Israeli expert: the Iron Dome is a bluff

[RFS_Br]

What if the Iron Dome is a bluff?

An Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket from Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, July 5, 2014. Do the missiles really intercept most rockets or just self-destruct? Photo by AP

Iron Dome is Israeli society’s deus ex machina coming from nowhere to solve the problems that left us helpless. We worship it. Unquestioningly. We were told up front that it can guarantee interception of only 90 percent of the rockets launched at us, so even a little damage and a few casualties and fatalities won’t cause us to doubt its efficacy.

However, Israel Defense Prize laureate and aerospace engineer Dr. Moti Shefer, whose specialty is interception missiles, says Iron Dome is a bluff. It doesn’t intercept anything but rather invents virtual rockets. The explosions we hear are the sounds of Iron Dome missiles self-destructing. As of the writing of these lines, Hamas rockets have done very little damage to people and property. We see this as proof of Iron Dome’s efficacy and reliability; Shefer says the number of rockets coming in from the Gaza Strip is immeasurably smaller than what Iron Dome reports and in any case they are tinpot weapons, so 95 percent of the time we are safe anyway, irrespective of Iron Dome (and the endless “open spaces” with which we have suddenly been blessed, like some new sort of manna rained down upon us by a benevolent deity).

In an article in Haaretz in March, 2013, the late military commentator Reuven Pedatzur cited anti-missile defense specialist MIT Prof. Theodore Postol, who after analyzing dozens of videos filmed during Operation Pillar of Defense concluded that the percentage of successful interceptions by Iron Dome was only about 5 percent.

Shefer and Postol make the most subversive claim imaginable. If they are right, what we have here is the mother of all conspiracies: The national leadership is manufacturing an imaginary reality and convincing citizens of its truth, out of tyrannical and economic motives. If so, North Korea is here.

Nevertheless, no one is savaging Dr. Shefer. Savaging is reserved for extreme leftists, people who say that Israel’s pilots are war criminals, Ismail Haniyeh is Winston Churchill and Hamas is the victim. For Gideon Levy and Uri Avneri. They are taken seriously. They are accused of incitement, of collaborating with the enemy. Others take the trouble to answer them.

Whereas Shefer is totally dismissed. He is an anecdote. He is off his rocker, a sad sack, the village idiot, a joke.

Is such a deception possible? Could the Israel Defense Forces and the government be lying to us, without batting an eye? Of course not. They love us. They are watching over us. Right?

I haven’t the slightest idea or the tools to determine the truth about this claim. It is amazing that none of the media are investigating this assertion. No one wants to know.

 

[Owl of Abott]

Ynet confirms that the first IDF battle deaths which occurred today resulted from a major fashla (“disastrous mistake”). Because an IDF observation post was abandoned, Palestinian militants not only penetrated Israeli territory via a tunnel, they lay in wait for an IDF patrol to pass by. They attacked the patrol with RPGs, killing a major and sergeant. One of the Palestinians was killed, but the remaining eight fighters successfully retreated back to Gaza.

The infiltration was adjacent to a Negev kibbutz and the Palestinian force could have attempted to attack that community, in which case there may’ve been even more deaths.

A Palestinian rocket landed on a Bedouin tent near Dimona killing one and wounding others. Israel largely provides bomb shelters for its Jewish citizens. There are no shelters provided for Bedouin:

The incident in Dimona highlighted the severe lack of bomb shelters and protective cement structures in Bedouin villages across the Negev. Since many Bedouin communities are unrecognized by the government, many basic services are not provided to them. They are also not protected by Iron Dome, which registers their homes as “open areas” and allows rockets to fall there without attempting interception.

“Their homes are what’s called ‘open areas,’” one relative, Yasser al-Beit, told Ynet, “so Iron Dome doesn’t intercept the rockets. And there’s no warning siren. When you hear of impacts in open areas, sometimes it’s fallen (near) one of our homes. This time it fell on people’s home; hit everyone, a mother and children. We have no protection,” he said.

…Two Bedouin girls aged 11 and 13, were seriously injured after a rocket fell near their home on the outskirts of Beersheba.



The girls’ grandfather, Ibrahim al-Wakil said then that “All the residents of the Bedouin diaspora are in danger, especially in the unrecognized villages. They are defenseless. We’ve asked time and again that they give us protection but nothing has been done.”

Although they live in encampments for which it would be difficult to create permanent shelters, it would not be difficult for create stationary shelters near or between such encampments to which the Bedouin could retreat during attacks. The problem is that the State refuses to recognize these communities. They literally don’t exist in the eyes of the government. So it refuses to offer services to them. Similary, Israel doesn’t sound air raid sirens for missile launches landing near Bedouin communities. Nor does it site Iron Dome to intercept rockets landing in these zones. In other words, Israeli Bedouin are Israel’s “disappeared.”

Israeli anti-war protest in Tel Aviv

Yesterday, an IDF soldier was killed by friendly fire from an IDF tank shell. The IDF has refused to provide any further information on this incident.

Yossi Melmanpublished a piece in The Forward in which he made the nonsensical claim:

Most Israelis — even many on the radical left — share the view that Israel had no choice.

At first, I though he may be referring to Meretz, which has a history of ardently supporting Israeli wars no matter the circumstance. Usually it takes about two weeks of fighting before Meretz comes to its senses, screws up its courage, and begins posing tentative questions about the wisdom of the military adventure. After week two or three, it comes “forward with full-throated criticism.

But not this time. MK Zahava Gal On has forthrightly portrayed this war as a “bloody Gazan swamp” (Hebrew), which will cost the lives of IDF soldiers and innocent Palestinians.”

So who, pray tell, are these mysterious “radical leftists” supporting the war on Gaza? Use of such pejorative terms by supposed journalists exposes their own political prejudices rather than portray the actual views of those they demean.

Some real Israeli peace activists protested the war yesterday in Haifa. The police arrested 30 of them (Israeli Palestinians naturally) for having the chutzpah to oppose the national consensus.

In a related development, I’ve previously covered here the skeptical views about Iron Dome of Prof. Ted Postol, Haaretz’s late military analyst, Reuven Pedatzur, and Israel Defense Prize winnner, Dr. Moti Shefer. Shefer has bet the house in his criticism of Iron Dome saying virtually the entire system is an IDF ruse:

Israel Defense Prize laureate and aerospace engineer Dr. Moti Shefer, whose specialty is interception missiles, says Iron Dome is a bluff. It doesn’t intercept anything but rather invents virtual rockets. The explosions we hear are the sounds of Iron Dome missiles self-destructing. As of the writing of these lines, Hamas rockets have done very little damage to people and property. We see this as proof of Iron Dome’s efficacy and reliability; Shefer says the number of rockets coming in from the Gaza Strip is immeasurably smaller than what Iron Dome reports and in any case they are tinpot weapons, so 95 percent of the time we are safe anyway, irrespective of Iron Dome (and the endless “open spaces” with which we have suddenly been blessed, like some new sort of manna rained down upon us by a benevolent deity).

A word of caution is in order. The anti-missile system Shefer proposed to the IDF was rejected in favor of Iron Dome. So he does have an axe to grind. But if he was the only figure criticizing it that might be significant. Considering there are many experts doing so, his criticism bears taking notice.

The concluding sentence of this Haaretz report on Iron Dome, from which I quoted above, is worthy of serious consideration, and constitutes the reason I’ve paid so much attention to the issue:

It is amazing that none of the media are investigating this assertion [that Iron Dome is a fraud]. No one wants to know.
​

 

[Archdemon]

Iron Dome works fine, 90 percent fine!

 

[Beny Karachun]

What if the Iron Dome is a bluff?

An Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket from Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, July 5, 2014. Do the missiles really intercept most rockets or just self-destruct? Photo by AP

Iron Dome is Israeli society’s deus ex machina coming from nowhere to solve the problems that left us helpless. We worship it. Unquestioningly. We were told up front that it can guarantee interception of only 90 percent of the rockets launched at us, so even a little damage and a few casualties and fatalities won’t cause us to doubt its efficacy.

However, Israel Defense Prize laureate and aerospace engineer Dr. Moti Shefer, whose specialty is interception missiles, says Iron Dome is a bluff. It doesn’t intercept anything but rather invents virtual rockets. The explosions we hear are the sounds of Iron Dome missiles self-destructing. As of the writing of these lines, Hamas rockets have done very little damage to people and property. We see this as proof of Iron Dome’s efficacy and reliability; Shefer says the number of rockets coming in from the Gaza Strip is immeasurably smaller than what Iron Dome reports and in any case they are tinpot weapons, so 95 percent of the time we are safe anyway, irrespective of Iron Dome (and the endless “open spaces” with which we have suddenly been blessed, like some new sort of manna rained down upon us by a benevolent deity).

In an article in Haaretz in March, 2013, the late military commentator Reuven Pedatzur cited anti-missile defense specialist MIT Prof. Theodore Postol, who after analyzing dozens of videos filmed during Operation Pillar of Defense concluded that the percentage of successful interceptions by Iron Dome was only about 5 percent.

Shefer and Postol make the most subversive claim imaginable. If they are right, what we have here is the mother of all conspiracies: The national leadership is manufacturing an imaginary reality and convincing citizens of its truth, out of tyrannical and economic motives. If so, North Korea is here.

Nevertheless, no one is savaging Dr. Shefer. Savaging is reserved for extreme leftists, people who say that Israel’s pilots are war criminals, Ismail Haniyeh is Winston Churchill and Hamas is the victim. For Gideon Levy and Uri Avneri. They are taken seriously. They are accused of incitement, of collaborating with the enemy. Others take the trouble to answer them.

Whereas Shefer is totally dismissed. He is an anecdote. He is off his rocker, a sad sack, the village idiot, a joke.

Is such a deception possible? Could the Israel Defense Forces and the government be lying to us, without batting an eye? Of course not. They love us. They are watching over us. Right?

I haven’t the slightest idea or the tools to determine the truth about this claim. It is amazing that none of the media are investigating this assertion. No one wants to know.

Ahahaha, "expert"?
Is this why we don't see Tel Aviv in ruins?
Is this why Israel didn't destroy Gaza yet because of the "massive casualties" that the hundreds of "non intercepted" rockets?
Nope, that's all wrong. he doesn't know anything.