The new banknotes that the Bank of Israel plans to issue in 2012 will apparently not include any politicians, but only leading literary and rabbinical figures. Hebrew daily "Yediot Ahronot" reports that Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz has formulated a list of ten proposed personalities for the new banknotes. He has also instructed that "New Shekel" be replaced with just "Shekel".
Governor of the Bank of Israel Prof. Stanley Fischer and banknotes committee chairman Judge Emeritus Yaakov Terkel will select the personalities for the new banknotes from Steinitz's list. The personalities are: Rachel the Poetess, singer Naomi Shemer, poets Shaul Tchernichovsky, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Nathan Alterman, and Yehuda Amihai, composer Sasha Argov, World War II paratrooper Hannah Szenes, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, and Rabbi Shlomo Goren.
Steinitz left off the list all national leaders, generals, and politicians. Dalia Rubin, the daughter of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, told "Yediot Ahronot" in response to the Ministry of Finance's wish remove her father's portrait from banknotes, "I don’t want to respond."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 29, 2009
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