 years from now?

It’s worth questioning your own ideas about parenthood, and whether what you think of as a mother’s role isn’t just as applicable to fathers.

Attitudes to fathering

Traditionally, fathers came home from work expecting the home to be clean, the children ready for bed, and a meal on the table. Today, it’s hard to believe that many modern mothers would stand for this.

Some women still expect their partners to handle all the family finances, some times to their disadvantage. It’s a good idea if couples can find a fair way to share their financial burdens.

It’s often assumed that men do all the heavy work. However, while a man must do this when his partner is pregnant and the baby is young, women are bigger and stronger than they used to be, and these tasks can be shared.

Women still tend to take on the chores while their partners play with the baby, even when both parents work. It’s much better, though, if both of you play with your baby care, and share the house work equally.

Some women leave discipline to their partners, but this is both out dated and a cop out. Try to agree on attitudes to discipline and apply them consistently.

You may never do anything more important than bringing up a child. However satisfying your career, whatever sports or leisure goals you’ve achieved, you’ll find parenthood is a role that is rewarding in a way that is unlike anything else.

Following Your Instincts

The instinct to bear children is a strong one, and luckily the joy and fulfillment felt by most parents far out weigh some of the inconveniences and compromises that they may have to accept. Although this isn’t always so, making the decision to have a child usually comes from with in a close, loving relationship between two people who decide that they would like to express their mutual affection in having a baby. This is just as well ­ you’re unlikely to make the decision because you’re attracted by the idea of reduced free time, never being able to put your self first, sleeplessness, and forking out for designer infant clothes! lf you think carefully about the changes brought about by parenthood, you’ll realize that it’s your genes that are pushing you relentlessly toward recreating your selves in the form of children. Now a days, people don’t like to admit that they might be at the beck and call of basic urges and tend to dress them up as something more refined. That’s fine, so long as we remember that we can also push back and say no to parenthood. For some, that can be the best decision, because having a baby is a commitment like no other.

More Than Just Nature

A.side from biological reasons, people also want to have a baby for fulfillment and personal achievement. Human beings arc social animals, and the way they think and act always has a social clement. This is shown most clearly in human parenthood in thc case of adoption, where (usually) two people voluntarily make a commitment to assume all the rights and duties of natural parents, while being genetically unrelated to the child. Adoption also illustrates the depth of the emotional need that people feel to nurture, educate and above all, love a child. What you give to your children in time, love, understanding, and teaching will constantly be repaid as you watch them grow and develop over the years. Every child is genetically a blend of his parents, but he is also a unique personality in his own right, and knowing that you have been the primary influences and educators in allowing that personality to take shape and mature is deeply enriching as well as being a major achievement.

Social And Economic Pressures

In a society where everyone goes to school, everyone expects to go to school. Similarly, when every one except a small minority has children, people expect to have children. It’s as though a person has to have a reason for remaining childless, rather than the opposite. In the past, when families tended to live close together, in the same street or village if not actually in the same house, there were quite important economic reasons for having children. As soon as they were old enough to work, children made a vital contribution to the family’s economic welfare, and parenthood was also a guarantee of being cared for in old age.

Changing Demands

In the much more fragmented society in which we live today, children aren’t expected to contribute to the family income (at least not until they have finished their education), and the state has taken over some of the basic responsibilities for the elderly, or people make their own provision for old age. As a result, the economic demands of the family are now directed downward, from parents to children, instead of the other way around. Bringing up children today can be a costly business, and not just financially. For the first time in history, large numbers of women can achieve a whole range of satisfactions out side parenthood and the home; and with safe methods of contraception, they can also choose when and whether they want to have children. This doesn’t mean that large numbers of women are opting out of motherhood, though some are; but what they are doing is fitting having and bringing up children in to lives where work and a career are also seen as theirs by right.

A Question Of Upbringing

Having begun to consider parenthood seriously, the first thing to realize before you go further is that having a baby is just the overture to bringing up a child. It isn’t too difficult to imagine having a baby the excitement, the celebrations, the delighted grandparents, the supportive friends and family. But it’s almost impossible to visualize bringing up a child if you haven’t done it. The demands in time, energy, and emotion are almost limitless, unless of course the first thing you’re going to teach your toddler is how to use the remote control for the TV and VCR. This isn’t an option for most people because, even before you become parents, you’ll have some idea of the kind of people you hope your children will grow up to be, and of the upbringing that will make this idea a reality.

A Firm Foundation

Upbringing begins from the moment of birth. For a baby care or young child, everything is a learning experience, so how you care for your baby is influential from day one. It’s worth looking at the background of some one you know who is independent but has a large capacity to love and interrelate with others, who is effective and confident, who recognizes that there is such a thing as the general good, and wants to contribute to it. You’ll probably find that person found the world an accepting, loving, encouraging, reasonable, and respectful place from birth. His parents made him feel that way, and the foundation for everything he has become was provided by them in his first year of life.

Father

It’s a good idea to be clear about your own attitude to parenting to make sure it doesn’t reinforce traditional stereo types about mothers and fathers. What you may think of as a mother’s role can be just as applicable to fathers.

Attitudes to mothering

While it’s still true that it’s mostly women who stay at home, many are now returning to work within months of the birth. Also, more and more men are becoming stay at home dads.

Recent surveys show that women, even full time working mothers, still do most of the chores in the home. Ask your self if this is fair there’s no reason why cooking and cleaning can’t be shared.

Tasks such as dealing with care givers and teachers and taking the kids to school used to be seen as a mother’s responsibility. But more fathers are fitting daily activities like taking their child to the doctor into their working day.

It used to be thought that mothers put children to bed, but most fathers enjoy the bed time routine, especially if they’ve been away from their children all day.

The idea prevalent not so long ago that it was somehow demeaning for a man to push a stroller is now laughable. Men are pleased to be seen doing this and are also more than happy to take their children out with out their partners.

An international investment company (holding company) will be tax exempt from dividends that it receives from investee companies. As mentioned, the benefits are not intended for Israeli residents and the main aim of the arrangement is to attract foreign residents to invest in Israel. Nevertheless, the new arrangement will not prevent Israeli residents from establishing holding companies. Israeli residents will be liable for tax, on their proportional share in the profits of the holding company (including exemptions), as if they received an imputed dividend (the tax rate on the imputed dividend will be determined according to the specific characteristics of the shareholder: if he is an individual controlling shareholder – 25%; and if he is an individual who is not a controlling shareholder – 20%). Israeli residents do not have any advantage to establish such a company because the Tax Authority will carry out a comprehensive examination to ensure that Israeli residents are not behind the founders of the company who are foreign residents (either an individual or a company).

What are the conditions that an Israeli holding company will be required to meet?

The company was incorporated and managed from Israel. For a period of at least 300 days during the tax year (from the year after the year of incorporation), the following conditions existed:

1. An investment of a minimum amount of NIS 50 million in shares and loans in foreign investee companies whose main income is business income produced abroad. The cost of the shares and the balance of the loans in investee companies comprise at least 75% of its total assets.

2. The Israeli holding company will have a minimum holding (10%) during a period of at least 12 months.

3. The company will not have income from business, excluding income from services or the management of investee companies.

4. An important technical detail – the company must submit an application to the assessing officer, to be considered “an Israeli holding company”, within 90 days from the date of its establishment.

Which investments abroad will entitle Israeli investment companies to benefit?

1. 75% and more of the income whose source is from business operations.

2. The investee company is a resident of the country with which there is a tax treaty with Israel; alternatively, that the tax rate on business profits by the company in that country is 15% or more. The object of this qualification is to prevent a tax regime which encourages tax haven activities. For example, Cyprus has a company tax rate of 10% up to a taxable amount equal in value to $1,200,000, and over this amount an additional 5% is paid. An investee company must submit tax returns in the country where it operates.

3. The cost of foreign company assets in Israel does not exceed 20% of all its assets in every tax year. In addition, the investee company’s income in Israel does not exceed 20% of its total income in the tax year.

A new immigrant will be entitled to tax benefits, which are given to each new immigrant, due on income from dividends or capital gains that the holding companies had and which will be considered as an imputed dividend. In addition, on the dividend that he actually receives from a holding company during the first five years after his immigration, he will be liable to tax at a rate of 5% as if he was a foreign resident.

Proposal for the structure of offshore-type of company

A foreign resident or even a Cypriot company establishes in Israel a holding company which purchases shares of companies operating in countries of the former Soviet Union and is engaged in managing an active business. The company pays the local company tax (e.g.: in Russia 24%).

An Israeli holding company receives its dividends less tax paid in Russia – a maximum of 10% (compared to an Israeli resident company which complements the tax on the dividend received from abroad to 25%).

Globes – Financial Consumer Supplement, April 3, 2006. ___________________

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