Moshe Ya'alon

Moshe Ya'alon (Hebrew: משה יעלון‎; born Moshe Smilansky on 24 June 1950) is an Israeli politician and former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. He currently serves as Defense Minister.

Early life

Ya'alon was born Moshe Smilansky, the son of David Smilansky and Batya Silber. His father, a factory worker, had moved to Mandatory Palestine with his parents from Ukraine in 1925, and was a veteran of the Haganah and Jewish Brigade. His mother was a Holocaust survivor who had fought against the Nazis with partisans during World War II. She came to Palestine in 1946. Ya'alon grew up in Kiryat Haim, a working-class suburb of Haifa. He was active in the Labor Zionist youth movement "HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed" and joined a Nahal group named Ya'alon, a name he later adopted. He later moved to kibbutz Grofit, in the Arava region near Eilat. In 1968, he was conscripted into the Israel Defense Forces, and served in the Nahal Brigade. He was discharged in 1971.

Military career

In 1973, Ya'alon was called up as a reservist during the Yom Kippur War. On October 15, 1973, his unit became the first IDF unit to cross the Suez Canal into Egypt. He continued fighting as part of the Israeli drive into the Egyptian mainland, and participated in the encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army. Following the war, he rejoined the IDF as a career soldier, and completed an officers' course. He was appointed a platoon commander, and then as a commander in officers' school. In 1978, he became a commander in the Paratroopers Brigade.

Charlie Rose

Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991, he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He has also co-anchored CBS This Morning since 2012. Rose also substitutes for the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley when Pelley is off or on assignment. Rose, along with Lara Logan, has hosted the revived CBS classic Person to Person, a news program during which celebrities are interviewed in their homes, originally hosted from 1953 to 1961 by Edward R. Murrow.

Early life

Rose was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child of Margaret (née Frazier) and Charles Peete Rose, Sr., tobacco farmers who owned a country store. As a child, Rose lived above his parents' store in Henderson and helped out with the family business from age seven. Rose admitted in a Fresh Dialogues interview that as a child his insatiable curiosity was constantly getting him in trouble. A high school basketball star, Rose entered Duke University intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track, but an internship in the office of Democratic North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics. Rose graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. At Duke, he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968. He met his wife, Mary (King), while attending Duke.

Middle East

The Middle East (also called the Mid East) is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the derived noun is Middle-Easterner. Formerly, the Eurocentric synonym Near East (as opposed to Far East) was commonly used. Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, Persians, and Turks constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population, while Armenians, Assyrians, Circassians, Copts, Druze, Jews, Maronites, Somalis, and other ethnic and ethno-religious groups form significant minorities.

The History of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the (geo-political) importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Several major religions have their origins in the Middle East, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; the Baha'i faith, Mandaeism, Unitarian Druze, and numerous other belief systems were also established within the region. The Middle East generally has a hot, arid climate, with several major rivers providing irrigation to support agriculture in limited areas such as the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds of Mesopotamia, and most of what is known as the Fertile Crescent. Most of the countries that border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil, with the dictatorships of the Arabian Peninsula in particular benefiting from petroleum exports. In modern times the Middle East remains a strategically, economically, politically, culturally and religiously sensitive region.

Prime minister

A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime minister is the presiding member and chairman of the cabinet. In a minority of systems, notably in semi-presidential systems of government, a prime minister is the official who is appointed to manage the civil service and execute the directives of the head of state.

In parliamentary systems fashioned after the Westminster system, the prime minister is the presiding and actual head of government and head of the executive branch. In such systems, the head of state or the head of state's official representative (i.e. the monarch, president, or governor-general) usually holds a largely ceremonial position, although often with reserve powers.

The prime minister is often, but not always, a member of parliament and is expected with other ministers to ensure the passage of bills through the legislature. In some monarchies the monarch may also exercise executive powers (known as the royal prerogative) that are constitutionally vested in the crown and may be exercised without the approval of parliament.

I Am

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