In a somewhat unorthodox summer camp in the Gaza Strip, children aged between six and 16 picked up AK-47s and engaged in a series of quasi-military drills, including a lively game of “kidnap an Israeli soldier” in the sand dunes of Raffah.

An AFP correspondent listed some of the activities the Islamic Jihad summer camp offers its enrollees: Weapons use, jumping over fire and crawling under barbed wire, all performed to the tune of exploding charges.

Continue reading at YNet.

A Formula 1 race car zips past Jerusalem’s iconic YMCA building on Thursday as part of the Formula Jerusalem exhibition. (photo credit: Ilan Ben Zion/Times of Israel staff)

High performance sports cars roared through central Jerusalem Thursday afternoon in the city’s first ever Formula 1 exhibition. Approximately 70,000 tourists and residents — from both eastern and western neighborhoods of the capital — lined the streets of Jerusalem’s scenic core to see and hear the roar of the engines.

Braving the sun’s glare, spectators lined the three kilometers of cordoned-off streets to watch the first of two days of the Formula 1 Jerusalem Peace Road Show. Ferrari, Audi and Lotus race cars burned octane and rubber past the King David Hotel, Jerusalem’s ritzy Mamilla neighborhood, the newly renovated train station, and the iconic Ottoman-era Old City walls.

Phalanxes of police officers, reinforced by Border Police and hundreds of private security guards, lined the track. A white IDF observation dirigible, capable of providing an eye in the sky for the security detail on the high-profile event, hovered near the Jaffa Gate. Read more at The Times of Israel.

Iran and its terrorist allies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are carrying “non-stop” cyber attacks against Israel’s central computer systems, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed Sunday in his address to an international conference on cyber warfare at Tel Aviv University.

Without elaborating, Netanyahu said that “vital national systems” had been targeted. Suspected targets include water systems, power stations, and banking sites. “In the past few months, we have identified a significant increase in the scope of cyber attacks on Israel by Iran. These attacks are carried out directly by Iran and through its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah,” he added.

Continue reading at The Tower.org

A United Nations special investigator said his reputation was being smeared and he wouldn’t resign, despite calls for his ouster over provocative remarks on terrorism, the United States and Israeli policy.

Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, told reporters Tuesday in Geneva that he was only doing his job and “it’s important to distinguish criticism from this kind of smear campaign.”

In public remarks and reports sharply critical of Israel’s settlement policy, Falk has repeatedly run afoul of advocacy groups such as UN Watch, which accused him of anti-Semitism, and the United States, which called for his resignation.

Continue reading at the Times of Israel.