MySQL/Language problem

Hi all, I'm having a weird problem (heh, tha'ts not new, I know:) which is whenever I post my form into a mysql table, it's saves the values into it as garbage and this happens only when the values are written using non-english standard characters, such as Hebrew characters for example. Shouldn't these values be saves as regular ANSI chars? I've set the correct charset in my meta tag, everything should work fine and yet I still can't display them correctly. Any help would be appreciated :) Regards, Ayman