Comment: Iron Dome? We didn’t think it would work. They’re going to shoot our rockets out of the sky? Impossible. But heaven help us, they’ve done it.
Iron Dome First Intercept of Gaza Terror Rocket
Those fiendish Jews. They are making it so hard for us to kill them.
They pulled every last father, mother and child out of the Gaza Strip, where we could get at them easily. They pulled their army out too.
Every last tank, every last soldier. The only one we’ve got here now is Gilad Schalit.
Some of them thought that this might sate our ambitions. Idiots. They thought the “international community” would give us hell if we carried on trying to kill them. Fools. Of course we weren’t going to stop, and of course no one was going to stop us. We won’t stop till we’ve terrorized them all the way out of Palestine. And it’s not like we’re making any secret of that; it’s all there in our charter.
But, heaven help us, they don’t shift easily. And they do value life.
Even our people’s.
We make sure our fighters are surrounded by women and children before we open fire. We make sure our fighters are indistinguishable from civilians; no uniforms for us. And still those Jews insist on holding their return fire unless they can be reasonably sure they’ll only kill our men. Unbelievable: We’re doing everything we can to get our ordinary people killed, and they’re doing everything they can not to kill them. What kind of upside-down world is this?
How do they even know who our fighters are? Think of the resources they’re expending making sure they don’t kill the wrong people! Thank goodness the rest of the world is too dumb or too blinkered to internalize what’s going on; thank goodness they still haven’t figured out that we’re deliberately putting our people in harm’s way and those Jewsare doing their best not to harm them.
And as for their lives? Like I said, it’s just getting harder and harder to kill them. They have early-warning systems and alarms and bomb shelters and safe rooms and protective concrete cubes and fantastic, heroic medical services. Just imagine, if we adopted those kinds of measures, we’d have none of our people killed, and then where would we be?
Come to think of it, we wouldn’t need to adopt any of those measures if we just stopped shooting at them. It’s not as though they’d shoot first. But if we stopped firing, how could we complain to the world about those vicious Zionist enemies? How could we keep the UN and the rest of those suckers on our side? How could we keep the Jew-hatred at fever pitch among our people? How could we serve our noble, bloody cause?
But, damn them and their clever innovations, they haven’t stopped with the alarms and the shelters. Now they’ve come up with this “Iron Dome” gadget.
In a million years, we didn’t think it would work. They’re going to fire rockets at our rockets and shoot them out of the sky?
Yeah, right. This isn’t Xbox or PlayStation. Last time I looked, it was a pretty big sky out there.
But bless my soul, they’ve managed it. Ten of our rockets blasted out of the air in the past two days alone. Nauseating. We were sure we’d have some meaty kills out of those salvoes.
I mean, it’s not even supposed to be working properly yet; it’s still in the experimental stage; the Israeli media were laughing at its developers; they were certain it was useless.
Sometimes, I swear, I start to wonder if God’s on their side. Crazy, huh? I don’t know what’s getting into me. But look at the evidence: This weekend we had a Grad land near a kibbutz administration building. We got one right next to a school in Ofakim. Not a single fatality. A few minutes earlier on Thursday, we might have had a bus full of schoolkids near Kibbutz Sa’ad. But no, they got off just before we hit that bright yellow, sitting- duck target, and all we got was one teenager and the driver.
What? What’s that you say? Put the weapons away? Internalize the sanctity of human life?
That’s ridiculous talk. Next you’ll be telling me to make peace with them. To acknowledge that they have the right to live here. To build a state alongside theirs. To give our people a better future. To turn our attention away from war and violence and death and killing, toward something productive.
Never, I tell you. Never.
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?ID=215881&R=R1
Iron Dome changes the Gaza equation
Many people from within and outside the defense establishment had questioned the Iron Dome's capabilities. They were wrong.
On Sunday, schoolchildren go on their annual Pessah vacation, and the real countdown begins – to end the current round of violence between Israel and Hamas before the start of the holiday.
The IDF had prepared for this current round and accurately predicted that it would take place after it bombed the car in southern Gaza last Friday night, killing three senior Hamas operatives who were planning attacks against Israelis in Sinai. The answer came on Thursday with the anti-tank missile that hit the school bus near Kibbutz Sa’ad.
The IDF has been warning for several months of the growing rift within Hamas between the political echelon, led by Ismail Haniyeh, and the military wing, led by Ahmed Jabari.
Haniyeh and the rest of the Hamas government are mostly interested in solidifying their regime, and are currently more concerned about the possibility that the unrest in the Arab world will spread to Gaza than they are with Israel. For this reason, Hamas has cracked down hard in recent weeks on any signs of demonstrations and, like Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, has not hesitated to use brutal force to quell the riots.
Jabari has other interests.
First, he apparently felt the need to avenge the Israeli strike against his fellow Hamas operatives. It didn’t help that one of the men killed in last week’s strike was a personal friend of his.
Secondly, he has prevented his fighters from using their weaponry against Israel since Operation Cast Lead two years ago, allowing Islamic Jihad to steal most of the show and gain prominence as an up-and-coming organization and power player in the Gaza Strip. His subordinates have felt real frustration.
After all, they smuggled powerful and high-quality weaponry into Gaza, but were not allowed to use it.
There are two main differences between this current escalation and the one that led to Operation Cast Lead two years ago.
First, Israel is not agreeing so quickly to a cease-fire, and has made clear that it will not accept one in which Hamas fires rockets and Israel refrains from firing back.
“It will either have to be a full cease-fire, or nothing,” a senior defense official explained Saturday night.
The second difference is the successful operation of the Iron Dome counter-rocket system.
Many people from within and outside the defense establishment had questioned its capabilities.
They were wrong. Based on the 10 interceptions since Thursday, Iron Dome works.
While it does not intercept every rocket fired into Israel, that is because it is designed to intercept only those set to strike populated areas. If the system detects a rocket falling in an open field, it will not fire an interceptor. At the same time, there are still only two batteries – deployed outside Beersheba and Ashkelon, respectively – hardly enough to provide an adequate defense for southern Israel.
Nevertheless, this does provide Israeli leaders with unprecedented diplomatic maneuverability.
While rockets are hitting within Israel, the damage and number of casualties is lower than it would have been in the past, due to Iron Dome. This means the government does not feel as much domestic pressure to launch a larger offensive against Hamas, and can consider its options more slowly and more carefully.
It also means that the government feels it can continue to strike at terrorists it detects in Gaza, even at the risk of more rocket attacks.
The clock will be ticking, though, with Seder night approaching. What will likely happen is that Israel and Hamas will try to find a way to end this cycle before it escalates any further, so Israelis can celebrate Pessah and Jabari and his men can go back to the drawing board and plan for tomorrow.
http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?ID=215883&R=R1
