Word: hurvitz
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...popularity at home is the parlous state of the Israeli economy, which suffers from triple-digit inflation, high taxes, scarce and expensive housing, and unemployment. Following up on a previous decision to slash $140 million from the defense budget, the five-member economic Cabinet headed by Finance Minister Yigael Hurvitz last week recommended overall budget cuts of an additional $108 million. Indeed, Hurvitz is so worried about the state of the economy that he may resign from the government...
...clinging to power, though by a fairly narrow strand. During a nine-hour meeting of his Cabinet, he won approval for a $140 million cut in his defense budget of $3.6 billion. By so doing, he averted an all-out clash with, on the one hand, Finance Minister Yigael Hurvitz, who was pressing for a cut of $300 million, and on the other, with Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, who said that any cut over $80 million could endanger Israel's security. Hurvitz's threatened resignation could have reduced the parliamentary majority of Begin's Likud coalition...
...decision to quit was precipitated in the end by a relatively minor budgetary dispute in which, ironically, moderate and hawk exchanged roles. Weizman was angered that Finance Minister Yigal Hurvitz, a hard-liner who had voted against the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, was advocating a 10% reduction in Israel's military spending. Weizman asserted that he could not be responsible for security if the cuts were approved. When he learned that the cuts would be recommended anyway, he decided to hand in his resignation. He stopped off at Begin's office in Jerusalem before the customary Sunday Cabinet...
Finance Minister Yigael Hurvitz called the currency changeover a "mere technicality," but it was clearly more than that. Psychologically, the government hoped, the introduction of a new and more valuable currency would curb the profligate habits of Israelis, who are accustomed to spending their pounds freely. Emotionally, the government hoped, naming the new currency after the ancient Jewish coin would appeal to the Israelis' sense of history. According to Genesis 23: 2-19, Abraham paid 400 shekels to buy a burial site in Hebron for his wife Sarah. In Roman times the shekel was not only a coin...
Confusion rather than confidence greeted the changeover, which was actually authorized by the Knesset as far back as 1969. Fearful that the new shekels would depreciate as rapidly as the old pounds, Israelis rejected Hurvitz's pleas not to embark on "a buying spree" and converged on Arab money-changers in Israel to convert the new currency into American dollars, British sterling and even Jordanian dinars...