This past week, the true extent of the problem of rape and sexual assault in the military came to light, and the numbers were stark and ugly. A new Pentagon report found that nearly 26,000 members of the military were sexually assaulted last year — a 35% increase from 2010. The numbers sent shock waves…
Israel risks a loss of credibility over both its “red line” for Iran’s nuclear programme and its threat of military action, and its room for unilateral manoeuvre is shrinking. After years of veiled warnings that Israel might strike the Islamic Republic, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out an ultimatum at the United Nations last September….
Israel’s military plans to vacate land worth $14 billion and move most of its headquarters from the heart of Tel Aviv in a $7 billion project intended to alleviate an acute national shortage of room for housing. The Bank of Israel, concerned by surging housing prices, has called on the government, which controls about 93…
The Israeli Defense Forces criticized a public relations campaign launched by the Foreign Ministry to boost Israel’s image around the world because it starred sexy Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli, an Israeli TV station reported Sunday. The report stated that the IDF spokesman sent an official letter to the Foreign Ministry arguing that by using Refaeli,…
Democratic U.S. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the powerful Armed Services Committee, said on Thursday he would not seek re-election in 2014, ending more than three decades in the Senate. “This decision was extremely difficult because I love representing the people of Michigan in the U.S. Senate and fighting for the things that…
Ed Koch documented his struggles with racist, Jew-hating soldiers as a young GI in a long-lost diary that came to light after his death earlier this month. The late ex-mayor of New York wrote of his struggles with bigotry during his Army boot camp in a diary that his sister found while cleaning out his…
Israel’s government watchdog criticised outgoing Defence Minister Ehud Barak and former armed forces chief Gabi Ashkenazi on Sunday over a relationship full of “loathing and mistrust” that had hurt the military’s hallowed national image. The findings detailed mud-slinging at the very top of Israel’s defence establishment and briefly shifted local media focus away from the…
A Swiss army commander reportedly praised Nazi-era German general Erwin Rommel before a group of officers, holding up Rommel as an example for the Swiss army to follow. According to a report in the Swiss newspaper Der Sonntag, the officer, a lieutenant colonel identified only as “PL,” defended his words as “no praise for Rommel…
