I have covered several gun and/or military-related jewish invention myths before – such as the Uzi, (1) the Desert Eagle (2) and the MiG series of fighter planes – (3) but another less well-known myth concerns the origins of IDF’s main weapons of the 1970s to the 1990s although more in theory than practice: the Galil Rifle.
Although often touted as some ‘amazing Israeli invention’ by commentators who should know better (4) the truth is the Israeli Galil was simply – rather like the Uzi – a straight copy of an existing weapon in the form of the Egyptian-made variant of the Soviet AK 47 but then modified using a Finnish improved version of the AK 47: the Valmet RK 62.
