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US Army soldiers train with an M2 Bradley IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle). Active Protection Systems that shoot down incoming anti-tank missiles must be carefully designed to avoid killing nearby friendly infantry. Even as the US Army races to install Trophy Active Protection Systems on its M1 Abrams heavy tanks, Trophy’s manufacturers are testing slimmed-down versions they want to sell the US for lighter vehicles, especially the aging M2 Bradley troop carrier. While other technologies look promising, Trophy is still the only non-Russian system that’s combat-proven to shoot down incoming anti-tank rockets and missiles. What’s more, US Army testing of the...

Hamina Class FAC in Finnish Navy service. Finland has selected Israel’s Advanced Naval Attack Missile to replace its current MTO85M system, a derivative of Swedish RBS15 that will reach the end of its life cycle in the 2020s. IAI’s Gabriel has beaten four other competitors evaluated by Finland’s MOD, including Kongsberg’s NSM, MBDA’s Exocet, Boeing’s Harpoon and Saab’s RBS15. IAI Gabriel 5 Advanced Naval Attack Missile is heading to Finland next year, replacing RBS15 on the Hamina-class missile boats and future Squadron 2020 corvettes. Image: IAI The selection of Israel’s Advanced Naval Attack Missile marks an important achievement for IAI,...

Slovakia will open a cultural embassy in Jerusalem for now. But that appears to be a prelude to a larger move. “Slovakia is on its way to relocating its embassy to Jerusalem,” Head of the Slovak National Council Andrej Danko told Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the visiting delegation of Slovak lawmakers announced the Eastern European country would open a cultural center in the Israeli capital. The move, when it materializes, would mark a break from European Union policy on Jerusalem. Slovakia would join the Czech Republic and Bulgaria as the other European Union member states to...

As Syrian government forces press on with a furious offensive against rebel-held areas in the country's south, Israel is quietly acknowledging that President Bashar Assad's forces will soon be on its doorstep, laying down red lines for postwar relations with the Syrian leader. Israel's main concern is to keep archrival Iran, an Assad ally, as far away from its border as possible — along with its proxy, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. "Our demand is that the Iranian forces will go out or withdraw from Syria as a whole, and in it specifically southwest Syria," said a senior Israeli military official.It...

Germany has been brokering an exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, and in recent weeks has proposed a concrete arrangement, the London-based Arabic language Al-Hayat newspaper said Thursday. In the deal, Israel would release Hamas terrorists it is holding in prison, in exchange for the remains of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin, Hy”d, and Oron Shaul, Hy”d, along with Israelis Avraham Mengistu and Hisham a-Sayad. According to the report, Germany has been trying to broker a deal for the past three years — almost since the end of Operation Protective Edge, when both Goldin and Shaul went missing in a battle...

With the case of the Aquarius ship, Spain of the new socialist government of Pedro Sánchez showed its welcoming and open face. But quietly and far from the cameras, all concentrated in the port of Barcelona, ​​Spain itself was becoming the most hostile European nation to Israel. First there was the decision of the third largest city of the country, Valencia, to embrace the boycott of Israel by proclaiming itself a "zone free from Israeli apartheid". Then the leader of the third largest Spanish party, Pablo Iglesias Turrión, head of Podemos, defined the Jewish state as a "criminal and illegal...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that the demand that Iran withdraw completely from Syria "is unrealistic." In a meeting with Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi, Lavrov argued that Iran is one of the strongest countries in the region...

The Tel Aviv District Court on Thursday convicted an Israeli hacker, who had terrorized institutions in the United States and airlines from his home in the southern city of Ashkelon, of thousands of counts of extortion and making false statements. The hacker was on trial on trial for making hoax bomb threats against Jewish community centers in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Israel for several months. ...

Australia on Monday announced it had ended direct aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) government over concerns the funds could be used to assist Palestinians convicted of political violence. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Australia would no longer be giving its yearly funding of A$10 million (€6.9 million, $7.5 million) to the World Bank’s trust fund for Palestinian recovery and development. “I wrote to the Palestinian Authority on May 29, to seek clear assurance that Australian funding is not being used to assist Palestinians convicted of politically motivated violence,” Bishop said in a statement. “I am confident that previous Australian...

An Iranian general accused Israel of manipulating the weather over the Islamic Republic, claiming on Monday the Jewish state was stealing clouds and snow and contributing to climate change. Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali made the remarks while speaking at a conference on agriculture in Tehran, where he claimed Iranian scientific centers have confirmed a foreign role in the drought conditions across the country. "Foreign interference is suspected to have played a role in climate change," Jalali said, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency. “Joint teams from Israel and one of the neighboring countries make the clouds entering into...

Federal Judge Rosemary Collyer refused the Fraenkel family's request to reconsider the low compensation imposed on Iran and Syria as those responsible for the kidnapping and murder of their son Naftali, along with Eyal Yifrach and Gil-Ad Sha'ar. The verdict set a compensation of $ 4.1 million, while the suit demanded $ 340 million, an amount that was common in previous similar suits. The suit was based on the fact that Naftali's family had American citizenship. The judge explained her decision with an outrageous statement that also imposed responsibility on the Fraenkel family, which she asserted had exposed itself to...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel has denied entry to a Jewish-American activist for advocating boycotts of the Jewish state. Israel’s immigration authority says the activist, Ariel Gold, arrived to Israel Sunday and was refused entry at the airport. Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said “whoever works consistently for a boycott against Israel will not enter here.” Gold is the national co-director of CODEPINK....

An Iranian general has accused Israel of stealing its clouds in order to manipulate weather and cause drought in the Islamic Republic. Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iran's Civil Defence Organisation said that the changing climate in Iran is 'suspect'. 'Foreign interference is suspected to have played a role in climate change,' said Jalali, who insisted results from an Iranian scientific study 'confirm' the claim. 'Israel and another country in the region have joint teams which work to ensure clouds entering Iranian skies are unable to release rain,' he said. 'On top of that, we are facing the...

Poland has amended its controversial Holocaust law that made it a crime punishable by up to three years in jail to say “Polish concentration camps,” four months after the law went into effect. Polish lawmakers voted on Wednesday by a vote of 388-25, with five abstentions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is pleased that Poland “fully rescinded” clauses in its Holocaust law. “I’m pleased that the Polish government, the parliament, the senate and the president of Poland decided today to fully rescind the clauses that were signed and caused a storm and consternation in Israel and among the international...

Rioters hurl rocks, Molotov cocktails and a bomb at troops, incendiary balloons spark 15 fires in Israel; small Israeli drone downed; over 100 Palestinians said hurtTwo Palestinians were killed Friday in violent demonstrations along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said. A 13-year-old was fatally shot in the head and a 24-year-old man died of gunshot wounds to his leg and abdomen, the ministry said. According to some reports, the boy was shot while sabotaging the border fence. A paramedic told AP the teenager was throwing stones “very close to the fence” before he was shot.Around...

Israel is rushing to secure its northeastern border after the latest onslaught from Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad drove 120,000 people to flee their homes. A war monitoring group said today that most of the refugees are heading towards the border with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. A senior Israeli minister said refugees gathering at the Golan frontier must be prevented from crossing into Israel.

The socialist congressional candidate whose primary-election upset of a Democratic House leader made national news this week claimed Israel committed a “massacre” of Palestinians in Gaza, despite the admission of Hamas that most of the dead were Hamas operatives. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, wrote in a May 14 tweet that the killing of some 60 Palestinians in “March of Return” protests that day was a “massacre” and that “no state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters,” reported the Jewish News Syndicate. “There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else,” she said. “Democrats can’t...

At least 17 civilians have been killed in an air strike on a basement shelter in south-western Syria, activists say, as warplanes pound rebel-held areas. A monitoring group reported that five children were among those who died when aircraft identified as Russian bombed Musayfira, east of the city of Deraa. Russia is backing an army offensive in the region, which borders Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. More than 90 civilians are said to have been killed since it began 11 days ago. The provinces of Deraa and Quneitra had been relatively calm for almost a year because of a...

A progressive Democrat in New York who called Israel’s killing of violent Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border a “massacre” scored a major upset over incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in a contentious party primary. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, defeated Crowley, 56, by a margin of 58-42 percent in Tuesday’s election, toppling a lawmaker who was viewed as the successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ocasio-Cortez belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America and is a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who ran as a Democrat in the 2016 presidential primaries. New...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held rare talks with King Abdullah II of Jordan during an unannounced visit to Amman on Monday, official sources in the two countries said. The two leaders discussed the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, the Jordanian royal court said in a statement. Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab countries to have peace treaties with Israel, and Monday’s visit was Netanyahu’s first to the kingdom since 2014. “The king and the prime minister discussed regional developments as well as advancing the peace process and bilateral relations,” the Israeli leader’s spokesman Ofir Gendelman...