Slashdot Mirror
Israelis Sue Government For Laser Cannons
An anonymous reader writes "Residents of a southern Israeli town want a real-life laser cannon to protect them against Palestinian rocket attacks. And they're suing the national government, for failing to provide the ray gun defense.
The U.S.-Israeli Tactical High Energy Laser project was widely considered to be the most successful energy weapon ever built. But the toxic chemicals needed to generate THEL's megawatts of power made the thing a logistical nightmare. It was scrapped. Now, the residents of Sderot want it back. And they're taking Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to court to make it happen."
If it was just a little scratch, some Bond-O and polish oughtta do the trick.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Did they sue for the sharks, tanks, and related expenses too? How else can they operate the lasers effectively? Lazer cats?
"Oy, for you, only the best lasers will do. You don't want this one, it's scraped. Let me get you one with a fresh paint job, good as new, I'll have my brother Manny bring it around Tuesday."
John
Can we all please make an effort to keep the comments on track, and not diverge into a "Israelis/Jews are evil" fest?
The residents of Sderot have every right to expect their government to protect them and if the government is refusing to take any preventative action, while over 7,000 rockets have fallen on the town, then suing the government seems a very reasonable action.
Please note that they're not strapping bombs to themselves and running into cafes or government buildings - they're taking a legal action in a desperate request for help.
To pre-empt the comments that will follow, it's not relevant to point out Israeli action in Gaza and get into a debate over whether it's justified or not - this topic is about residents of Sderot taking completely non-violent, legal action, over repeated aggressive and violent attacks from a neighbouring region.
If only everyone in the region sought such a solution, instead of violence meets violence.
One could substitute
LL
AA
WW
YY
EE
RR
SS,
but that would be stereo typing.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The town in question is Sderot, where most inhabitants are of North African (especially Moroccan) origins. Those tend to be not so hell-bent on Zionism as European Jews because they weren't persecuted as much. I like to think that the government of a country founded on Zionism and so proud of it, would be slightly biased towards the inhabitants of Sderot.
Also, has anyone of you ever seen the damage katyushas make? Calling those things rockets or spending money to intercept them is ludicrous.
Res publica non dominetur
A few points:
- There are Arabs living happily in Israel. The Druze are happy Israeli citizens, and the Bedouin are generally friendly with Israelis.
- Even the Arabs living in Israel who AREN'T happy with Israel would rather live in Israel than in Palastine (West Bank/Gaza).
- The Palastinian refugees living in Arab countries (like Lebanon) are treated much worse by the Arabs than those in Palastine are by the Jews.
It's true perhaps that Israel goes a little overboard in their responses to people attacking them, however, they do have at least one neighbor who has sworn explicitly to destroy them, so it is kind of understandable.Qxe4
For about a year on the mobile version that was supposed to go on a series of containers on trucks. The cost was going into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and so the army cut the program. One reason was that insurgents in iraq weren't using mortars very often anymore, so there wasn't much use for such a system.
A few months later, hezbollah in Lebanon started firing katyushas again, oh well.
It was the most awesome project I've worked on so far. I actually got to see it take out mortars in flight on monitors while sitting in command and control 5 km away. (The system in new mexico doesn't have very good output scrubbers, so to avoid NF3 poisoning, humans have to be 5km away while it is firing.)
There's also more problems with it than just chemicals. For instance, the glass window in the front that the beam exits from costs 1 million dollars and takes a year to make (got to withstand a vacuum and a very powerful laser).
And the biggest problem is, they overwhelm it by sending lots of rockets, and then send several directly at the device itself. One rocket gets through, and there goes years of work and millions of dollars.
Anyway, thought the slashdot crowd might find some of that interesting.
The U.S. has a system that works pretty well in this kind of situation: The Phalanx CIWS, or the C-RAM system (very similar).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-RAM
I won't say anything about its specifics, but I can tell you that it DOES work. It IS loud and you WILL crap your pants every time it goes off without warning, but that's a small price to pay for a WORKING product that shoots mortars and rockets out of the sky. This would be the perfect solution to their problem and frankly I'm surprised that I haven't heard more about it. Ah, I just answered my own question from my wiki link- it looks like they are in fact looking into these. Good for them.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196847389509&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
I don't know what the retail is on these things, but I'm sure we could squeeze a few into the multi-billion-dollar defense support that we give to Israel every year.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
It's never been deployed, primarily for the logistical reasons mentioned. However, it's been extremely effective in tests, shooting down simultaneous salvos of artillery and even mortar shells fired in exercises. Katyusha rockets are even easier to hit.
The issue is range: THEL is effective only out to a few kilometers, and ideally a target would be destroyed over the launch territory. To protect a town of any decent size, several of these would have to be deployed, possibly within heavy rifle range of Palestinian buildings, and production costs could be several million dollars each. I'd still be interested to see the effects, particularly if Israel basically could deploy enough to cover the border with the Gaza Strip and then simply stop targeting the launch sites, which would reduce the number of incursions into Palestinian territory, and start moving the PR tide back the other way.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I wonder if a lower tech weapon system wouldn't do. Something like a grid of Phalanx point defense systems. They can shoot down mortar rounds so the low tech stuff the Palestinian are firing should be even easier to hit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsnhyTiTqk4
A little more digging with Google indicates the system has already been fielded for that purpose. Just set up a perimeter and be careful about where the misses come down.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Do you have a problem with that?
The part where "terrorist" is defined as "whoever we killed"?
There are a lot of people in the world who believe that unarmed Israeli civilians somehow deserve to be shelled.
Those same people frequently believe that armed rebel terrorists firing the rockets at them do not deserve to be shot back at by the Israeli military.
I don't understand it myself, but I'll tell you when I do.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
"The Palestinians try and kill as many babies, women, children and non-combatant civilians as possible. When it happens, they celebrate, just as they did on 9/11 and just as they did last week." I'll just pretend you sound completely rational and not like a bigoted racist who is trying to dehumanize another severely oppressed group... say what? they're intentionally killing "babies"... wont' somebody save the children? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iman_al-Hams Iman Darweesh Al Hams was a 13-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops in a "no man's" zone near the Philadelphi Route on 5 October 2004 in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Hit by more than a dozen bullets, her death was one of series of incidents cited by human rights groups as illustrative of a "culture of impunity" among the Israel Defense Forces.[2] It is also one of the few instances, among the hundreds of cases in which Palestinian children and teenagers have been killed by army fire, in which the army actually launched an investigation.[3] Ultimately however, no one was held responsible for her death. There was no explanation from the officer or the court as to how al-Hams came to have 17 bullet wounds to her arms, legs, torso and face.
There are a number of games that you can play where the optimal result requires perfect cooperation between the different teams/players, but where individual greediness can lead to a significant individual gain. That individual gain of course comes at the expense of all other players.
There is a variant of this type of game that disallows communication between teams. It's been shown that with that setup, there is exactly one way to play:
1st round: no information is available, so assume maximal cooperation from all other teams, and play your turn accordingly.
2nd round: Reciprocate the other teams' play: if they played greedy, play greedy. If they played nice, play nice.
3rd round: repeat approach from round 2 until the end.
The logic behind this is that greedy players will only play nice when they see the exact consequences of their actions imposed on themselves, and when they see that playing nice is rewarded.
Applied to the Israel/Palestine conflict, it could mean that the appropriate response to random rocket launches is an immediate retaliatory strike with equal destructive power, aimed at the source of the rockets. On the other hand, the appropriate response to suicide bombers is a little more fuzzy. Send in robot-bombers? Drop a bomb in a random place? Also, it is unclear what the positive feedback for no rocket launches or suicide bombers would be. Resume normal conditions? Stay put? Unlock frozen support funds for hamas?
I definitely think though that Palestinians in general have to understand that rockets being launched from their territory means that rockets will be launched against them in general as well. It'd be difficult to implement, as it's a completely different approach to dealing with rocket attacks and suicide bombers: personal responsibility and punishment is out, collective punishment is in. Not to mention that a lot of the current preventive measures would have to go out the window as well.
I doubt that anybody in Israel has the courage to experiment with that.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
burning ur karma
I hate to participate in an off-topic discussion, but Israel's treatment of its Arab population (a highly debatable topic with a profound history btw) would be contrary to its own purpose if it is as you say. The whole idea was to establish a "Jewish" nation, so by definition the creation of the state was a very racist mistake indeed. The Arabs living "happily" in Israel are no measure in number to the others whose land is being stolen daily to new settlements being built on it, and who are being mercilessly massacred with their families if they attempt to fight back, where the settlement building is a daily series of facts being created and not something that happened a "long time ago". There are people losing, as we speak, the land that belonged to them for centuries because they do not happen to belong to a particular race. Lasers will not change how utterly disgusting that is, or the those people's efforts to fight back in whatever desperate way they can.
For the record: I do not condone attacks on civilians by either side, and am as disgusted at the Arab militants as I am at the Israelis. It's just that you're making it sound like Arabs are welcome to live in Israel, whereas this is obviously not true "by definition". Indeed, that's what the whole right-of-return issue with the Palestinian Arabs is all about.
There are a lot of people in the world who believe that unarmed Israeli civilians somehow deserve to be shelled.
And there are just as many idiots that believe that unarmed Palestinians deserve to be shelled. A Jewish soldier shoots and kills a few Muslims boys playing football so a Muslim soldier (we call them terrorists because we don't like Muslims) fires a rocket at a Jewish village so the Jewish army send in a helicopter to blow up a Muslim market and the Muslims go and blow up a Jewish market...
and the plebs take sides. Why can't people see that until we stop killing each other there will never be peace. The people in power, both Jewish and Muslim, do not want peace. They are not stupid. They make their money from the fighting. All the shouts of "He started it" just sound like 10 year old boys fighting in the playground. They are both killing each others children and the fighting will not stop until those in power give peace a chance.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Do you take the same attitude to WWII?
When people's countries are occupied by others who believe they have some ancient right to lebensraum, you can't expect to be able to scold both sides and tell them to play nicely. This is life, not the playground.
Okay, I'll bite. You've provided one example. Let's say the story is entirely as you tell it. Can you now refer me to the video of Israelis dancing in the streets, handing out sweets? Or perhaps the Israeli streets named after the shooter?
No, I didn't think so.
If Palestinian children are being hit by gunfire, perhaps Palestinian gunmen shouldn't be firing from near children.
It happens all the time in Israel and abroad. Islamists know dead children and crying mothers are good shields when alive and good propaganda when dead.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/05/22/lebanon-battles-070522.html
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2006/06/index.html
http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2007/03/iraqi_jihadists.php
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
I really hate this topic. But I feel obligated to respond to it every time.
Nobody, for some reason, can admit that BOTH are wrong, and probably share equal blame in the matter. The Israelis invades already occupied land and expects them to hold the Israelis sovereign because some ancient book says so, of course the Palestinians fought back. In this Israel is wrong. The Palestinians purposely targetting civilians is ALSO wrong. The Israelis near genocidal clamp down on said Palestinians is ALSO wrong. And so it goes.
My problem with this is when someone has the balls to criticize Israel they get branded either pro-Palestinian, or worse, anti-Semitic. To entertain a probable straw-man, don't say that EVERYONE does this, you rarely hear of the Israeli terrorists, or the Palestinian freedom fighters, these terms are just as valid this way, as the way they are commonly used thanks to the brutal tactics on BOTH sides. And yes, both sides can be looked on with sypathetic rhetoric, the Israelis are fighting for their existence, and the Palestinians are fighting against tyranny. Fine... To me this is an indicator that siding with one faction is impossible, since both are semi-justified, and semi-evil.
Neither side wants compromise, so bloodshed they shall get, and probably deserve.
The only point of policy I can come down on is that the U.S. has no right to assist either side. Either way we are left morally tainted and bloodied. This is especially true today when our support of Israel is a major contributing factor to the hatred of the West. I'd support which ever side decided to deal with things in accord with international law, and humanistic values, and for the time being it looks like neither even want to come close to this.
The only fair (albeit now dated) version of this conflict I've seen way David K. Shipler's Arab And Jew. Both sides are indoctrinating each other towards pure hatred and violence, there will never be a valid conversation on this until that stops.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
How people can have more sympathy for people randomly shelling unarmed non-combatants than for their victims is something I really don't want to understand.
Wait, are you talking about the Israelis or the Palestinians there? Both?
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but when you refer to people evicted from that land, it's not who you think. No Arabs were required to leave in 1948. Who do you think Israeli Arabs are? The ones who stayed. The "Palestinians" are one of three groups of people:
No, in fact the only people to be evicted from the land were the Jewish residents of Gush Katif (the settlements in Gaza that Sharon's government evicted in 2005).
Besides, comparing the situation to Texas and the Mexicans is inaccurate; both Jews and Arabs have been living in the land for centuries.
Thank God for evolution.