With Advanced Technology, Russia Is Making It Harder for the U.S. and Israel to Operate in Syria

In recent weeks, Russia has completed the creation in Syria of a network of surface-to-air missiles as well as electronic-warfare devices that can jam mobile phones, radar, and the like and interfere with the systems used by aircraft. The most advanced Russian anti-aircraft missiles now provide protection to almost the entire country, and their range extends into northern Israeli airspace. Matti Suomenaro and Jennifer Cafarella discuss the implications for both Washington and Jerusalem:

Russia is using its electronic-warfare systems to monitor and disrupt operations by the U.S. anti-Islamic-State coalition in Syria. . . . Russia is likely to continue, if not to escalate, its use of electronic warfare against the U.S. in Syria. Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu stated on September 24 that Russia would jam the satellite navigation, airborne radar, and communication systems of combat aircraft in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in order to protect its facilities on the Syrian coast. Shoygu likely issued this threat in order to deter future strikes by the U.S. and Israel against Syria. . . . The U.S. must be prepared to defend against a future escalation that combines electronic warfare with ground operations against its partner forces in eastern Syria.

Russia ultimately aims to use its technical capabilities as part of its wider campaign to force the withdrawal from Syria of the U.S.-backed coalition. Russia can use these systems to decrease the overall freedom of maneuver—and increase the overall risk—faced by the U.S. in Syria, [thus raising] the cost of future airstrikes aimed at deterring chemical-weapons attacks by Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. [These systems] also increase the cost of future strikes by Israel against Iran in Syria.

The U.S. and Israel both must be prepared to suppress a larger number of air-defense systems and use more expensive stealth aircraft, such as the F-35, in Syria. Russia stands to gain a long-term strategic advantage over NATO through its new capabilities in Syria. The U.S. and NATO must now account for the risk of a dangerous escalation in the Middle East alongside any confrontation with Russia in Eastern Europe.

Read more at Institute for the Study of War

More about: Israeli Security, NATO, Politics & Current Affairs, Russia, Syrian civil war

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society