In Breaking New Ground in Missile Defense, Israel Can Help Itself and the U.S.

In recent years, numerous Israeli lives have been saved by the Iron Dome, an advanced defensive system that shoots rockets launched from the Gaza Strip out of the sky. But this system only works against the relatively simple rockets fired by Hamas and its allies. In the next major war, Gaza is expected to be a secondary theater as Hizballah rains down more sophisticated rockets from Lebanon and Syria, perhaps to be joined by barrages from Yemen, Iraq, and even Iran itself. To meet this challenge, Israel has developed David’s Sling and the Arrow, each intended to counter a different category of missile. Jacob Nagel and Jonathan Schanzer describe the latest breakthrough:

The Israeli Missile Defense Organization and U.S. Missile Defense Agency announced earlier this month the successful completion of a series of tests of a multilayered missile-defense system using David’s Sling, Iron Dome, and Arrow systems. . . . Success was not a foregone conclusion: there are significant technological and operational differences between these systems, such as maneuverability, range, and cost. But the tests proved the systems can work simultaneously.

For Israel, this was the first time all three of its missile-defense layers worked simultaneously, demonstrating interoperability and enabling Israel to leverage each specific system’s comparative advantages. It was a major milestone in Israel’s capabilities to defend itself against current and future threats.

The recent test also sends a message to Israel’s most important ally, the United States. U.S. interests are increasingly vulnerable to Iran’s growing arsenal of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial systems, and rockets. Repeatedly, Iran and its regional proxies have used these weapons to attack U.S. personnel and partners in the Persian Gulf, exposing dangerous gaps in American defense. Finding fast and practical solutions to fill those gaps should be an urgent U.S. priority. Proven Israeli technology can help.

Read more at Newsweek

More about: Iron Dome, Israeli Security, Israeli technology, Missiles, US-Israel relations

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