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Israel’s War Against Hamas Ushers in New Era for Defense Technologies
Israeli soldiers inspect the entrance to what they say is a tunnel used by Hamas terrorists during a ground operation in a location given as Gaza, in this handout image released Nov. 9, 2023. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
The “shock and horror” of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel and Israel’s ensuing war against the Palestinian terror group in Gaza is shaping how a defense technology renaissance will unfold, the head of a newly launched $50 million defense tech fund told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.
The Israel Defense Fund, headed by unmanned systems integrator Titan Innovations, is the second dedicated defense fund of its kind with the explicit goal of saving more Israeli lives on the battlefield with homegrown technologies.
According to Menahem Landau, the fund’s managing partner and the former head of UAV and drone technologies at Israel’s defense ministry, the operation in Gaza known as Iron Swords as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine are exposing significant gaps arising from connectivity and communications challenges in addition to AI-rooted threats.
“When dealing with urban warfare, when faced with challenges like dense civilian populations, urban obstacles, and unimaginable underground operations, and when Israel is constantly examined under a microscope by the world, battlefield victories are not enough — efficiency has become critical,” Landau told The Algemeiner.
According to venture capital (VC) monitor Pitchbook, more than $100 billion of VC has been invested in defense tech startups since 2021. Yet despite Israel’s obvious prowess in the defense space, and its reputation as the “Startup Nation,” the country’s technology and defense ecosystems do not have much overlap or interaction. Landau is hoping that will change in 2024 and that VC firms, as well as Israeli entrepreneurs, “will jump on the rising wave of defense tech.”
“Defense tech became a thing thanks mostly to Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific theater. Beyond that, we’re seeing over a trillion dollars in global defense budgets,” Landau said.
An estimated 3,000 terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7 by breaching its 40-mile long, $1 billion border fence at several dozen locations. In a statement, the Israel Defense Fund said it aims to identify technologies that can effectively address gaps in border security. The technologies can also be transferred to bridge existing gaps with US Homeland Security, Landau said.
“Seen through our lens, this means autonomous systems that accurately detect incoming threats in real-time, hidden from the enemy, with better survivability, and dynamic in its nature,” Landau said.
With 136 hostages still being held in Hamas’ vast subterranean tunnel network, estimated to stretch at least 380 miles, the fund also aims to prioritize technologies for conducting tunnel warfare, including specially-adapted search and rescue technologies.
Drones have played an enormous role in the war, even as early as Oct. 7 itself. In one instance that garnered headlines, the head of security at Or HaNer, a Gaza periphery kibbutz, was able to thwart a terrorist infiltration by deploying drones.
The drones “detected enemy movement and location prompting immediate mobilization of kibbutz security forces, averting a massacre in their kibbutz,” Oded Lipshitz, general partner at the Israel Defense Fund, told The Algemeiner.
Lipshitz went on to say that soldiers in Gaza also reported the huge benefits of drones for providing real-time threat detection and nullifying the use of “soldiers acting as human scouts.”
But Lipshitz stressed that the use of drones on the battlefield is limited “on account of connectivity challenges” and that Israeli drones, despite their abundance, still faced various obstacles in “working together in combat.”
Landau highlighted further obstacles faced by unmanned operations.
“On one hand, our guys are describing the moments of utilizing drone ops as ‘oxygen to their lungs’ and ‘our eyes in the sky,’ but these experiences are short-lived due to interruptions and neutralizations [of the drones] because of the environment, the enemy, and our own forces,” he said.
The fund hopes to mitigate the brief lifespan of drones by investing in AI-based sensors, software, and communication solutions needed for connectivity, GPS, threat detection, and unified command and platforms. Such technologies will also lead to preventing instances of friendly fire, Landau said.
The fund’s strength, he said, relies on the fact that it is “intimately familiar” with the ecosystem and the relevant technologies needed to allow for the development and deployment of fully integrated solutions.
More than half the CEOs from portfolio companies in Titan Innovation’s previous defense investment fund, which oversaw the development of game changing security systems like “Ronen” and “David,” were called up to war on Oct. 7 as reservists. “It has been enriching to get reports from the battlefield as to what works and where the challenges lie,” he said.
“We feel like it’s our moral imperative to show the world that Israel has the resilience and innovation to swiftly overcome all challenges and preserve our quantitative military edge and deterrence,” Landau said.
The post Israel’s War Against Hamas Ushers in New Era for Defense Technologies first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
The post Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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