Cuban softball player Alberto Tacher, left, and coach Roberto Saria Popowsky, both living in Israel, welcome archery siblings and fellow Cuba natives Rafael, second from right, and Roxana Gonzalez upon their arrival at Ben Gurion Airport to participate in the Maccabiah Games, July 3, 2013.
Changes to the Israel Defense Forces after controversial budget cuts are “revolutionary,” and, in the end, will produce “a different IDF,” Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Thursday.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (R) looks into Syria on tour of Golan Heights – Photo: Ariel Hermoni, Defense Ministry spokesman
In a statement to the press, Ya’alon stated that the cuts are being made in light of regional threats, and have been pitted against advances in technology.
By Shahar Haselkorn
Sunrise Ltd. and the Association for the Promotion of the Electric Car in Israel purchased all the operations and assets of the Better Place electric car company in Israel for 18 million shekels (about $5 million) after the Lod District Court confirmed the purchase agreement of the bankrupt company on Wednesday.
Better Place electric car – Photo: AFP
The court also approved the sale of Better Place Switzerland’s intellectual property to the same group for NIS 25 million ($6.84 million). Continue Reading »
Egyptian security forces have killed dozens of armed men and arrested hundreds more as part of a crackdown on extremist cells operating in the Sinai Peninsula, pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat reported on Thursday.
Egyptian army soldiers stand guard on the border with Egypt in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, July 5, 2013. – Photo:AP
At least 32 Hamas fighters that entered Sinai through underground smuggling tunnels and joined the cells were among those arrested, according to the report.
Tensions flared between the Egyptian army and Hamas about a year ago, when armed men ambushed an Egyptian military base in Sinai, killing 16 officers. Continue Reading »
The United States plans to go through with the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt in the coming weeks, despite the overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, U.S. officials told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday.
The clarification came as Washington deliberated whether to call the ouster of Egypt’s elected leader a military coup.
A decision to brand Morsi’s ouster a coup would, by law, require the Obama administration to halt aid to the Egyptian army.
One defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the delivery of the four F-16s was likely to take place in August. Continue Reading »
By Reuters
Israel is bolstering its forces on the once-quiet frontier with Syria where it believes Lebanese Hezbollah militants are preparing for the day when they could fight Israel.
Car bomb explosion in Beirut, Tuesday – Photo: EPA
Syria’s civil war has brought an end to decades of calm on the Golan Heights, a strip of land which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Continue Reading »
On Tuesday, the Rishon Letzion Magistrate’s Court heard testimony that another Israeli is being held in total solitary confinement in one of the most secure prisons in Israel – the same prison in which the Mossad agent Ben Zygier was held. According to the testimony, the cell is well guarded and without windows. The prisoner has no contact with other prisoners or with his guards, who know nothing of his identity or the details of the indictment against him.
Second Prisoner X
According to prison service officials, except for brief walks in a secluded adjacent yard, the prisoner has not left his cell for a few years now. Continue Reading »
By Elad Benari
Saudi Arabia is targeting both Israel and Iran with powerful ballistic missiles, new satellite photography shown by military experts to the British Telegraph suggests.
Image sent to Daily Telegraph – from Ynet
Images analyzed by experts at IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review has revealed a previously undisclosed surface-to-surface missile base deep in the Saudi desert, with capabilities for hitting both countries, the Telegraph reported on Wednesday.
Analysts who examined the photos spotted two launch pads with markings pointing northwest towards Tel Aviv and northeast towards Tehran, according to the report. Continue Reading »
Plans for 10,000 homes over the pre-1967 lines were ready to be marketed in Jerusalem and West Bank settlements, the Minister for Construction and Housing Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi) said on Wednesday as he called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to solve his housing crisis by approving the projects.
East Jerusalem – Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
“We have the ability to market 10,000 housing units in [east] Jerusalem and the settlement blocks in Judea and Samaria,” Ariel told the Knesset Finance Committee during a meeting on the housing budget for 2013-2014.
Vienna’s Jewish community says a historically important trove of hundreds of ancient Jewish tombstones have been recently unearthed, including some dating back to the 16th century.
Tombstones at a small Jewish Cemetery in Vienna, Austria, July 10, 2013. – Photo: AP
Senior Jewish community official Raimund Fastenbauer said Wednesday that the headstones have “high historical value.” He describes their significance as comparable to that of the ancient Jewish cemetery in Prague, the oldest known graveyard of its kind and one of the Czech capital’s most visited tourist sites. Continue Reading »
When rock legend Paul McCartney came to Israel in 2008, he was, at least to some extent, taking his life in his hands. Not because of Israel’s sometimes precarious security situation, but because he was threatened by BDS (boycott, divest, and sanction) anti-Israel groups. “I got death threats, but I’m coming anyway,” the singer was quoted as saying by Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs researcher Adam Shay. Continue Reading »
By Uri Dromi
Once again, the American administration finds itself in the situation where it doesn’t really know exactly how to deal with an enigmatic Middle East. This time, it’s Egypt that is teaching Americans how complex this turbulent region is.
Islamists in Egypt abused their power – Israel Today
From the standpoint of Washington, something good must have happened in Egypt in the last two years. After decades of dictatorship, it seemed that democracy had eventually prevailed. The many Egyptians who took to Tahrir Square in January 2011 chanting, “Enough is enough,” finally got , in the eternal words of President Lincoln, “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Continue Reading »
FIFA President Sepp Blatter says Israel has promised to help solve one of Palestinian soccer’s biggest problems: Traveling into and out of the Palestinian territories.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter at the press conference in Jerusalem, Tuesday – Photo: AP
After meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, Blatter said the Palestinian travel problem was “of national interest” to Israel, and that Netanyahu had agreed to help solve it.
By JTA
Archaeologists in northern Israel discovered an Egyptian sphinx thought to date back at least three millennia.
Sphinx, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY – Photo courtesy to Wikimedia Commons
The sphinx was unearthed Tuesday, according to the French news agency AFP, and bears a dedication to the Egyptian ruler Mycerinus, who ruled circa 2500 BCE and built one of the three Pyramids at Giza. Researchers estimate that the sphinx arrived at its location in the town of Tel Hazor in around 1500 BCE as a gift from a later ruler. Continue Reading »
A gag order was eased on Wednesday confirming the detention of Wael Abu Rida, a Palestinian man from the Gaza Strip suspected of as-yet unpublishable alleged security offenses.
Wife of Palestinian Wael Abu Rida holding his picture. – Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Abu Rida, 35, vanished while visiting Egypt last month. His family and Israeli lawyer told Reuters that they did not know how he ended up in Israel.