Tag Archives: IDF

I have a crazy, very difficult week this week (family illness again) but I still want to post a Good News weekend instalment, if only for the sake of my sanity. It’s going to be a bit of a mix this week because I missed a fair bit of the …

Another week has rushed by and it’s time for another Good News Weekend instalment.  This weekend we’re going for an international flavour. My first item simply highlights the incredible distance Israel has travelled in a mere 71 years, and demonstrates the strength of Israel’s diplomatic and military standing. This week …

Israel turned into the Middle Eastern version of Italy tonight as Binyamin Netanyahu failed to form a coalition, and the Knesset voted to dissolve itself – a mere 7 weeks or so after the last elections. As far as I understand (and I may be wrong in which case please …

While we were sleeping – or at least some of us, those of us who live north of Rechovot and Ashdod – our Israeli compatriots were living through another hell of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s making. The terror groups shot over 300 missiles into Israel over Shabbat, and the shooting …

In recent years, Israel has waged a covert war against a large-scale Hamas effort to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip, a Hebrew-language media report has said. The Jan. 6 report, citing unspecified international media sources, was published in Walla News, one of the largest online Israeli news agencies. Since …

The IDF began its Operation Northern Shield at the beginning of December when it revealed Hezbollah attack tunnels leading from within Lebanon into Israeli territory. Since then five tunnels have been exposed and the IDF has begun destroying them. One of the more innovative ways has been to pour liquid …

I have written countless times about the UN and its various institutions and their depraved, insufferable bias against Israel. Last week we saw it all in action once again as the UN found it impossible to condemn Hezbollah – Hezbollah! One of the world’s most violent and vicious terrorist organizations …

Ryan Ashley is like a long cold drink on a hot summer day.  Cool, confident and extraordinarily talented, she made history as the first woman to win Ink Master after eight seasons of the tattooing reality TV show competition.  That led to her participation in the spin-off show Ink Master: Angels …

Yom Kippur, in all its weight and power, has passed. We have heard the last blasts of the shofar for this year. Hopefully it has awakened in us a stronger sense of who we are and where we need to go. ~~~~~~~~~~ The outpouring of grief over the terrorist murder …

 Has the IDF brass forgotten that they are soldiers, charged with providing military solutions to physical threats to the nation’s security; not sociologists, tasked with diagnosing the societal ailments of its enemies?  …the IDF General Staff has been insisting there is only one thing Israel can do about Gaza. According …

Today the new US Embassy in Jerusalem was dedicated and what a glorious day it has been. I knew I would watch the entire proceedings, which were very ably presided over by Ambassador David Friedman. What I did not know was how beautiful it would be or how deeply moved …

I did not watch “Seven Days in Entebbe” and I don’t intend to. When the trailer came out my first reaction was excitement.  This story is one of the best, breathtaking, exciting, moving, against-all-odds, adventure stories I have ever heard and, best of all – it’s real.  And it’s OURS. …

The Ballad for the Medic is one of the most powerful songs about the IDF. On Yom Hazikaron, IDF Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism, the radio is full of songs that have to do with the army, bereavement, and memory. Many of these songs are very …

In brief, this crazy: On Monday, the IDF identified a tunnel from Gaza that had entered Israel. It was under active construction, and not simply left over from before 2014. Beginning in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, it extended “dozens of meters” into Israel – headed towards Kibbutz Kissufim two …

On April 24th Israelis will commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day.  This is not the same date as the International Holocaust Memorial Day.  This date was chosen to emphasize the place of the Holocaust in the story of the Jewish people. We do this by first celebrating Passover.  One week later, we …

Were that I had only good news to report.  But painfully this is not the case.  And in a situation such as we are facing now, the good news, which does exist, must wait. There seems no end to this: In the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of Jerusalem today (Sunday) a …

Coming from the United States, I remember Memorial Day as the day we had to move our car to the side street if we didn’t want to get blocked in by the parade.  Old men in uniforms…I didn’t know the word veterans or what that meant…police, marching bands. Across the …

Towards a New Law of War  is the subject of a conference currently being held by Shurat Hadin, the Israeli Law Center, founded and run by the amazing Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. Current laws of warfare are outdated, she explained in her introductory remarks.  The Geneva Conventions never envisioned the asymmetrical warfare that …

 Israel Advocacy Update. Written by Emily Gian. Media and Advocacy Director, Zionist Federation of Australia.. The moment I heard about the devastating earthquake in Nepal, I knew that one of the first countries to put its hand up to offer assistance would be Israel. The IDF and other Israeli rescue …

In memory of the 67 brave soldiers who died before they could celebrate 67 years of Independence… One of my roles when I worked for the Zionist Council of Victoria was to put together the booklet for the Yom Hazikaron ceremony, which takes place every year the night before Yom …