Stand for Israel

The Iron Dome system is intended to protect against missiles with short ranges; the Arrow system--pictured above--targets long-range, ballistic missiles.

Hamas rocket-fire is down significantly from the levels before the air and ground incursion Israel was waging this time last year, but terrorist leopoards rarely change their spots (or tactics): On Thursday, a Hamas-fired Kassam rocket hit just south of the southern port city of Ashkelon yesterday. And that was on the heels of a 10-shell volley of mortars. Plus, the “militants” also launched an anti-tank missile at IDF troops patrolling the Gaza border.

(Last night, Israel struck back, pounding several targets in Gaza, including a weapons factory in Gaza City that belonged to Islamic Jihad terrorists.)

Last year’s “Operation Cast Lead” damaged Hamas infrastructure and helped restore some of Israel’s deterrent power, but everybody knows that the war against Hamas terror–by rockets or suicide bombing–isn’t over yet.

So Israel’s progress toward developing a missile defense system is important. In the last few days, the Israeli-developed “Iron Dome” short-range defense system passed several important tests “with flying colors,” Ha’aretz reports.

The system successfully shot down Kassam and Grad rockets in rapid succession and, more importantly, was able to determine which missiles to ignore and which to shoot down (by quickly computing whether its trajectory made the rocket likely to land in a populated area). The significance of this is “hard to exaggerate,” analyst Amos Harel wrote.

Iron Dome is intended to protect against everything from simple mortar shells, low-tech and impossible-to-aim Kassams, Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets, and even Iranian Fajr rockets, which may already be in the Gaza Strip. But Harel cautions not to get too excited, too soon:

• First, Iron Dome has yet to be tested in a genuine attack.
• Second, Israel has only the prototype that was tested. Many additional batteries will need to be built and installed.
• Third, Israel’s missile defense system has three layers and the Iron Dome is only the first, covering missiles with reasonably…
  Read More »    Comments (0) »

Two Russian-made Grad rockets hit the southern Israeli city of Netivot around 9:30 p.m. Thursday night, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Israeli radio reported that the IDF had found only one rocket shell and was looking for more; residents reported hearing two, separate loud explosions.

This is the first time since Operation Cast Lead a year ago that Hamas has used this sort of rocket (they’ve mostly used mortars, with an occasional Kassam rocket), as well as the first time that Netivot has been targeted since the operation.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the operation, an incursion into Gaza to stop Hamas rocket fire. Since the operation’s conclusion, rocketfire has been sharply curtailed.