Israel News

A senior Israeli official close to Prime Minister Yair Lapid condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision announced Wednesday to mobilize hundreds of thousands of reservists to fight in Ukraine and his veiled threat of nuclear war, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports.

Israel announced Wednesday that its navy has successfully tested the Gabriel 5 anti-ship naval missile system, i24 News reports.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz says Israeli troops have arrested and shot more than 1,000 Palestinians engaged in terror activity in recent months, as the military presses on with an operation in the West Bank following a series of attacks earlier this year.

A U.S. court has ordered the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to pay millions of dollars in damages to a group of Americans who sued saying they were wounded by the group’s rockets during a war with Israel in 2006.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told American Jewish leaders Monday that he plans to visit Israel, a gesture that advances Turkish-Israeli efforts to build diplomatic ties after 20 years of hostilities, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports.

Israel has seen a 128% increase in “Aliyah” – Jewish immigration to Israel – since last September, the Jerusalem Post reports. Israel has taken in 60,000 new immigrants in the last year, compared to 28,500 immigrants the country absorbed last year.

Archaeologists and scientists have identified traces of opium on ancient ceramic jugs unearthed at a Bronze Age burial site in Israel’s Tel Yehud, in a discovery they say prove unequivocally the drug was used in the Levant in the ancient world, the Times of Israel reports.

Speaking at the Auschwitz death camp, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi on Monday slammed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi for expressing doubt about the Holocaust, saying that was one of the main reasons Tehran could not be trusted with nuclear weapons.

Israel’s Antiquity Authority (IAA) stated Sunday that an intact burial chamber dating to the time of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, the Biblical Pharaoh associated with Moses, has been discovered at the Palmachim National Park in Rishon Lezion, DW reports.

Hezbollah terror chief Hassan Nasrallah on Friday issued a fresh threat over the offshore Karish gas field partly claimed by Lebanon, warning Israel against beginning extraction amid maritime border talks between Jerusalem and Beirut.

The first poll following the closing of the election lists on Thursday was issued with great fanfare by Kan 11 News Saturday night, and it reveals that, 1. Nothing has changed on the ground, other than the fact that Balad, the crazy, hateful, anti-Israeli Arab list that’s been dumped from the Joint Arab List will not make the cut, remaining well below the 3.25% vote threshold, leaves their former partners with only 4 mandates; and, 2. Everything has changed on the ground because now Lapid can rely on the Joint Arab List to recommend him to the President to take a stab at cobbling a new coalition government.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi is expected to take off for Europe on Sunday with the aim of meeting officials in Poland and France and strengthening Israel’s military cooperation with the nations and discussing the threat it faces from Iran.

The nuclear deal between Iran and world powers is unlikely to be renewed soon, if at all, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Thursday after European leaders voiced doubt about Tehran’s willingness to restore the 2015 agreement.

A senior Israel Defense Forces officer told reporters on Thursday that the military has identified that Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias in Syria are beginning to withdraw from the region following a series of airstrikes attributed to Israel in recent weeks.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield met with Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Monday to discuss the Biden Administration’s “commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” – but used the opportunity to also continue her boss’s mission of pressuring Israel into accepting the so-called “two state solution.”

Iran’s financing and support for terror proxies is the foremost cause of instability in the Middle East, and the country’s nuclear program could spark a regional arms race, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Monday.

Mossad chief David Barnea on Monday said Israel would not participate in the “charade” of a renewed nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, and warn that the emerging agreement would “not provide immunity” for Tehran from the spy agency’s operations.

Iran has turned scientific facilities in Syria into bases for the production of advanced missiles and weapons for its proxy forces across the Middle East, Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Monday.

France, Britain, and Germany on Saturday vented their frustration at Iran’s demand in talks to revive its 2015 nuclear deal that the UN nuclear watchdog close a probe into uranium particles found at three sites, adding that it was jeopardizing the talks.

Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar said on Sunday that his security agency has foiled more than 300 “significant” terror attacks so far this year, as the Israeli military has ramped up operations in the West Bank under its direction.