Israel Summit Spurs Closer Cooperation with Mideast Allies on Iranian Drones - Yaniv Kubovich (Ha'aretz)
    The foreign ministers who attended the Negev Summit in Israel this week reached understandings on defending their airspace from Iranian threats, Israeli defense officials said.
    Recent attacks by Iran and its proxies against Saudi infrastructure have prompted Israel and a number of Arab countries to develop a joint mechanism for detecting and intercepting missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles.
    Since Israel's partner countries are geographically closer to Iran and Iraq - where a number of Iran-backed militias operate - this enables the Israeli Air Force to detect imminent threats earlier.
    Senior defense officials have said that coordinated air defense has in fact already occurred.

Top IRGC Commander: Tehran Will Not Tolerate Relations between Gulf Countries, Israel - Fazel Hawramy (Rudaw-Kurdistan)
    Maj.-Gen. Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), on Wednesday warned the Arab Gulf countries that Tehran will not tolerate political and security relations between them and Israel.
    "We say emphatically and warn that these kinds of relations are not acceptable at all."

Israel Welcomes 10,000 New Immigrants since Start of Ukraine War (i24News)
    10,000 people have immigrated to Israel in the past month, with more than 2/3 coming from Ukraine. The rest are from Russia and Belarus.

68 U.S. Senators Seek to Quash UN Probe of Israel - Jacob Magid (Times of Israel)
    68 U.S. Senators, including 31 Democrats and 37 Republicans, signed a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for the Biden administration to quash a UN Human Rights Council inquiry into Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
    They noted the council's "continuing bias against Israel and the disproportionate use of resources in an ongoing campaign to disparage, discredit and denounce Israel."
    The initiative was led by Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rob Portman (R-OH).
    The UN voted by 125 to 8 with 34 abstentions to launch an open-ended probe into Israel following the May war with Hamas.
    AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group, called the probe "part of the UN's broad, decades-long campaign to criminalize and delegitimize the world's only Jewish state."

U.S. and Israel Begin Naval Exercise (U.S. Central Command)
    The U.S. 5th Fleet and the Israeli Navy kicked off a 10-day maritime exercise on March 27 off the coast of Israel, focusing on maritime security operations, explosive ordnance disposal, health topics and unmanned systems integration.
    More than 300 U.S. personnel are participating, including a U.S. Navy explosive ordnance disposal dive team and a U.S. Coast Guard maritime engagement team. The USS Cole guided-missile destroyer is also participating.

20 Years Later, PA Still Glorifies Perpetrators of Passover Seder Massacre - Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch (Palestinian Media Watch)
    March 27 marked the 20th anniversary of the Passover Seder Massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya in 2002, when a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up, murdering 30 people and injuring another 160.
    Every month since then, the Palestinian Authority spends thousands of dollars to reward the family of the bomber and pay salaries to the terrorists who were arrested for their part in the massacre.
    Four of the terrorists arrested for the attack - Abbas Al-Sayid, the main planner; Fathi Hatib, who transported the bomber; Muhannad Shreim, who financed the attack; and Muamar Al-Sheikh, Al-Sayid's deputy - have by now each been paid over one million shekels by the PA as a reward for their participation in the murders.
    The PA has also paid hundreds of thousands of shekels to the families of Kais Adwan, one of the main planners of the attack, and to the family of the bomber, Abd Al-Basset Odeh.
    The PA has repeatedly honored Al-Sayid, calling him a "heroic fighter" and "the lion of the prison cells." The PA has also repeatedly glorified the bomber, Odeh.
    People who praise and reward terrorist murderers, simply because they murdered Jews, are not and will never be partners for peace.
    The writer, director of legal strategies for PMW, served for 19 years in the IDF Military Advocate General Corps.

There's No Apartheid in Israel, Says Arab Beauty Queen - Nicola Miltz (South African Jewish Report)
    Former Muslim beauty queen turned global interfaith activist Sarah Idan visited the University of Cape Town during the annual global Israel hate fest known as Israel Apartheid Week.
    Idan told the SA Jewish Report she had an argument with one Muslim student who was standing next to an "apartheid" wall.
    "I told her I was an Arab myself, and that I'd been to Israel and it was nothing like apartheid which was imposed by one set of people on another in the same country. The Palestinians are self-governing, they're not ruled by the Israelis."

Irish Jews "Dismayed" by Parliamentary Attacks on Their Community - Tim O'Brien (Irish Times)
    Maurice Cohen, chairman of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, was asked by the UN Human Rights Council to comment on Ireland's human rights record.
    In a two-minute video presented to the Geneva-based body, Cohen said Jews have been "dismayed by the use of anti-Semitic tropes by some members of the Irish parliament," and that Ireland has failed to deal with an upsurge in anti-Semitism fueled by online abuse.
    Ireland has failed to appoint a coordinator to combat anti-Semitism, as agreed by EU states, he said, and the council also had concerns about limitations to the Irish government's proposed hate crime legislation, which does not adequately address anti-Semitic hate speech and incitement to hatred.
    Cohen said a member of the Jewish community, Alan Shatter, was "wrongly forced" to resign as minister for justice and defense "as a result of a variety of false allegations," and should receive "a complete public apology" from the Dail.

Israeli Curriculum Continues to Spread in Jerusalem's Arab Sector - Peggy Cidor (Jerusalem Post)
    After five-and-a-half decades of the single rule of the Palestinian curriculum, the Israeli program and the Israeli matriculation are gaining a foothold in Jerusalem's Arab sector.
    The construction of new schools have greatly helped to encourage the transition, with 32 new educational institutions established in the last six years in eastern Jerusalem at a standard similar to every new school in Israel.
    In September 2021, 13,000 Arab students studied according to the Israeli program, compared to 5,000 five years ago - a jump of 160%.
    Young interviewees said the change in outlook was due to the realization that employment prospects were limited in the Palestinian market, so it was preferable to pursue integration into the Israeli market.

Elbit Systems Has the Weapons the World Wants - Danny Zaken (Globes)
    Israel's major privately-owned defense company, Elbit Systems, has a range of products that are in demand, like the Sigma artillery system, electronic warfare systems and protection against them, and precision-strike guided missiles for ranges of 40-150 km.
    Elbit's Hermes unmanned aerial vehicle has been sold to several armies worldwide.
    The war in Ukraine has sped up global demand, as countries in Europe and NATO are re-equipping and buying new weapons systems.

UK Acquires Israeli-Made Body Armor for Women Soldiers (Monch-UK)
    The UK Defense Ministry in April will begin issuing body armor specially designed for women.
    The ministry announced that "extensive trials with serving female soldiers" have led to the creation of a vest more tailored to women.
    The Virtus Scalable Tactical Vest (STV) is manufactured by Israeli company Source Tactical Gear and has been in use by men in the British military since 2020.