Israel Develops a Way to Defend against Missiles with Lasers

Since the 1990s, the Jewish state has revolutionized anti-missile technology, most notably with the Iron Dome that protects its citizens from rocket onslaughts from the Gaza Strip. It has now, after a decade of work, made another stride in this realm, developing a system that uses lasers to shoot down rockets, guided anti-tank missiles, and similar weapons. Early this month, writes Anna Ahronheim, the Ministry of Defense announced its success in overcoming the problems that have until now stymied the efforts of scientists in Israel and elsewhere to develop such a system:

The breakthrough recently made by the ministry is based on the precision of the laser beam, which can be focused on long-range targets and which can overcome atmospheric disturbances such as clouds and dust storms. . . . [T]he ministry was able to take several laser beams and, with an advanced algorithm, connect them to get one strong beam that is able to intercept and take down a variety of threats. Based on high-energy electric lasers rather than chemical laser technology, the robust system will complement the other layers of Israel’s aerial defenses and will be a strategic change in the defense capabilities of the state, the ministry said.

According to Yaniv Rotem, [head of the Defense Ministry’s directorate of research and development], some of the advantages of the high-energy lasers include the ability to use the system continually at a lower cost and with higher effectiveness. [The lasers] will also decrease the number of missile interceptors necessary and make it possible to intercept a variety of threats, including unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, and guided rockets. “During a war, missile interceptors will at one point run out, but with this system, as long as you have electricity, you have a never-ending supply,” he said.

“This is a weapon that you can’t see or hear,” Rotem said, adding that . . . the use of two different and complementary technologies—systems such as the Iron Dome and laser platforms—“is a game-changer.”

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Iron Dome, Israeli Security, Israeli technology

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