| Bizarre logic: Terror groups say Israel's planned anti-missile laser system is proof that Iron Dome doesn't worknoreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 20 Mar | | Defense Update reported on Thursday about Israel's Iron Beam laser-based air defense system: Israel's Minister of Defense Benny Gantz has approved allocating a significant budget to develop and produce a high-power solid-state laser system designed to intercept rockets, mortars, and UAVs. Rafael, the system developer, expects to sign the full-scale development contract with the Ministry of Defense in the coming days; the initial investment amounts to hundreds of millions of NIS. The system's production and deployment will cost hundreds of millions of NIS more, and the funding approved will cover the system development, procurement, and initial deployment. As Iron Beam becomes operational, it will be integrated into Israel's multi-tier air and missile defense system, providing a cost-effective and operationally efficient lower-tier defense against missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, rockets, and mortars. In the latest example of bizarre magical thinking, Palestine Today - which is run by Islamic Jihad - has an article about this plan, claiming that it shows that Iron Dome doesn't work.
They interview an "expert" who says that the war last May proved that Iron Dome was ineffective, and Israel is forced to spend hundreds of millions to come up with a replacement.
Some 90% of the Gaza rockets that were headed towards populated areas were intercepted during the May war. Iron Beam is designed to hit projectiles...Read More |
From Ian: Jonathan Tobin: The US ambassador to Israel calls pay-for-slay 'martyr payments' - for starters Thomas Nides may not be able to erase everything his predecessor accomplished. But he's doing his best. That was the upshot of an astonishing webinar conducted by the U.S. ambassador to the State of Israel earlier this week with Americans for Peace Now. Israelis and American friends of Israel were aware that Nides and his boss, President Joe Biden, have a different point of view about the Jewish state, as well as the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, than that of former President Donald Trump and his envoy to Israel, David Friedman. But what his conversation laid bare wasn't just hostility to the views of the overwhelming majority of Israelis, including many in the current government. Nor was it about what Trump tried to do in order to shake the Palestinian Arabs out of their intransigence and to help facilitate normal relations between the Jewish state and much of the Arab world. Like others in the administration these days, he is determined to stick with the foreign-policy establishment's failed Middle East policies of the past to try to force Israel to do things that voters of that democratic nation have repeatedly rejected. Nides tossed diplomatic courtesy to the winds in the webinar in which he spoke of there being people in the current government to which he is accredited with whom he would not wish...Read More |
From Ian: Noah Rothman: The Costs of a New Iran Deal Outweigh the Rewards Anew nuclear deal with Iran, in substance or principle, may be imminent. But the circumstances that would produce such an arrangement ensure that it would not bring peace. It may not even postpone war. On the night of March 13, a volley of rockets launched from inside Iran rained down on targets in the Iraqi city of Erbil near enough to a U.S. consulate compound that it left no ambiguity about Tehran's targets. That attack, the Associated Press reports, bolstered arguments both for and against a new nuclear deal. How? "For the administration," the AP continued, "it confirmed that Iran would be a greater danger if it obtains a nuke." In other words, Iran must be rewarded for shooting at Americans lest it continue to shoot at Americans. This mindboggling logic tacitly admits that a new nuclear deal is a product of duress; we are deterred by the mere potential of an Iranian bomb. In the administration's efforts to keep negotiations over an Iranian program from collapsing, the White House is already sacrificing its relationships with America's partners in the region. Following the Iranian missile strike, administration officials told New York Times officials that the American facilities that were struck were not, in fact, Tehran's target. Those officials lent credence to an Iranian narrative that the...Read More |
Jewish Voice for Peace is ecstatic. They sent out an email: We just got proof: our collective power stopped the ADL's police exchange program for three years and caused a massive internal crisis. A leaked ADL memo shows us that our collective organizing is working: in June 2020, at the height of Black-led uprising against police violence, staff at the ADL wrote a memo recommending an end to their police exchange programs. In it, they admit their trips militarize the police, and detail the years of our campaigning that have made the program incredibly costly and controversial to them. This is a huge victory, built by decades of Black and Palestinian movement building, and brought home through the sustained pressure of a targeted, unrelenting grassroots campaign rooted in local communities and coalitions. However, the ADL is now doubling down on their deep relationship with police and even talking about expanding these programs. First of all, the leaked memo is a draft. It is not at all clear it was ever sent out or acted upon. Part of what they say is true: the ADL memo reveals that it had to spend a lot of money defending the program of cooperating with Israeli law enforcement from the haters. But in no way does the memo say that the trips "militarizes the police." It said that the...Read More |
From Ian: Caroline Glick: Ukraine's lessons for Israel The situation with the Palestinians is also disturbing, and speaks clearly to the destructive implications of Bennett's decision to play mediator between Russia and Ukraine. Last week, Congress passed an omnibus spending bill which Biden signed. With AIPAC's support, the bill contained a section on Israel that significantly downgraded the US commitment to the Jewish state. The section on Israel was an amended version of a law that passed initially in 2012. The 2012 law required the US to "assist" and "support the Government of Israel" in its ongoing talks with the Palestinians. The new law deleted the part about supporting Israel. Under the new law, the US is obligated to "a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in two states living side by side in peace, security, and mutual recognition." In other words, under the amended law, the US is committed to supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state, whether Israel supports it or not. Sen. Ted Cruz has fought since last July to block the passage of this amendment because he recognized the damage it was liable to do both to US-Israel ties and to Israel's national security. The Israeli Embassy, on the other hand, was less concerned. Senate sources explain that Israel's diplomats were nowhere to be found as Cruz fought adoption of the amendment. The worst aspect...Read More |
Rasmea Odeh is the convicted Palestinian terrorist who is the darling of modern antisemites (who claim they are merely anti-Zionist.)
Commentary's Jonathan Marks has a review of "The Trials of Rasmea Odeh," where he summarizes a book by Steven Lubet that examines the evidence that Odeh was guilty of both lying on her immigration form to the US as well as of murder of two Israeli Jews in 1968.
Not surprisingly to those of us who have followed the cases, Lubet shows that she is guilty on all counts.
Here is a summary of the summary: First, Odeh was guilty of the crime to which she pleaded guilty: "procuring citizenship contrary to law." She falsely denied, in writing and in person, being arrested, convicted, and jailed in Israel. That lie, without which she would not have obtained citizenship, was illegal. After her grudging plea was accepted, Odeh rushed to the courthouse steps to take it back in the presence of her fans. But Lubet shows that Odeh pleaded out for a good reason, namely, the weakness of her defense. At trial, Odeh claimed that she misread her naturalization application, which asked such unambiguous questions as "Have you EVER been convicted of any crime or offense." That boldfaced, capitalized "ever," she said, referred only to convictions in the United States, she had thought. The official who conducted her naturalization interview testified to having clarified...Read More |
In his Wednesday speech, Russian president Vladimir Putin compared Western sanctions imposed on Russia, its economy, athletes and cultural world to the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis in the 1930s.
He said in the speech:: In many Western countries, people are subjected to persecution just because they are originally from Russia. They are being denied medical care, their children are expelled from schools, parents are losing their jobs, and Russian music, culture, and literature are being banned. In its attempts to "cancel" Russia, the West tore off its mask of decency and began to act crudely showing its true colours. One cannot help but remember the anti-Semitic Nazi pogroms in Germany in the 1930s, and then pogroms perpetrated by their henchmen in many European countries that joined the Nazi aggression against our country during the Great Patriotic War. Whatever one thinks about Western blanket sanctions against all things Russian, it is nothing like how Nazis treated Jews in the 1930s. For one thing, Jews in Germany were utterly helpless, as they didn't have a state that could protect them.
Putin's use of the word "pogrom" is also telling, since the Russian word has been...Read More |
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