The Freeman Center agrees with Dr. Aaron Lerner that anti-
missile defense is a false solution for Israel's security
problems.
There is only ONE solution-the annihilation of
terrorist/jihady forces.
[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:
Let's put on our thinking caps for a moment and walk through the logic of
the following:
1. 15% of the Grad and Qassams made it through the Iron Dome system.
2. The Arabs have a large quantity of these missiles and if Israel retreats
from even more areas their importation of these will increase.
3. The system cannot provide protection to areas within 7 kilometers of the
border.
So why in the world is the following claim made: "The battlefield success of
Iron Dome could change the political calculus in Israel by providing
protection against attacks that prevented Israel from withdrawing after it
dismantled settlements in Gaza in 2005."
Pull out a map and look at where withdrawals could take place from.
(a) The 7 kilometer unprotected zone includes many Israeli communities
(including Jerusalem).
(b) More to the point: why in the world would it be acceptable to put the
Israeli civilian population in a situation that it may find itself
constantly seeking shelter and hoping that the incoming rockets won't be
part of the 15% that get through.]
Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense system hits 85% of targets
By Eli Lake The Washington Times Monday, August 29, 2011
Israel’s cutting-edge missile defense called Iron Dome scored an 85 percent
success rate in knocking out rockets launched against Israel’s southern
cities in recent clashes with Gaza.
“Iron Dome in April became the first anti-ballistic missile system to be
used in combat,” said Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United
States.
Israeli officials said the country’s two batteries of Iron Dome missile
interceptors shot down Russian-made Grad and Qassam rockets fired from Gaza
positions by smaller terrorist groups such as the Popular Resistance
Committees and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The battlefield success of Iron Dome could change the political calculus in
Israel by providing protection against attacks that prevented Israel from
withdrawing after it dismantled settlements in Gaza in 2005.
Mr. Oren said 1,000 Qassam rockets were fired into southern Israel from
August 2005 to May 2006. At the time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon formed a
political party, Kadima, to complete what he called disengagement, or the
withdrawal of Israeli forces and the dismantlement of settlements in
Palestinian areas of the West Bank that the Jewish state did not intend to
keep within its final borders. The continuous barrage of rockets from Gaza
is widely seen as stopping disengagement in its tracks.
“This restores Israel’s deterrence against a weapons system that Israel’s
enemies believed Israel was incapable of defending against,” said Patrick
Clawson, the director of research for the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy. “Second, by doing that, it makes it politically possible to talk
about trading territory for peace, even if you are not confident that the
new authorities can stop missile attacks by terrorists from that territory.”
The Obama administration has supported Iron Dome. In the current defense
budget, the Pentagon provides $205 million for Iron Dome deployments, in
addition to the nearly $3 billion Israel received in U.S. military financing
for 2011.
Rep. Steven R. Rothman, a New Jersey Democrat who is the lead lawmaker on
the House Appropriations Committee that secured the additional money for
Iron Dome, said the missile defense system “serves as an essential part of
Israel’s multilayered umbrella of anti-rocket and anti-missile defenses, and
over the past week this system has shown just how capable it is.”
A former senior Israeli defense official with detailed knowledge of the Iron
Dome system said it is a crucial element of Israeli defenses. “But it is not
a silver bullet because there will always be 10 times more rockets than Iron
Dome interceptors can stop,” he said.
Despite the high success rate, one Grad rocket did get past the Iron Dome
battery protecting the Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, killing one and wounding
eight, according to Israeli news reports.
Mr. Oren said the Iron Dome system can distinguish between rockets and
missiles that will land in civilian areas and rockets that do not need to be
intercepted because they will impact in remote areas.
One criticism of Iron Dome is that it costs about $100,000 to fire an
interceptor, compared with the cost of about $1,000 for Palestinians to fire
a Qassam rocket.
Einat Wilf, a member of Israel’s Knesset who serves on the foreign affairs
and defense committees, said “the cost is a major issue with Iron Dome.”
She added that the system works well for populated areas and strategic
targets. “We don’t use it to stop everything. This is one way to balance the
equation financially,” Ms. Wilf said.
Ms. Wilf also said Iron Dome cannot defend areas close to rocket launch
areas, such as the southern Israeli town of Sderot.
Carl Sherer, an Israeli blogger who closely follows the development of Iron
Dome, said the system cannot operate at short distance.
“They don’t deploy at anything less than 7 kilometers from Gaza,” he said.
“This means that Israel’s cities that are less than 7 kilometers from Gaza,
like Sderot, can’t be covered by Iron Dome because it takes too long for the
human being operating the system to fire on the rocket after its launched
from Gaza.”
Mr. Clawson said Iron Dome still could end up doing for missile attacks what
Israel’s security barrier did to stop the threat of suicide bombers.
“The concern was how do you stop suicide bombers, and the answer was the
security barrier,” Mr. Clawson said. “Now the problem has been missiles,
short range missiles and rockets. Iron Dome is making a big dent on this
problem.”
• Ben Birnbaum contributed to this report.
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IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
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