The Iron Dome Kept Israel Safe—and Therein Lies Its Danger

Dec. 12 2023

Looking at the October 7 attacks not as a military strategist but as an economist, Russ Roberts argues that maintaining eternal vigilance is simply impossible—even though it is often required of political leaders. In a follow-up essay, he applies these lessons to the Iron Dome:

The more effective is the warning system or the safeguards, the more dangerous the situation becomes as the human side of the equation starts to underestimate the risk. Every day that Hamas did nothing more than launch a few rockets into Israel convinced the Israeli security apparatus that this was all it was capable of.

The effectiveness of Iron Dome helped us [in Israel] ignore the risk we faced from Hamas. Before October 7 it seemed reasonable to believe that Hamas’s ability to hurt us was very limited. We were wrong. Israel came to believe that the status quo might be a bit unpleasant but manageable. We were wrong.

When you reduce the risk of bad events, people often respond by taking more risks. In economics this is known as the Peltzman effect. A simple example is that a football helmet protects your head from the hit of your opponent but it also emboldens that opponent to lead with his head. A helmet can become a weapon. Because helmets are imperfect protection, they can lead to a higher risk of damage to the brain—any one hit is likely not to hurt, but the wearing of the helmet increases the numbers of hits delivered and received.

Read more at Listening to the Sirens

More about: Economics, Gaza War 2023, Iron Dome, Israeli Security

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023