Defense cuts bite into IDF’s operational platforms
(JNS.org) The Israel Defense Forces began to implement government-mandated cuts to its budget, announcing Tuesday that several of its operational platforms will be reconfigured, while others will be retired, in an effort to slash its expenditures.
The defense establishment has been asked to slash some 22 billion shekels ($6 billion) from its budget over the next three years. As part of the operational restructuring, the Israel Air Force will shut down one of its veteran squadrons and fuse two other squadrons into one. One of the IDF’s ground units will also be shut down, and several brigades will be reconfigured accordingly.
IAF Chief Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel met Tuesday with the servicemen assigned to the squadron that is scheduled to be dissolved, and broke the news to them.
“The IAF would rather forfeit a jet than cut back on flight hours. We would rather have well-trained pilots and advanced equipment than hollow capabilities,” a senior IAF officer told Israel Hayom.
The IDF has yet to finalize the restructuring of some of its ground units, but a military source familiar with the issue said the army would retire outdated tanks and other equipment whose operational relevance had significantly reduced over the years, ahead of making any changes that would affect personnel.
IBM buys Israeli cloud computing company
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) IBM on Tuesday announced an agreement to acquire Israel-based Computing Solutions Leaders International, a leading provider of virtualization management technology for IBM’s zEnterprise system. Financial terms were not disclosed, but market sources told Globes that IBM was paying about $20 million.
CSL International is a privately held company founded in 2004 by Sharon Chen with headquarters in Herzliya Pituach. In a statement, IBM said the acquisition deepened its cloud capabilities by offering simplified management of the virtualization environment.
CSL International’s CSL-WAVE software enables companies to monitor and manage their z/VM and Linux on System z environments using a powerful interface. The software provides drag and drop simplicity to instantly create, discover, visualize and connect virtual servers to resources, allowing clients to free up more skilled staff to address other business challenges.
The zEnterprise System enables clients to host the workloads of thousands of commodity servers on a single system for simplification, improved security and cost reduction. The combination of IBM and CSL International technologies will allow clients to manage all aspects of z/VM and Linux on System z virtualization, including CPU, memory, storage, and network resources.
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Jewish patrol unit to protect mosques in London
(JNS.org) Jewish crime-fighting volunteers in London met over the weekend with Muslim leaders and agreed to patrol mosques and other Islamic buildings to reduce anti-Muslim hate crimes.
The London-based Shomrim are Jewish volunteers who collaborate with authorities to prevent crimes, including hate crimes. Since the murder of British soldier Drummer Lee Rigby on the street by Muslim extremists in southeast London, anti-Muslim hate crimes have risen in Great Britain.
The local Muslim community turned to the local Liberal Democrat councillor, Ian Sharer, who connected them to the Shomrim, the London Jewish Chronicle reported. “This is a very serious situation, and so I thought, why not call my friends from Shomrim? We wanted to see if we could offer them protection and also security lessons,” Sharer said.
The collaboration is “just the beginning of a long-term partnership between the two communities,” said Shomrim patrol supervisor Chaim Hochhauser.
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Same-sex marriage law in Pennsylvania challenged by Jewish teacher
(JNS.org) Helena Miller, a Jewish teacher from Philadelphia, is one of 20 people who filed a federal lawsuit challenging a Pennsylvania law banning same-sex marriage.
Though they were married in Connecticut, Miller and physician Dana Raspberry cannot currently be recognized as legal partners in Pennsylvania because the state does not recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Consequently, Miller’s baby daughter also cannot be legally considered Raspberry’s daughter in Pennsylvania.
“We would really like for our child, when she’s old enough to understand what these things all mean, we want her to understand and see that our family is equal to any other family,” Miller told the Forward.
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Ramallah protesters call for launch of third intifada
(JNS.org) Arab demonstrators with covered faces marched in Ramallah on Monday, calling for the launch of a third intifada (uprising) against Israel and chanting “military action is the shortest route to end occupation.”
Ma’an News Agency reported that the protester group called “Tamarod” (rebellion), the same name as the movement that protested recently deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, included both men and women who chanted that a new intifada will revive the Palestinian cause.
“If you want a third intifada to break, you have to rebel against the Palestinian reality which the current leadership brought due to their disputes and different trends,” the protester group posted on its Facebook page.
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