Israeli currency 5000 Sheqalim banknote 1984 Bank of Israel
Obverse: Portrait of Levi Eshkol; a panorama of united Jerusalem; the denomination "Five Thousand Sheqalim" and "Bank of Israel" in Hebrew.
Reverse: Pipe carrying water, symbolizing Eshkol's enterprise, against a background of meadow and barren land: the denomination "5000 Sheqalim" and "Bank of Israel" in Arabic and English.
Watermark: Portrait of Levi Eshkol.
Security thread: In the middle of the note.
Look-through: A geometric pattern on the front merges with a pattern on the back to form a Star of David when held against the light.
Sign for the blind: A square in the upper right-hand corner of the front.
Colour of numbering: Black.
Signatures: Governor of the Bank Moshe Mandelbaum; Chairman of the Advisory Council Avraham Shapira.
Design: Jacob Zim.
Year: 1984.
Date of issue: August 9, 1984.
Ceased to be legal tender: September 4, 1986.
Size: 138 X 76 mm.
Dominant colour: Blue.
Israel Banknotes - Israel Paper Money
500 Sheqalim 1000 Sheqalim 5000 Sheqalim 10000 Sheqalim
On June 4, 1969 the Knesset passed a law providing for the sheqel to become the currency of Israel at a date to be determined on the recommendation of the Governor of the Bank of Israel. In November 1977 conditions were considered ripe for implementing this law, and in May 1978 Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Finance Minister Simcha Erlich approved the Governor's proposal to introduce a series of sheqel banknotes identical to the Israeli pound notes except for the denominations, which were to be determined by dropping one zero from the denominations of the pound series.
The notes were prepared in the same colour and size and with the same portraits as the pound series in order to make it easier for the public to become familiar with the new denominations.
The preparations were conducted in complete secrecy over a period of more than two years. On February 22, 1980 the sheqel was declared legal tender, and the first notes went into circulation on February 24, 1980.
This was the largest series of banknotes in the history of the State of Israel. Initially there were four denominations (1,5, 10 and 50 sheqalim), but as inflation accelerated, another five were added between 1981 and 1985 - 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 sheqalim.
Beginning with the IS 500 denomination, the banknotes were printed in distinct colours and standard size (76x138 mm), thus achieving a considerable economy in production costs. A new security device - a look-through - was incorporated, while special signs for the blind continued to be printed in various geometrical forms.
Levi Eshkol (Hebrew: לֵוִי אֶשְׁכּוֹל; born Levi Shkolnik (Hebrew: לוי שקולניק) 25 October 1895 – 26 February 1969) served as the third Prime Minister of Israel from 1963 until his death from a heart attack in 1969. He was the first Israeli Prime Minister to die in office.
Levi Eshkol (Shkolnik) was born in the shtetl of Oratov, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now Orativ, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine). His mother (born as Dvora Krasnyanskaya) came from a Hasidic background and his father (Joseph Shkolnik) came from a family of Mitnagdim. Eshkol received a traditional Jewish education in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania).
In 1914, he left for Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. He was a leading member of the Judea Workers' Union in 1915–1917. During World War I, he volunteered with the Jewish Legion. Eshkol joined Kibbutz Degania Bet and married Rivka Maharshek. They had a daughter, Noa, born in 1924 and were divorced in 1927. Eshkol married his second wife Elisheva Kaplan in 1928, with whom he had three daughters, Dvora (mother of Sheizaf Rafaeli), Ofra (mother of Eshkol Nevo), and Tama (wife of Avraham Shochat). His second wife died in 1959. In 1964 he married Miriam, a librarian at the Library of the Knesset 35 years his junior.
From 1940 to 1948 Eshkol was a member of the Haganah high command. He engaged in arms acquisition for the Haganah prior to and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. After Israel's victory, Eshkol was appointed Director-General of the Ministry of Defense, serving from 1950 to 1951.
Political career
Eshkol was elected to the Knesset in 1951 as a member of Mapai party. He served as Minister of Agriculture until 1952, when he was appointed Finance Minister following the death of Eliezer Kaplan. He held that position for the following 12 years. During his term as Finance Minister, Eshkol established himself as a prominent figure in Mapai's leadership, and was designated by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion as his successor.
When Ben-Gurion resigned in June 1963, Eshkol was elected party chairman with a broad consensus, and was subsequently appointed Prime Minister. However, his relationship with Ben-Gurion soon turned acrimonious over the latter's insistence on investigating the Lavon Affair, an Israeli covert operation in Egypt, which had gone wrong a decade earlier. Ben-Gurion failed to challenge Eshkol's leadership and split from Mapai with a few of his young protégés to form Rafi in June 1965. In the meantime, Mapai merged with Ahdut HaAvoda to form the Alignment with Eshkol as its head. Rafi was defeated by the Alignment in the elections held in November 1965, establishing Eshkol as the country's indisputable leader. Yet Ben-Gurion, drawing on his influence as Israel's founding father, continued to undermine Eshkol's authority throughout his term as Prime Minister, portraying him as a spineless politician incapable of addressing Israel's security predicament.
Prime minister
Eshkol formed Israel's twelfth government in 1963. His first term in office saw continuous economic growth, epitomized by the opening of the National Water Carrier system in 1964. His and Finance Minister Pinchas Sapir's subsequent "soft landing" of the overheated economy by means of recessive policies precipitated a drastic slump in economic activity. Israel's centralized planned economy lacked the mechanisms to self-regulate the slowdown, which reached levels higher than expected. Eshkol faced growing domestic unrest as unemployment reached 12% in 1966, yet the recession eventually served in healing fundamental economic deficiencies and helped fuel the ensuing recovery of 1967–1973.
Upon being elected into office, Levi Eshkol fulfilled Ze'ev Jabotinsky's wish and brought his body and that of his wife to Israel where they were buried in Mount Herzl Cemetery.
Eshkol worked to improve Israel's foreign relations, establishing diplomatic relations with West Germany in 1965, as well as cultural ties with the Soviet Union, which also allowed some Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel. He was the first Israeli Prime Minister invited on an official state visit to the United States in May 1964. The special relationship he developed with President Lyndon Johnson would prove pivotal in securing US political and military support for Israel during the "Waiting period" preceding the Six-Day War of June 1967.
According to Michael Oren, Eshkol's intransigence in the face of military pressure to launch an Israeli attack is considered to have been instrumental in increasing Israel's strategic advantage as well as obtaining international legitimacy, yet at the time he was perceived as hesitant, an image cemented following a stuttered radio speech on 28 May. The Egyptian President Nasser's ever more overt provocations, created diplomatic support for Israel. Eshkol eventually established a National Unity Government together with Menachem Begin's Herut party, conceding the Defense portfolio to Moshe Dayan.
With President Johnson's administration also, represented in this case by national security aide Robert W. Komer and others, Eshkol signed what became known as the Eshkol-Comer (sic) memorandum of understanding (MOU) about Israeli nuclear capabilities. The 10 March 1965, MOU, variously interpreted since, said 'Israel would not be the first country to "introduce" nuclear weapons to the Middle East'.
Death
In the year following the war, Eshkol's health gradually declined, although he remained in power. He died in office of a heart attack, at the age of 73, on 26 February 1969. He was laid to rest at Mount Herzl.
Commemoration and recognition
Since 1970, Yad Levi Eshkol is the official organization commemorating prime minister Eshkol.
The Eshkol Regional Council in the north-western Negev and the Eshkol National Park near Beersheba has been named after him, as well as the Eshkol Power Station and the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem (Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם Yerushalayim; Arabic: القُدس al-Quds) is a city in the Middle East, located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea.
Israelis and Palestinians both claim Jerusalem as their capital, as the State of Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there while the State of Palestine ultimately foresees the city as its seat of power; however, neither claim is widely recognized internationally.
One of the oldest cities in the world, Jerusalem was named as "Urusalima" on ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, probably meaning "City of Shalem" after a Canaanite deity, during the early Canaanite period (approximately 2400 BCE). During the Israelite period, significant construction activity in Jerusalem began in the 9th century BCE (Iron Age II), and in the 8th century the city developed into the religious and administrative center of the Kingdom of Judah. It is considered a holy city in the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent. Today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City's boundaries.
According to the Bible, King David conquered the city from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of the united kingdom of Israel, and his son, King Solomon, commissioned the building of the First Temple. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, assumed central symbolic importance for the Jewish people. The sobriquet of holy city (עיר הקודש, transliterated ‘ir haqodesh) was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesus's crucifixion there. In Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. In Islamic tradition in 610 CE it became the first qibla, the focal point for Muslim prayer (salat), and Muhammad made his Night Journey there ten years later, ascending to heaven where he speaks to God, according to the Quran. As a result, despite having an area of only 0.9 square kilometres (0.35 sq mi), the Old City is home to many sites of seminal religious importance, among them the Temple Mount with its Western Wall, Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb.
Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the areas captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured and later annexed by Jordan. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into Jerusalem, together with additional surrounding territory.[viii] One of Israel's Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the country's undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset (Israel's parliament), the residences of the Prime Minister and President, and the Supreme Court. Whilst the international community rejected the annexation as illegal and treats East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, Israel has a stronger claim to sovereignty over West Jerusalem. The international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and the city hosts no foreign embassies. Jerusalem is also home to some non-governmental Israeli institutions of national importance, such as the Hebrew University and the Israel Museum with its Shrine of the Book.
In 2015, Jerusalem had a population of some 850,000 residents, comprising ca. 200,000 secular Jewish Israelis, 350,000 Ultra-Orthodox Jews and 300,000 Palestinians. In 2011, the population numbered 801,000, of which Jews comprised 497,000 (62%), Muslims 281,000 (35%), Christians 14,000 (around 2%) and 9,000 (1%) were not classified by religion.