Natan Sharansky also served as a contributing editor to "The Jerusalem Report" and as a Board member of Peace Watch. In 1995, Sharansky and Yoel Edelstein founded the Yisrael BaAliyah party (a play of words, since "aliya" means both Jewish emigration to Israel, and "rise", thus the party name means "(People of) Israel immigrating (to the State of Israel)", as well as "Israel on the rise"), promoting the absorption of the Soviet Jews into Israeli society. The party won seven Knesset seats in 1996. It won 6 seats in the Israeli legislative election, 1999, gaining two ministerial posts, but left the government
Rina Natan Rina Natan Rina Natan (born September 8, 1923) was an Israeli who was the first Israeli transsexual woman. Natan was born and was assigned male at birth on September 8, 1923, in the town of Siegen in Germany, to a wealthy Jewish family. As a child she excelled in music and art. Beginning as a child, she used to wear women's clothing. During World War II, she stayed for a period of time in France, where she learned agriculture. She moved to Palestine in 1946. In Palestine she moved between the Kibbutzes Ma'agan Michael, Ashdot Ya'akov, and Na'an. During the