A solar energy company headquartered at a Conservative Jewish kibbutz spread its solar energy investments with the launch of six new solar fields in the Negev and Arava, north of Eilat, on Monday.

The $150-million projects cover 128 acres on moshavim and kibbutzim.

Arava, based on the Ketura Kibbutz in the Arava, approximately 43 miles north of Eilat, also has begun construction of a 150-acre solar energy farm near Ketura and which will be able to supply more than a third of Eilat’s electricity’s needs

“Now that the current quotas have been utilized, the time has come to launch the economic tariff era, and to build scores of additional projects, all of them in the Negev and Arava, ventures which long ago demonstrated eligibility for tariff approval, ventures which can be hooked up to the national grid within a year of publication of the second campaign series,” said Arava Power CEO Jon Cohen said.

Arab has been an innovator in clean energy. It recently installed the world’s first automated cleaning system with 84 robots for its solar 28,000 panels.

The kibbutz is environmentally oriented in other areas besides solar energy.

Its operates Algatechnologies, a leading manufacturer and supplier of natural algae astaxanthin. The company announced on Monday the launch of a new products, called AstaPure® 20% astaxanthin oleoresin, which “offers much smaller, friendlier sized capsules without changing or reducing the astaxanthin dosage,” according to Efrat Kat, Director of Marketing and Sales at Algatech.

Algatech’s cultivation process employs a closed system that remains completely exposed to natural sunlight.

AstaPure products are used in multiple forms of dietary supplements, “cosmeceuticals,” foods and beverages.

Israel’s new Iron Beam anti-mortar shell system achieved a high interception rate in tests that showed it “shoots down flying objects like flies,” according to the CEO of Rafael Advanced Systems, which developed the technology.

Yedidia Yaari told Israel Defense, “This is a system for a shorter range than Iron Dome,” which has been deployed around urban centers and has a high success rate of interception short and medium-range missiles.

The Iron Beam uses a laser that “is designed to intercept simpler munitions, such as mortars,” Yaari explained.

He added, “The system has undergone feasibility tests, and we’re now in the development stage. We’re after the demo, but there is another development phase ahead of us. There are technology models that prove that it has a very high interception rate.”

The system will give a bit of peace of mind to residents of the Gaza Belt communities, pounded by thousands of mortar shells for well over a decade.

Leaders of the communities have been hollering for years for the government to give the IDF the green light to invade Gaza and regain control that was lost by a soft policy against terrorism in the Oslo War, also known as the Second Intifada, which began in 2000.

The Defense Ministry for years consistently carried out a policy of restraint, preferring not to retaliate harshly for fear of sparking an escalation by Hamas terrorists, who always want the last word, or in this case, the last missile.

The only changes in the policy were when Tel Aviv was threatened, in November 2008, prior to the Operation Cast Lead counter-terrorist campaign, and a year and a half ago, when the IDF countered with the Pillar of Cloud campaign.

With these exceptions, southern Israel’s residents have been subject to enemy missile fire and mortar shelling attacks at any time day and night and have paid a heavy price. Dozens have been killed, hundreds have been wounded and thousands still suffer from post-trauma stress.

In the past year, the Defense Ministry has become more defensive and has retaliated almost after every mortar shell or Kassam rocket attack.

The response usually is symbolic, with Air Force planes and drones bombing weapons factories and smuggling tunnels that already are known to exist.

The Iron Beam system will offer more protection and will make it more difficult for Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza to ruin the lives of people in the Western Negev.

The IDF knows that Hamas eventually will try to use their longer-range missiles to attack Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Terrorists do not stockpile missiles. They use them to prove to themselves that normal civilization has no value in the eyes of their Allah.

Sometime in the future, when Israel has enough confidence to decisively wipe out the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza if it does rot away first, historians might write that Israel was strong by not touching off another war with the usual outcome of international condemnation of the country’s carrying out the right to defend itself.

They also should write that the bravery of Israel in the Negev who did not flee, and many of whom were killed, allowed the IDF to wait so many years before developing the Iron Beam.

Terrorists in northern Gaza shot at an IDF patrol near the Gaza security fence early Thursday afternoon as attacks on soldiers become almost daily.

No one was injured.

The army maintains a small base on the outskirts of kibbutz, located in the Western Negev.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the government “has turned the Negev and Be’er Sheva into the cyber capital of the Eastern Hemisphere” and that “there will no trickle of rockets.”

Every prime minister for the past 20 years has promised Jews in Gaza, before they were expelled, and residents in the Western Negev, that Israel will not tolerate missile fire from Gaza.

Those promises were worth about as much as the commitment of Ariel Sharon when he encouraged Jews to live in Gush Katif and as much as the intellectual dishonesty of the Labor governments that offered incentives to Jews to live in the same communities in Judea and Samaria that they now want to dismantle.

After the expulsion of Jews from Gaza in 2005, the Palestinian Authority, then under the aegis of Mahmoud Abbas and later under the current Hamas regime, relentlessly pounded Sderot and Netivot with missiles. They developed longer-range rockets to hit Ashkelon, and then Ashdod, both of them key port cities where a single missile blast at the wrong place could blow up strategic  infrastructure, such as the electric generating, fuel depots and gas lines. Defense ministers talked, and terrorists fired. When the missiles stated hitting the area of Rehovot and Rishon LeTzion, cities that are part of metropolitan Tel Aviv, the government ordered the IDF not only to put an end to the attacks but also changed its policy and started retaliating for every rocket attack.

It is a sad fact that the government really does not care that much about the towns of Sederot, Netivot and surrounding rural areas. The votes are in metorpolitcan Tel Aviv, the home of most Israeli factories and offices and the homes of the power brokers, the people who really run Israel.

Tel Aviv is running out of room, Home prices are out of reach of the average family, and the Olmert and Netanyahu administrations made strategic decisions to invest in the wide open Negev, whose “capital” is Be’er Sheva, for decades an ignored outpost for Moroccan Jews and academics who learn and teach at Ben Gurion University.

A revolution is taking place in Israel, and it is in the Negev. A new high-tech park, with international investment, was launched earlier this year. The north-south Highway 6 high-speed highway is being extended to the outskirts of Be’er Sheva.

The IDF is in the process of moving bases, especially Air Force bases, from the Tel Aviv area to the Negev.

“We are in the midst of a revolution that is turning the Negev into a thriving center, not a periphery or branch, into a bustling center of Israel,” Netanyahu said Tuesday.

His last line, that “my policy is clear; any firing of rockets will be met with an immediate and sharp response,” was ostensibly irrelevant to the subject of development, but in fact it was part and parcel of the new Negev.

Israel now has a vested interest in the Negev, and it cannot afford even one rocket attack no more than it can allow rocket firing on Ben Gurion Airport.

It is not a very nice message to the pioneers of kibbutzim, moshavim and development towns in the Negev, but the truth is that the Iron Dome anti-missile system is just a Band-Aid.

The developing the Negev as the Cyber Capital of the Eastern Hemisphere is guaranteeing southern Israel peace and quiet.

The Israel Defense Forces called up a limited number of reservists following a second day of rocket attacks from Gaza on southern Israel.

The reservists — for air defense, according to the Israel Defense Forces — were summoned on Thursday, when 17 more rockets were fired at Israel. Seven landed in Israel and two were intercepted by the Iron Dome system. The remainder hit Palestinian areas. Another rocket struck southern Israel after the announcement was made but caused no damage.

At least seven rockets were fired at southern Israel shortly after the Islamic Jihad terrorist group in Gaza said it would abide by the cease-fire mediated by Egypt in 2012 amid an Israeli operation to stop rocket attacks.

Four rockets were fired Thursday morning at Ashkelon and Ashdod, with two landing in open fields between the cities and one intercepted over Ashkelon by Iron Dome. Ashdod closed schools without rocket-proof shelters following attacks.

Hours later, Israel’s Air Force retaliated by targeting seven “terror sites” in the southern Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would continue to respond militarily to the attacks.

“Our policy in the South is clear — we attack anyone who attempts to hurt us and we will react with a powerful force,” Netanyahu said Thursday morning. “I want to clarify that whoever tries to hurt our Purim celebrations, we will respond with force.” Purim begins on Saturday evening.

Israel’s security Cabinet met Thursday morning to discuss the escalation in attacks from Gaza.

The previous evening, Islamic Jihad fired dozens of rockets at southern Israel, with 41 landing in Israeli territory, including five in residential neighborhoods. Iron Dome shot down at least three of the rockets. The IDF responded by hitting what it called in a statement 29 “terror locations” in Gaza with artillery fire. Israeli residents were instructed to remain within 15 seconds of a bomb shelter overnight. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks and urged restraint from all sides. The U.S. State Department in its condemnation of the attacks said Israel has a right to defend itself.

Wednesday’s attack was the largest on Israel since the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense, the IDF said.

Soldiers in a new IDF company called “Defenders of the Negev” maintain an observant Jewish lifestyle and learn Torah while they work to protect the State of Israel.

Their service reflects an important goal of the IDF –  to help Haredi Orthodox Jews integrate into the army.

The combat soldiers, all “ultra-Orthodox Jews,” undergo six months of special training that focuses on infantry patrol, pinpoint operations and even basic lessons in Arabic that enable them to communicate with the population that lives in the area.

Throughout this process, these soldiers are able to preserve their religious lifestyle. During their basic training and course, they study religion and Jewish tradition with rabbis, just as they would in a traditional yeshiva. The soldiers regularly pray, study Torah and even have a special kitchen that prepares kosher food to an extra-high standard.

“They have everything they were accustomed to here,” explains Brig. Gen. Rafi Peretz, Chief Military Rabbi to the IDF. “Everything has remained the same, except for maybe spending the night in a sleeping bag.”

The difference between the “ultra-Orthodox” youth in the program and typical Haredi draft dodgers is that they don’t wear black hats and black suits. They are what in Israel is called “Hardal,” an acronym for Haredi national religious.

However, the IDF also has a program for Haredi black hatters to join the army and learn Torah, as some Haredi Zionists do as opposed to the masses who follow their anti-Zionist rabbis.

One of the “Hardal” soldiers is New Jersey native Eliyahu Frankel, whose father told the IDF, “He woke up one morning and decided this is what he wants to do, and we think he has been enormously successful here.”

Solder Eliyahu says, “I have been able to pray three times a day and study Torah. I decided to enlist in the IDF because I wanted to contribute to the country and protect its citizens.” He said his training has helped him “understand the other side and to stick together.”

Haredi black hats are welcome.

Terrorists form Gaza attacked Israel with one and possibly two missiles on Thursday despite pledges by Hamas that it would halt rocket firing.

Either Hamas is not capable of controlling rival terrorist gangs, which has been the situation off and on for more two years, or it has returned to its old tactic of  pledging ceasefires and allowing others to break them.

One rocket exploded south of Ashkelon early Thursday afternoon south of Ashkelon, exploding in an open area without causing damage, and  a second blast was heard at night. The point of impact has not been determined.

The IDF contradicted a report from local officials that the Iron Dome system intercepted the first missile.

One rocket also was fired on the area on Tuesday.