The Successes of Israel’s Iron Dome, and Its Downsides

When Palestinian terrorists launched some 400 rockets into Israel last week, the Iron Dome anti-missile system shot down many of them. Since the system went into operation in 2011, it has intercepted 1,500 rockets and established a 90-percent success rate. Yet this high-tech defense has its critics, as Jacob Nagel and Jonathan Schanzer write:

[B]y granting time and space to Israeli officials to consider a proportional or surgical [retaliatory] strike, Iron Dome can have the unintended consequence of potentially prolonging a conflict. In other words, the system raises the threshold for Israeli political leaders and military brass to launch a decisive operation, even as the volume of rocket provocations increases.

There is also a psychological-warfare element. Israel’s enemies can repeatedly broadcast photos of their cadres firing rockets with relatively little response from the Israeli side. And when Israel does respond with lethal force, the international reaction is often harsh, with critics pointing to the efficacy of Iron Dome as a reason why Israel need not take decisive action against its enemies.

That said, if Hizballah or Hamas seeks an all-out confrontation with Israel, they will fire thousands of rockets regardless of whether or not Israel deploys Iron Dome. Indeed, both groups did exactly that in 2006 (before Iron Dome’s invention) and 2014 (well after).

Iron Dome has [undoubtedly] given Israel an advantage. But this advantage is in no way guaranteed to last. Constant examination and adaptation of the system is necessary to maintain its superiority. Israeli decision-makers must also develop a cohesive strategy to ensure that [Israel’s overarching strategic needs are met].

Read more at FDD

More about: Iron Dome, Israeli Security, Missiles

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