Free Republic

Sunday’s cabinet decision to approve the acquisition of 17 F-35s for the Israel Air Force is a belated, necessary result to the partial decision the previous government made nearly three years ago. Then, only a partial equipping was approved in an unusual step that would have left the IAF at the end of the acquisition process with a squadron and a half. It would have been an operational hybrid, which would likely not allow long-term planning and conducting of missions on an ongoing basis. According to the decision, the IAF will have a full complement of two squadrons by 2021...

Israeli aircraft attack a facility in the Syrian part of the Golan Heights in retaliation for Sunday's attack on IDF soldiers. Israeli aircraft attacked early Monday morning a facility belonging to the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization in the Syrian part of the Golan Heights. The attack was in retaliation to Sunday's attack on IDF forces who were engaged in operations along the Syrian border. The patrol returned fire, first with small arms and then with mortars. The Israel Air Force then located the armored vehicle that had been the source of the fire and destroyed the vehicle, killing all...

The boat, which was disguised as a Palestinian fishing vessel, was intercepted by IDF forces off the coast of the Gaza Strip and fired upon after the two occupants jumped in the water and swam for shore; secondary explosions from weapons on board completely destroyed boat. A Palestinian boat disguised as a fishing vessel was caught on camera by the IDF while attempting to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip before eventually being destroyed. The boat was observed departing from the southern Gaza Strip and heading towards the Sinai. Several days later, the ship suspiciously reappeared with the rear...

The regular (permanent) service cadre of IDF is currently undergoing one of the most severe crises in its history. At the same time, the IDF conducts a training exercise and issues a massive technological tender. It is one of the most troubling issues as far as the Israeli defense establishment is concerned, but no one will speak about it publicly: the regular (permanent) service cadre of IDF is currently undergoing one of the most severe crises in its history. Some of the indications of this crisis: IDF seem unable to staff numerous positions normally staffed by officers at captain's rank,...

The commander of Israel Navy Ship Eilat, a Sa’ar-5 class Israeli missile boat, was extremely displeased. For some time, INS Rahav, the navy’s latest Dolphin-2 class submarine, had been cruising in the waters beneath him, at fairly close quarters. The sub occasionally lunged up and trained its periscope on the missile boat. Observers on the boat, whose task is to spot such potential threats, hadn’t noticed the periscope’s tip, which is the size of a fist, on the surface. The sub was practicing intelligence gathering, using the missile boat and its surroundings as targets; it wasn’t spotted even when sailors...

Israel's Defense Ministry on Friday responded to U.S. President Barack Obama's claims from a day earlier that the nuclear deal signed between Iran and the West had been successful in improving the security situation in the Middle East, and that even Israel acknowledges this fact. "The Israeli defense establishment believes that agreements have value only if they are based on the existing realities, and have no value if the facts on the ground are completely opposite of those upon which the agreement rests," the statement read. "The Munich Agreement did not prevent the Second World War and the Holocaust, precisely...

On the morning of July 19, 2014, an M-113 armored vehicle belonging to the Israeli army’s Golani Brigade crept into one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip — the scene of one of the most brutal battles in the 2014 war with Hamas. But the lightly-armored vehicle, which dates to before the Vietnam War, was not meant for this kind of conflict. During the fighting, an anti-tank mine exploded underneath the M-113, killing seven soldiers. Hamas gunmen then ambushed IDF troops coming to the rescue, forcing them to retreat.

The Jerusalem Post reports: The Defense Ministry unveiled on Monday the IDF’s first wheeled armored personnel carrier (APC). The platform will soon enter service, joining the tracked Namer APC and eventually replacing the aging and vulnerable M113 platforms.

“If Thy people go out to battle against their enemy, by whatsoever way Thou shalt send them, and they pray unto Hashem toward the city which Thou hast chosen, and toward the house which I have built for Thy name” I Kings 8:44 (The Israel Bible™) The Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) Battalion 82 recently decided to drop its decades-old Merkava MK 2 tanks and launched into a new world of military technology by adopting the cutting edge Merkava MK 4 tanks in their place, reported The Jerusalem Post. A part of the 7 Armored Brigade, Battalion 82 was formed prior...

IAF Chief Brig. Gen. Tal Kelman, who participated on Thursday in the rollout ceremony for the first F-35 “Adir” single-seat, single-engine, all-weather stealth multirole fighter at the Lockheed Martin factory in Dallas, sees the first 50 jets Israel will be receiving over the next few years as only a beginning. “We want to reach 75 jets,” Kelman told the IAF blog. “The Israeli F-35 is the first fifth generation fighter to arrive in the Middle East, and it will allow us to open a significant gap in our abilities when facing all of the elements in the area.” According to...

For the Obama administration, Israel’s security brass is an alternative government. That is the lesson from an article published this week in Foreign Affairs by David Makovsky, a member of Secretary of State John Kerry’s negotiating team during his failed peace process two years ago. Makovsky wrote that the security brass’s unbridled vilification of Sgt. Elor Azaria, for killing a wounded terrorist in Hebron in March, “captures the IDF’s growing involvement in the Palestinian issue.” “Seeing a diplomatic vacuum in Israeli politics,” he wrote supportively, “the IDF has increasingly worked to assert itself as a guardian of democratic values and...

Politicians should take careful note of the discontent in the street, as one woman from Dimona has as much voting power as the Prime Minister himself. She now represents many of the population’s feelings about how a young soldier has been dealt with. Those who wish to stay in power and those who wish to head a motivated army should have their ears to the ground instead of blaming extremist right-wing organisations and "twisted ideology.". A walk down the street in one of Israel’s major cities turned up the following comments voiced loudly in plain hearing range of everyone around:...

It has been cleared for publication that the IDF recently discovered a terror tunnel from Gaza into southern Israel, marking the first such discovery since 2014's Operation Protective Edge. The tunnel was a particularly large and complex one; its route stretched along the eastern sector of the Gaza Strip all the way to southern Gaza, and crossed onto the Israeli side. At some points it reached as much as 30 meters in depth. Video After being discovered, IDF forces quickly mobilized to secure and neutralize it - though precisely how is under a gag order, as is the tunnel's exact...

The family of Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif, the terrorist who was shot by a soldier in Hevron last week after a stabbing attack against Israelis, on Monday threatened the IDF with legal procedures, the Ma’an news agency reported. In a press conference at the Hevron governor’s office, al-Sharif’s uncle Fathi al-Sharif also urged the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, to file legal procedures against Israel at the International Criminal Court, over the incident. He also urged the PA and human rights organizations to push for the release his nephew’s body. On Sunday, it was reported that investigators in...

The family of an Israeli soldier now under investigation after shooting a wounded terrorist has filed a complaint with the police after receiving death threats. Relatives of the soldier reported that a man with a discernibly Arabic accent called them on Saturday, making threatening statements and revealing private information about the family. On Thursday, two terrorists attacked an IDF soldier station in Hevron, stabbing him in the upper torso. Both terrorists were neutralized. As the wounded soldier was being carried away by paramedics, one of the neutralized terrorists began to move, leading several people at the scene to express concern....

Channel 2 news broadcast highly incriminating video evidence Thursday evening filmed with hidden cameras by nationalist group Ad Kan, which shows ultra-leftist group Breaking the Silence engaged in what appears like espionage activity against the IDF. ‘Breaking the Silence has crossed another red line,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said after the report was aired. “The investigative security forces are looking into the matter.” The videos were gathered by Ad Kan’s undercover agents who infiltrated Breaking the Silence over a three-year period. They show Breaking the Silence activists questioning ex-IDF soldiers – who are, in fact, Ad Kan agents – about...

For about three and half years, since the summer of 2012, Hezbollah has been actively involved in the Syrian civil war. From protecting its weapons caches on Syrian soil and guarding assets essential to the regime of President Bashar Assad, the Lebanese organization moved on to frontline positions. In many cases, it is Shi’ite fighters who led Assad’s attacks on rebel organizations, and paid a price accordingly. At the beginning of this year it was estimated in the Israel Defense Forces that at least 1,300 Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the war in Syria and about 5,000 wounded. At...

Archive photo of Navy Squadron 916. (photo credit:IDF SPOKESMAN’S UNIT) Hamas in Gaza has received Iranian operational instructions on how to prepare swarm-like boat attacks, and is preparing such capabilities for clashes with Israel, according to a senior naval source. The Israel Navy’s Squadron 916 of fast patrol boats, tasked with securing the coastline, is training and preparing itself for combat with Hamas, while keeping a close eye on sea movements around the Strip. “Hamas is building up its ability to cause much damage from sea-based attacks,” the navy source told The Jerusalem Post this week. “It is improving its...

An Arab teenager from Hebron tried to stab an IDF soldier at a Hebron checkpoint on Saturday, after she aroused his suspicions. The soldier asked the 17-year-old woman to show him what was in her bag, at which point she pulled out a knife and tried to stab him. The soldier was lightly wounded. The soldier succeeded in pushing the woman away, and she collided with another Arab civilian, also from Hebron, who apparently tried to grab her and stop her terror attack. The terrorist then proceeded to stab the Arab man, wounding him moderately. At which point the soldier...

Eshkol regional council head Gadi Yarkoni on Monday addressed reports that Hamas is ramping up its terror tunnel construction, and several attack tunnels have already crossed underneath the border. Yarkoni said that the IDF has checked the complaints of residents of the region adjacent to Gaza who said they heard the sounds of digging underneath their homes, and he claimed that the sounds were not from terror tunnels. "I don't say that there aren't tunnels, the IDF needs to say that there aren't tunnels. The IDF needs to check everything. The IDF should come to every resident who hears noises...