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The name Israel, given to the Biblical patriarch Jacob mentioned in Genesis, means "one who has struggled with God".

Image:Goldmeir at whitehouse.jpg
Golda Meir, the first female Prime Minister of Israel and the second female Prime Minister in the world, was called the "Iron Lady" years before the epithet was coined for Margaret Thatcher. David Ben-Gurion once described her as "the only man in the Cabinet."

Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the US, over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions. Israel places first in this category as well. 24% of Israel's workforce hold university degrees, ranking third in the industrialized world (after the US and Holland) and 12% hold advanced degrees. [1]
Israel has the highest in the world ratio of university degrees to the population.
Israel has the highest per capita ratio of scientific publications in the world by a large margin, as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.
In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US (3,500 companies mostly in high tech). On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech start-ups.

The cell phone was developed in Israel by Motorola-Israel.
Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.
Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.
The Pentium MMX and Centrino as well as Core Duo chips were designed by the Israel R&D division of Intel.

National spending in Israel on civilian R&D rose 164% in 1990-2004. In terms of purchasing power, it grew 126% in 1996-2002, while GDP rose 29%. To compare, Ireland's R&D spending was up 40%, while GDP grew 64%.

An average of 1,549 scientific articles per million residents per year were published by Israel in 1999-2003. This puts Israel just behind Switzerland in this category. The corresponding numbers are 900 for the US and 729 for the EU.

Israel accounted for 1.28% of all scientific articles worldwide. The leading field in Israel was mathematics, in which Israel accounted for 2.74% of all articles, followed by computer science (2.22%) and physics (1.52%).

The proportion of women among R&D workers in Israel was 23.4%. This puts Israel in second place, behind Denmark. Women accounted for 37% of all degrees granted in science and engineering in Israel, one of the highest proportions in the world. (Source: [2])

In the course of its unilateral disengagement, Israel is evacuating 21 communities from the Gaza Strip and 4 from Samaria (northern West Bank).

Kfar Darom, an Israeli community within the Gaza Strip, was established on 250 dunam (65 acre) of land purchased by Tuvia Miller. Following the Arab riots of 1936-1939, Miller deeded his land to the Jewish National Fund. A community was established on the land in 1946 by the Hapoel Mamizrachi kibbutz movement. In the summer of 1948, it was withdrawn following a three month siege by the Egyptian army during the Israeli War of Independence. :(Source: [3])