re: #60 ckkatz

The Galil was an interesting rifle. It was based upon a Finnish copy of the AK-47 . But was mostly built in the US M-16 (5.56x45) cartridge. It was intended as replacement for the standard IDF rifle, the FN-FAL after the 1973 war.

(Can’t blame them. The FN-FAL is long unwieldy, heavy and shoots the old 7.62x51 cartridge. Plus it really sucked due to many malfunctions from the desert dust. It got so bad that during the 1973 war a lot of soldiers ditched their FN and scrounged up very old Uzi submachine guns.)

However, as production geared up, the US decided to sell Israel M-16 and M-4’s. The US could produce the M-16 family much more cheaply than Israel could the Galil.

Eta- Galil is the Hebrew word for Galilee.

Still, the FAL (and its British inch-dimensioned and semi-auto-only variant, the L1A1) wasn’t referred to as “the right arm of the free world” for decades for nothing, since many of the nations outside of the Soviet bloc used it at some point (or still use it), with the notable exception of the US (who trialed it in the 50s, but ended up going with the M14 instead). It definitely made some interesting history at times, like this:

In the more than 70 years of use worldwide, the FAL has seen use in conflicts all over the world. During the Falklands War, the FN FAL was used by both sides. The FAL was used by the Argentine armed forces and the L1A1 Self Loading Rifle (SLR), a semi-automatic only version of the FAL, was used by the armed forces of the UK and other Commonwealth nations.[108]

en.wikipedia.org