Greek soldiers trained in Israel with the Kfir Brigade’s Haruv reconnaissance unit – Kan 11 speaks of a message to Erdoğan

Dozens of Greek soldiers were in Israel this week for joint training with fighters of Haruv, the reconnaissance unit of the Israeli army’s Kfir Infantry Brigade. The information was made public by the main news bulletin of Israel’s public broadcaster Kan 11 on the evening of Thursday, November 12, in a first report by military correspondent Itay Blumental.

The headline of the report was “The Greek exercise in Israel and the message to Erdoğan”. In a post of his own, Blumental wrote that soldiers from Greece arrived in Israel this week for a joint exercise with Haruv fighters, against the background of joint messages to Turkey about the tightening of the two countries’ defence ties, while Kan’s post summed up: “The message to the Turks: the bond between Israel and Greece is getting stronger”. The report notes that the Israeli army’s joint exercises are aimed at strengthening relations between armies. The bulletin’s captions stated that “dozens of Greek army soldiers trained this week alongside fighters of the Kfir Brigade”.

What Haruv is

Haruv is the reconnaissance (sayeret) unit of the Kfir Brigade, the largest infantry brigade of the Israeli army. The bulletin’s footage shows soldiers in full kit on open, dry ground and an armoured vehicle, but it does not say which Greek unit took part or how many days the training lasted.

By Thursday evening there had been no official announcement either from the Hellenic National Defence General Staff (GEETHA) or from the Israeli army about the joint training. Kan’s report thus remains the only source for the participation of Greek service members.

Cooperation in every domain

The report comes one day after the publication of the large search and rescue exercise NEMESIS 2026, in which Greece, Cyprus and Israel worked together against a maritime disaster scenario, and a few weeks after the SPIKE NLOS and ER acceptance firings in joint training with the Israeli Navy. The two countries’ defence cooperation now covers exercises on land, at sea and in the air, as well as major armament programmes with Israeli systems.

Kan, as the headline of its report shows, also reads the training as a message to Ankara, at a time when Turkey is disputing the surveys for the Greece–Cyprus cable and Israel–Turkey relations remain tense.