Pulling together a list of the wars most in need of international attention and support in 2016 is challenging for all the wrong reasons. For 20 years after the end of the Cold War, deadly conflict was in decline. Fewer wars were killing fewer people the world over. Five years ago, however, that positive…
Category: Israel
Inspirational: How a US-born amputee fought his way back into the Israeli army
Floridian Izzy Ezagui, gravely injured in Gaza in 2008, wasn’t going to let the loss of his left arm stop him from heading back to combat duty JERUSALEM (JTA) — The hardest part was loading the assault rifle. That’s not because he was a newbie, unaccustomed to the workings of a Tavor rifle. Rather, 1st…
Peering into the Past and Future of Urban Warfare in Israel
I traveled recently to Israel to visit a state-of-the-art military training facility in the southern Negev Desert opened by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) last year. The facility, at the Tze’elim army base, is meant to simulate urban operations of the kind the Israelis have so often faced in their conflicts with Palestinian and Lebanese…
Israel honors GI who told the Nazis, ‘We are all Jews’
US Army Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds, who died in 1985, led over 1,000 POWs in refusing to deliver Jewish comrades to German captors The Nazi soldiers made their orders very clear: Jewish American prisoners of war were to be separated from their fellow brothers in arms and sent to an uncertain fate. But Master Sgt….