Page 4 - TORCH Magazine #14 - July 2019

Extensive military cooperation
Residents of rural Lincolnshire are used
to military operations above their skies. But in September, for the first time ever, Israel will join the RAF’s annual Cobra Warrior joint exercise.
It follows an unannounced training exercise over the skies of the Middle East in June, nicknamed “Tri-Lightning”, in which the British, American and Israeli air forces conducted the first ever F-35 joint exercise over the skies of the Middle East.
The level of UK-Israel military cooperation is often publicly downplayed by the British government because of the anticipated backlash it would cause. But reassuringly Britain and Israel are close and important military allies.
The UK already uses various Israeli weaponry, whilst Britain's BAE provides Israel with defensive and aerospace systems. An Israeli company is the main partner for the training system used by all new RAF pilots. Meanwhile, it is Israel’s battlefield medical technology that saves the lives of British troops that are wounded.
However, silence over the scale of co- operation could be changing.
The head of the British Army met with his counterpart for a tour of Israel in April during which the IDF tweeted, “The cooperation between Israel and the UK is strong and it’s getting even stronger”.
In 2018, HMS Ocean, the fleet flagship of the Royal Navy, heralded Prince William’s visit to Israel by docking in Haifa and the
RAF participated in a flyover for Israel’s 70th anniversary.
In May this year, over 60 British army veterans — many suffering serious injuries — flew to Tel Aviv with their families to join Israeli counterparts for the inaugural Veterans Games.
The five-day long event gave soldiers from the UK and from the Israel Defence Force the chance to experience the kind of competitive sports seen at the Invictus Games.
Help for Heroes praised Israel’s approach to supporting the rehabilitation and recovery of wounded ex-soldiers and said it is a model that could be explored to further help veterans in the UK.
Colonel Richard Kemp
Vital intelligence sharing
The former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, recently told CUFI that the UK’s military cooperation with Israel is “some of the closest with any country in the world”. But this cooperation is not only militarily.
Aside from perhaps with the US, the UK enjoys “virtually the closest intelligence cooperation with Israel than with any other country in the world.”
This was demonstrated in June when it was revealed that Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, had helped the UK discover a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate in London in 2015 for use in an Iran-backed, Hezbollah terror plot in the UK. The hoard of explosives was more than what was used in the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and damaged hundreds of buildings. Thanks to British and
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CUFI.ORG.UK
Veterans Games, Tel Aviv