A successful conviction in the ongoing trial of a suspected Hezbollah operative in Peru could help authorities “unravel the network of operatives and supporters that Hezbollah has erected throughout the country,” an expert on international terrorism wrote in Foreign Affairs on Wednesday. Mohammad Hamdar was detained in Lima in the fall of 2014 and tested positive...

Likud MK Ayoub Kara is expected to be named minister without portfolio on Sunday, an appointment that would make him the first lawmaker from Israel’s Druze community to serve as a full minister. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to make the appointment as part of a cabinet reshuffle ahead...

Israeli and Jewish American humanitarian aid organizations have launched an emergency mission to deliver warm clothing to Syrian refugees suffering from sub-zero temperatures and heavy snowfall in Greece. The extreme wintry weather has made life in the refugee camps even more difficult than usual. The non-governmental international humanitarian aid organizations,...

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman recommended on Wednesday that the IDF Chief of Staff should have his term extended by an extra year. In a statement announcing the decision, Liberman called Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot “a valued chief of staff who has led the army to success and with great professionalism. The...

Iranian authorities are exposing their “utterly brutal sense of justice” by continuing to carry out “cruel and inhuman” corporal punishments including floggings, amputations, and forced blinding, Amnesty International charged on Wednesday. Hundreds of prisoners are flogged in Iran each year, sometimes in public, Amnesty noted. In the latest flogging case on January 5,...

Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) introduced a bill on Tuesday that would improve legal protections for states that enact legislation to fight boycotts of Israel. The bill, called the Combating BDS Act, has 19 cosponsors from both parties. Its provisions would apply to state legislation addressing...

The Israeli Air Force on Wednesday received its first Arrow 3 ballistic missile interceptors, the latest in the military’s multi-layered missile defense system, the Defense Ministry said. Arrow 3, which has been under development for years and passed several tests involving launching interceptors into space, will be integrated into the military’s existing rocket...

The software giant Oracle is opening a startup accelerator program in Tel Aviv to fuel local cloud-enabled Israeli innovation. Run by the Oracle research and development team, the program will provide six months of mentoring from technical and business experts, state-of-the-art technology, a co-working space, and access not only to...

The strike last Friday on a military airport near Damascus was likely the latest salvo in Israel’s attempt to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining highly-accurate Iranian surface-to-surface missiles, Ynet military analyst Ron Ben Yishai wrote Tuesday. The targeted airport is a known drop-off point for missiles delivered from Iran by cargo planes,...

At least 32 Jewish Community Centers across the United States were subjected to bomb threats on Wednesday, less than ten days after 16 more JCCs were evacuated after similar threats. JCCs and other Jewish institutions were targeted in the Boston, Miami, Detroit, Cincinnati, Nashville, Minneapolis, and Orlando metro areas, among others. The...