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Israel's Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield Actually Works
Hugh Pickens writes "Sarah Tory reports that the debut of Israel's Iron Dome missile defense shield has added a new element to the conflict between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza strip, one that military officials are calling a 'game-changer.' Israeli officials are claiming that the shield is destroying 90 percent of missiles and rockets it aims at that have been fired into southern Israel by Hamas. This level of success is unprecedented compared with older missile defense systems such as the American-made Patriot model used during the 1991 Gulf War. The missile-defense system can detect rocket launches and then determine the projectiles' flight paths and only intercepts rocket or artillery shells if they are headed for populated areas or sensitive targets; the others it allows to land. It takes a lot of raw computing power to rapidly build a ballistic profile of a fast-incoming projectile, make a series of quick decisions concerning potential lethality, and launch a countermeasure capable of intercepting said projectile in-flight. One reason Iron Dome is showing a much more robust capability than the Patriot system did is simply that its battle control hardware and software are several generations more advanced than those early interceptor systems. 'Israeli officials point out that Iron Dome saves money despite the fact that the interceptors cost up to $100,000 each,' writes Tory. 'The cost of rebuilding a neighborhood destroyed by a rocket attack — not to mention people wounded and lives lost — would be far greater than the cost of the interceptor.' Most important, the system buys Israel time, allowing it to plan out an appropriate response without the political pressure that would be generated by hundreds of potential deaths."
How sure is that 90% hit rate? I wonder what it is about the other 10% that lets them through?
Anyone else thinking they should deploy it on the Gaza side too? Not instead (I know people will misread me). As well.
You mean that SDI might work after all?
That will get us out of the nuclear age. A stop rate of 90% eliminates a first strike advantage.
But what's going to replace mutually assured destruction (MAD) when the destruction isn't assuredly mutual?
These missile shields could bring us closer to nuclear war, or end it forever when the party with the shield tells everyone else to drop their nukes or vanish in sparkly glowing fireballs.
The assault on the Gaza concentration camp is MURDER.
I'm not saying Israel's defenses don't work (I've no reason to think that) but given the timing do you think we'd be told
a) If the defenses didn't work well at all
or
b) About all the instances the defenses failed to work?
Given the circumstances what we hear *especially* from official sources on either side of this conflict should be taken with quite a grain of salt.
So the Palestinians launch missiles at Isreal and you are upset that Isreal is pissed off about it and launches counter attacks? If Canada started launching rockets at the US, I would expect us to invade and conquer them in short order. I'm surprised that Palestine has been allowed to exist as long as it has.
You need to 1) detect the launch 2) determine the trajectory 3) determine the speed 4) determine a few other factors (mass? range? payload? whether it's capable of changing trajectory mid-flight?) 5) calculate where it's going 6) determine if that counts as a populated area 7) fill in any missing variables 8) make a decision 9) direct the defense
How fast could you do this? What if there's a hundred rockets coming in at once? It's not like a dumb bomb that's dropped straight down on a given point.
with some sort of ground effort? Or at least attempt to disrupt the RADAR or missile sites. The other alternative is to get more explosives into Israeli controlled areas to employ as IED and such, though much of that society is trained to spot things that should not be. Will a rash of homicide bombers be unleashed?
Eventually they energy weapons might replace the missiles and provide even better coverage, but it might lead to an escalation that is harder to contain, by which I mean the other guys might employ chemical or biological weapons which cannot be intercepted.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Yes, both parties are at fault for continuing this ridiculous feud. But is America blockading and occupying Canadian land to begin with? No.
And yes, I'm surprised that Palestine has been allowed to exist as long as it has considering the United States really doesn't give a damn about the fact that Israel continues to bulldoze their homes down for their own settlements.
Let's make it clear, I condone the actions of Hamas but Israel's actions are very heavy-handed in proportion to Hamas' attacks/
Does it really take so much computing power to calculate trajectory of a falling object? I know there's a lot of uncertainty coming from measurements but I don't really think you need anything more than an equivalent of pentium 100 to effectively decide wheter the missile is heading toward a populated area or not.
It depends when in the trajectory it plots the intercept path. If it is during the rocket-propelled phase then calculating the possible trajectories of something that will accelerate for a while then descend is probably a lot. Also the protected areas are likely to be a number of irregularly shaped patches on a three-dimensional terrain, not just one circle.
Then of course you have to calculate your intercept trajectory, again not simple
You seem to have left out the US and Israel funding Fatah to wage a proxy war against Hamas (democratically elected, by the corrupt system that the US and Israel pushed), the IDF killed a thirteen year old boy last month, then a twenty-three year old mentally disabled man who walked too near Gaza. Then, when the PFLP wounded four in a rocket launch near the border, Israel ASSASSINATED one of the leaders of Hamas and the strip.
Just thought you could use that background info.
I wonder what it is about the other 10% that lets them through?
How far do you manage to get in Missile Command? Do you 100% every level up to the 810,000 point, or do you rely on bonus cities?
Wow...you should REALLY read even a tiny bit of Middle Eastern history before making comments like that...also, rely on at least one non-US feed for your news...you do yourself a disservice otherwise.
Yet launching rockets at cities isn't? Iranian leadership should be tried for crimes against humanity. Iran can, most certainly, afford guidance systems in those rockets. an Ipad has enough sensors and processing power to be able to guide it at legitimate targets, and 20 dollars in servos to move guidance vanes would allow them to stop lobbing them at civilians. Oh wait...
So the Palestinians launch missiles at Isreal and you are upset that Isreal is pissed off about it and launches counter attacks? If Canada started launching rockets at the US, I would expect us to invade and conquer them in short order.
Well, if the US sent their military into Vancouver for "security" reasons, throwing out all the Canadians who lived there and allowed US citizens to build homes and "settle" the area and considering the US's superior military, I wouldn't blame Canada in the least for shooting rockets over the border.
I'm surprised that Palestine has been allowed to exist as long as it has.
You are either an excellent and crafty anti-Israel troll or an incredibly ill-informed person.
Best missile defense shield : peace treaty.
This isn't the first time they've been used, they were talking about how well the Iron Dome system worked way back in April. If the failure rate was higher, as you claim, there'd be a lot more Israeli deaths. If it didn't work they wouldn't have rushed the latest battery into operation.
Let's make it clear, I condone the actions of Hamas but Israel's actions are very heavy-handed in proportion to Hamas' attacks/
Paging Dr. Freud?
Reading the comments, it seems I'm the only one here who thinks this is awesome. When it comes to weapons development, this is exactly the sort of weapon we should be cheering for. Whether you agree with the ones using it or not, this is a wonderful thing. A weapon which only works as a shield to block incoming attacks; that is what the weapons used by enlightened countries should have evolved into.
A better example would be if American Indians, subjugated and embargoed on their reservation, started rocket attacks on the US.
The Palestinians? What, all of them? Even the children? I'm fairly sure it's only Hamas who've been launching the missiles, but hey, why not just fire indiscriminately into a heavily populated city anyway in retaliation? Sure you'll kill a large number of civilians and children, but hey they're just Palestinians so who cares?
Israel has also been brazen in it's attacks against politicians and journalists. I'm surprised they haven't levelled a few hospitals for good measure.
It's not a falling object, it has a rocket engine.
You have to estimate acceleration, correct for mistakes, compute a plausible trajectory for it, compute a plausible trajectory for the interceptor, and since it involves objects moving at high speeds, it all has to be very accurate. You probably have a lot of crappy data sources to aggregate (radar, optical, etc) and things like wind and coriolis effects to take care of.
The optimal control problems involving launching and controlling the interceptor are already hard to write down on paper, and solving them numerically is far from trivial. And it all has to be done in real time.
In sum, it wouldn't surprise me if they had a 500-core, state-of-the-art supercomputer crunching the numbers.
One other large difference that the summary glosses over is that there's a big difference between the Katyusha and improvised rockets of Hamas, and the much larger Scud missile used by Iraq. There's almost an order of magnitude difference in size and range, and a several-fold difference in speed.
There's a correspondingly large difference between the Tamir interceptor missiles used as part of the Iron Dome and the Patriot missile.
Still, on the whole, it's probably a good thing that we are getting better at setting our lethal weapons against each other, rather than at people.
There was a huge problem with the Patriot system early on where the tracking computers lost so much accuracy even after only running continuously for 8 hours that the system would fail to intercept threats. The short term solution was to reboot the system at regular intervals.
GAO Report: Patriot Missile Defense (Official report)
Patriot Missile Software Problem
Round off errors and the Patriot missile
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Oh well, they're just brown people anyway.
If you would strip an Isreali and a Palestinian naked and put them side by side, you wouldn't be able to tell which is which. (Except for the hairdo if it's a conservative jew, of course). This has nothing to do with race, just cultural background and history.
Too bad these "innocent civilians" are in 100% support of the missile launchers parked next to their house. Human shields are great for media sympathy when they actually get blown up.
I just don't get it. Is Israel suppose to just sit back and watch while the Palestinians lob hundreds of missiles at them? What is your solution? Because I personally see no other alternative.
It's amazing, Israel has the wealth, the brains, and the resources to protect and defend its people with systems like this.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians have nothing, but to blindly lob rockets into a sovereign country.
This clearly illustrates to the world who is the civilized one, and who the savages are.
It is clear that there is one cause of this; Islam. The linked article gets it when it says:
The New York Times has figured out that Hamas has been “[e]mboldened by the rising power of Islamists around the region” and is making use of its “increased clout” with the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt. Yes — news flash! — the Arab Spring is a disaster for Israel and for the cause of peace in the region.
Of course I was being modded down on Slashdot for pointing out that the "Arab Spring" would lead to a worse situation than the dictatorships it replaced as it was happening and our foolish governments were supporting it.
I'm surprised Palestine has survived as long as it has. Bit by bit, Palestinians are being forced from their homes as Israel expands its lebensraum.
The Palestinians are defending themselves against an invading army. What would you do if the Canadians surrounded your town, marched you out of your home at gunpoint, bulldozed it flat, and told you to get the hell out of Canada?
Holy crap, check this thing out!
Color me impressed...
Well you know casualties happen in war, some of them civilians. If the Arabs were not insistent on waging war on Israel and would instead negotiate a peace treaty, perhaps Israel would no longer launch attacks which kill some of those Arabs which live in Palestine.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This same hamas threw fatah members from high floors of buildings when the won their fair elections. I'm not sure elections are supposed to end that way
Dr. Freud just slipped, he may take a moment to answer your page.
Thus, in both a military and an economic sense, MIRVs render ABM systems less effective, as the costs of maintaining a workable defense against MIRVs would greatly increase, requiring multiple defensive missiles for each offensive one. Decoy reentry vehicles can be used alongside actual warheads to minimize the chances of the actual warheads being intercepted before they reach their targets. A system that destroys the missile earlier in its trajectory (before MIRV separation) is not affected by this but is more difficult, and thus more expensive to implement.
Even if you made an iron dome for ballistic nuclear warheads, who ever is firing them at you is just going to make them split right before they hit your interceptor kill zone. And then you'll have less time to act or deploy your interceptors and a random number at each entry point. Could you take out some of them? Sure but it's a clam shell game.
I'm pretty sure Hamas isn't using MIRV technology and the Israelis have developed this Iron Dome tech to stop this specific kind of attack. Not ICBMs with complex nuclear payloads.
My work here is dung.
It's not just calculating a trajectory. I'm not an expert, but I assume it involves at least:
1. Detection - multiple layers of detection systems such as
- radar
- IR
- computer vision / pattern recognition AI
all of these have to work in unison to produce a high detection ratio and eliminate false positives
2. Tracking
- tracking the object during its flight path using the aforementioned systems
3. Projection
- thinking ahead of where the object is likely to strike, a small part of this is the "trajectory calculation"
4. Threat assessment
- use projection data to assess the strategic value of impact location
5. Fire control
- make decision to intercept, if positive
- allocate the most appropriate platform
- check airspace / final safety assessments
- send warnings / signals / fire confirmation
All of this has to happen within seconds.
Now the other side needs to start using guided missiles that pretend like they're going to miss, but switch targets at the last second.
So in other words, the other side needs to learn to robotech its missiles.
The fact that those missiles strike crowded residential areas probably has something to do with various Arab organizations launching missiles at Israel from those very same residential areas. When you place military targets in residential areas, those residential areas become military targets.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The difference would be that Canadians haven't been herded into ever decreasing areas, surrounded by barbed wire, walls, checkpoints and sniper towers. They haven't been denied the means and materials through blockade to have a decent standard of living. I would say that extremism is a virtually inevitable part of living life under siege.
Heavy-handed? Try showing restraint when your backyard is being targeted by rockets.
That analogy works if and only if you consider Palestinians to be more indigenous than Israelis.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
In those days, rockets were made of thin pieces of wood and launched from a device resembling a stringed musical instrument. As a result of their brazen unprovoked attacks, their civilisations were wiped off the face of the Earth by the technologicall superior interlopers a few decades after arrival. Kind of like the Palestinians. Isolated by the lines that the British drew all over the Middle East, impoverished by a long standing blockade and confined to the largest concentration camp in human history, all the while being bombed, starved and shot into annihilation.
How dare some of them get angry enough to attempt to fight back?
I hate printers.
They have been fighting for about 2k years. Surely, it will be over soon.
rewriting history since 2109
It's trickier than it sounds. For one, you need good radar to pick those things up and accurately track them. You need to track it long enough to know its trajectory, but not so long that you are left with no time to respond. Then, you have to get your missile to the rocket, correcting for Wind and a possible new trajectory (we are talking about crude rockets, so they can't be too stable).
... the innocent civilian refugees dying in Gaza from missiles that are accurate enough to hit one car yet somehow manage to strike crowded residential areas every single day don't have the money to buy one of those. Or eat.
The reason Israels missiles "manage to strike crowded residental areas every single day", is simply becasue thats where Hamas sets up their rocket launchers. When you fire off rockets from within heavily populated civillian areas, despite the knowledge that your enemy is targeting your launch sites, bad stuff WILL happen.
However, if Israel hadnt kept on building settlements in the Palestinian areas of the west bank, sabotaging any attempt by the Palestinians to get a foothold in the U.N., or simply threated the Palestinians better, Palestinian resistance groups might not have felt as much need to attack Israel at any costs, but at the same time, firing off rockets towards your enemy from inside heavily populated civilian areas, makes Hamas at least party responsible for the heavy civillian losses in within Gaza City.
Let's make it clear, I condone the actions of Hamas but Israel's actions are very heavy-handed in proportion to Hamas' attacks/
I think you meant to use the word "condemn".
Heavy-handed? Try showing restraint when your backyard is being targeted by rockets.
Israel stole land from the Palestinians. They then allowed their people to build "settlements" on other people's land.
And you're condemning those people for fighting back?!? And obsolving Israel of any blame and condoning their complete over reaction?!?
Israel has lost all sympathy from me.
And people like you are going to keep this shit going on and on and on.
Israel is just living with their own karma. Oh, well. Too fucking bad!
Here's a random question for some knowledgeable person: how much of that $100,000 cost per interceptor is overhead? I realize that missiles aren't simple things, but that strikes me as way out of line with what it would actually cost to build one of these.
That goes for other missiles as well - you always hear about Tomahawks, etc., costing $1 million+, how much do they actually cost to build?
Well, they were just thrown out of office.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"right to retaliate".
There are two interesting words in that statement:
"right". Like they really would like to do it all the time, but only under certain circumstances do they gain the right. "In a democracy every citizen has the right to vote". "The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". "The right to retaliate". Does the police have the right to put you in prison when you commit a crime? Do they have a right to put you to death for murder? Or maybe they have an obligation? An obligation to the state? An obligation to do something that normal people would try to avoid?
"retaliate". This is not about preventing further attacks, or saving its citizens, or bringing justice to the perpetrators. No, it is simply a right to retaliate. Like when someone steals your purse, you gain the right to punch them back. Because that will make you feel so much better.
"In our school, when a kid gets punched, he gains the right to retaliate."
I really don't understand the argument against Isreal on this one. They've done a lot of wrong towards Palestinians, especially on the west bank side, but hundreds of rockets are being fired from Gaza targeting civilians. Isreal's assassination was a military target. Maybe they've killed some civilians in Gaza too, which is horrible, but at least accidental. They seem to avoid that when they can. Hamas is firing rockets directly at civilians. You have to see the difference.
Here's a handy diagram that may help to explain things. Try showing restraint when your neghbourhood has been invaded, bulldozed, and then built on.
It would still be wrong if the rockets were aimed at innocent civilians.
...we put effort into our own defense...
"You didn't build that..." You had to spy on the Americans and get... how many billions in aid? Let's reduce you both to sticks and stones, and see how well you hold up.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If prayer actually worked then there would be no need for an Iron Dome.
Aren't a lot of Israelis brown people too? Not all Jews are European...
Only Jews would be dumb enough to try and live somewhere where everyone else fucking hates them, then act in a way to ensure that everyone continues to fucking hate them.
Because they were treated SO WELL in Europe over the years?
Israel assassinated one of the leaders of Hamas
The man who was killed, Ahmed al-Jabari, wasn't just "one of the leaders of Hamas". According to Gershon Baskin, who was involved in Israeli-Hamas negotiations:
"Passing messages between the two sides, I was able to learn firsthand that Mr. Jabari wasn’t just interested in a long-term cease-fire; he was also the person responsible for enforcing previous cease-fire understandings brokered by the Egyptian intelligence agency. Mr. Jabari enforced those cease-fires only after confirming that Israel was prepared to stop its attacks on Gaza. On the morning that he was killed, Mr. Jabari received a draft proposal for an extended cease-fire with Israel, including mechanisms that would verify intentions and ensure compliance. This draft was agreed upon by me and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, Mr. Hamad, when we met last week in Egypt."
In other words, if Israel had really wanted a cease-fire agreement, they would have just waited for Jabari to sign the deal. Instead, they killed him.
I am officially gone from
Israeli engineers
Is that what they call spies these days?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The Patriot missiles were known to occassionally follow their target to *its* target.
Aside from just missing, another issue is that even if you hit the target, you need to make sure that your missile detonates when it makes contact with any part of the target.
Finally, detection isn't perfect, trajectories are approximations at the time of launch. The missile needs to adjust using information collected in-flight.
You do realize this is because the missiles being fired into Israel are being fired from civilian areas.
This is but one thing that separates terrorists from soldiers... terrorists hide among the civilians using them as shields and propaganda.
There is little honor to go around on either side of this, but hiding among the civilians is an act of supreme cowardice and Evil.
--- Nothing To See Here ---
No.
Yeah, all that espionage is paying off.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I remember how during the gulf war the patriot system was being lauded on news sites as being fantastically accurate, taking out most missiles before they landed, etc.
Only turned out later that it wasn't so accurate.
I'll give it a couple of years before I conclude whether the accuracy reported in the new system is just propaganda or not.
Let's pay the Russians 100 billion Euros to use one of their doomsday nukes to take out Jerusalem.
That eliminates one of the disputes between those people. When they bitch we tell them that "their God has deemed them bad and destroyed His Holy City and if they don't cut the shit, they'll be next. Now shake hands."
If they continue, we let those ridiculous piss-ant people's kill one another and the rest of World can eventually live without all this drama and horseshit. We then can concentrate on other assholes like the N. Korean leadership.
The Middle East went from being the cradle of Western civilization to its cancer. And cancers need to be nuked.
Ahmadinejad, is that you?
NY Times article has more information than the top link, e.g.: "Iron Dome has successfully intercepted more than 300 rockets fired at densely populated areas, with a success rate of 80 to 90 percent, top officials said."
So a bit lower percentage. Yet I'm skeptical of even that, because we have no independent verification, and officials are incented to cheerlead/bluff for things like this. Also note that it was about half paid for by the U.S. to the tune of about $900 million.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
But they can't make it too efficient. Otherwise it would be hard to justify killing hundreds of Palestinians by shelling and bombing residential areas.
...to Isreal, I think Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan should cut off all land, sea and air crossings, build walls, install tunnel detectors and disable all Israeli power and water plants.
Occasionally storming with ground troops couldn't hurt. You need to find those radicals who oppose the seige.
When Isreal stops opposing the seige, then the seige will be lifted. But we have to be sure they don't stop temporarily, so the seige should probably end if Isreal stops opposing for a couple decades or so.
Sounds like an excellent investment to me. You do realize that the US will benefit from this technology, yes?
It is a good question. Sri Lanka has managed to deal with LTTE (at a high cost to the Tamils in the region) but atleast there is some hope for long term peace for both communities. Isreal has the power to force the peace. Maybe its internal politics has a liberal slant.
Yes, both parties are at fault for continuing this ridiculous feud. But is America blockading and occupying Canadian land to begin with? No.
No, but America did blockade Cuba. Was it at fault that Soviets were trying to place missiles in Cuba? No. The Soviets were at fault. Just as the Arabs are at fault for electing Hamas to lead Gaza. If Hamas wasn't smuggling weapons in order to commit terrorist acts against Israel, Israelis would do what they with everyone else who doesn't shoot at them -- trade and cooperate.
I condone the actions of Hamas but Israel's actions are very heavy-handed in proportion to Hamas' attacks/
You misspoke, but your misstatement is actually the truth. You DO condone the attacks by Hamas simply because you call Israel's actions heavy-handed. Saying that Israel overreacts in self-defense gives too much deference to the attackers.
Go ahead and spew something about propaganda. That's what everyone else who hates Israel seems to do when hear plainly stated facts.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Yeah, war sucks. But Israel didn't start it. Doesn't mean they shouldn't try to win it.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
So, when the interception rate gets high enough, I presume that the antagonists will shift to using huge numbers of smaller rockets. Either there will be too many inbound rockets to be intercepted, or they will be able to all be intercepted, but it will get hugely expensive at $100k for every rinky-dink rocket, or the Israelis will decide that, on a per-rocket basis, $100k is too much to spend based upon the marginal damage that inbound rocket would do, so they don't shoot it down, and then, based upon the number of rockets launched, they add up to significant damage.
Note, I'm not saying that the Israelis are wasting their time, or that their technology is stupid. To the contrary, I think it's pretty neat. But, it won't surprise me if their antagonists du-jur come up with some really cheap counter-measure.
I wonder what the cowboys would have to say about that and how much the world would dare to condemn them.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Strangely, it's more complicated than that. Isreal was attacked more than once by it's neighbours before 1967. It's not really unreasonable for them to want a buffer zone they control access to around their main populated region.
What would you do if the Canadians surrounded your town, marched you out of your home at gunpoint, bulldozed it flat, and told you to get the hell out of Canada?
Doesn't take Canadians. Chinese do it to their own people. In the US, you can lose your land to eminent domain. Sometimes the world moves. You can go on, or you can go on slaughtering women and children and pretend it makes you feel better. If it actually makes you feel better, you have it coming.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The Palestinians? What, all of them? Even the children?
Yes, even some of the children.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Well, if the US sent their military into Vancouver for "security" reasons, throwing out all the Canadians who lived there and allowed US citizens to build homes and "settle" the area and considering the US's superior military, I wouldn't blame Canada in the least for shooting rockets over the border.
Exactly. At first, when you learn about a few Arab-instigated wars Israel has had to fight off, you have a little sympathy for their argument that they need Gaza, Golan, and the West Bank as buffer zones as well as a little punishment upon their aggressors, with the notion being that "You'll get this back when you've learned your lesson".
But then you find out that they're displacing the people living in those areas and then just gifting that land to Israeli settlers and you're like "WTF?!?! How are they ever going to undo that? You can't just go to the settlers and say 'Okay. Time to come back home, we are giving that land back to the Palestinians...'".
So, yeah... when Israeli's call those areas "buffer zones" or anything implying that they're temporary for as long as their neighbors are hostile toward them, I don't believe them for a second.
The US tends to keep Texas separatists from getting a foothold in the U.N. as well.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Yep, that's the standard Israeli newsline, alright.
The truth: "Israel was offered a truce; didn't respond; then tacitly agreed to a lull, which appeared to be working, until Israel shattered it with a massive escalation; in self-defence."
http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/blog_comments/israel_bombs_gaza_a_chronological_reminder
Where are you getting your information from? "Isreal" don't real.
Liberals always have so much compassion and love in their hearts...
But not for those damn Jews, and their dirty, underhanded Jew ways.[/melgibson]
Boy, talk about cognitive dissonance. Liberals openly despise all war and conflict, until it's targeted at people they don't like. Yep, sounds about normal.
Israel is practically carpet bombing Gaza every time Hamas launches an attack. They're killing at LEAST 10 times as many civilians as the terrorists are. I wouldn't be surprised if Israel was secretly hoping Hamas continued being stupid, just so they'd have an excuse to slowly wipe Palestine and all it's people off the map.
That means they know exactly where it was launched from too.
Accurate automated retaliation next perhaps?
And where is a place that people don't hate them?
Antarctica?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
When are the Palestinians going to explicitly recognize Israel's right to exist?
Well, technically, when Israel officially starts defining itself as an Islamic country intended (although not necessarily for real) into adopting Sharia law, coupled with a sizable portion of the currently non-Islamic population following suit and converting. Then it wouldn't be possible, from an Islamic perspective at least, to call its government an external power who came to desecrate land that had already been Islamized.
Not that this would be a good thing, mind you, but that it'd achieve this specific goal, it would.
Although I wonder if that wouldn't end with "New Muslim" Jews being persecuted in a similar way their "New Christian" counterparts were in pre-19th century Europe.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Also, a quick glance at the death tolls of each nation can be quite handy in identifying who the aggressor is.
Indeed. It's an instructive example.
Sri Lanka dealt with the Tamil Tigers with overwhelming military force, annexation, and only modest attention to civilian casualties. There is no "peace process", no Tamilstan, no "two-state solution", and nobody advocating boycotts of Sri Lanka dipped in fairly transparent anti-Sinhalese bigotry. And everybody else seems perfectly happy about it. (I am too, as the LTTE turned into vicious terrorist scum who deserved what they got.)
What's up with that?
overwhelm the system by launching many multiple rockets at the same time.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So they're almost finished then?
"goofy" rocket fuel
rather than a nice straight acceleration curve, "poison" the rocket fuel so it sputters and weakens in flight on purpose. Yes, the rocket won't be accurate, but I don't think accuracy is the point. Meanwhile, the goofy microaccelerations and microdecelerations would make the rocket impossible to target accurately.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=292706 though their policy is only to try and stop the ones on their way to populated areas, perhaps because it costs $100,000 to stop one
In other words, if Israel had really wanted a cease-fire agreement, they would have just waited for Jabari to sign the deal. Instead, they killed him.
Yeah, I have a hunch that Israel knew all hell would break lose with Hamas and did it on purpose: after all it's not like Syria can back them up now, all tied up as they are in their civil war. If Israel needs a time to finish the Palestinians, this is as good as it will be for quite a while.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
You know if Hamas was smart they'd just fire rockets with basically no payload and have Isreal waste $100,000 per $10-100 rocket that basically does nothing.
That said I figure it would err on the side of caution and shoot rockets down first and ask questions later if it came to a missile spam of like 100+ rockets being shot at the same time.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Their leader, in a car, on a public street, is a legitimate military target in your mind? If Hamas hit Netanyahu or Lieberman this way you would call that a fair strike then? Even if some civilians had the bad luck to be in the blast radius, it's still a fair shot right? I doubt it. I am pretty sure if they pulled that off you would call it a terrorist attack.
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I'd say, as someone living in Israel (Tel Aviv, specifically) at the moment that its been quite effective on the longer range Fajr-5 Iranian-made missiles that had been fired my way. Another thing that might be changing the over all statistic is that there are two version of the system out at the moment- The older system which had started to roll out a year or two ago, along with a new generation of hardware. Perhaps the spokesman is only referring to the 'newer' upgraded versions.
You mean on earth? There has been people all around hating on the Jews for a long time. And you can thank the ottoman empire and the Brits for them being in this particular place.
In my opinion, Palistine lost any claim on the lands given to them by the UN/UK when they starte and lost the '48 war. International warfare should always be played for keeps. You start the war and lose and you're lucky if your women aren't simply prizes for the victorious army and your lands become little more than a reminder to future nations not to attack someone stronger than you.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
You can't just go to the settlers and say 'Okay. Time to come back home'
Umm, isn't that exactly what happened in Gaza?
...must be overjoyed at helping fund this.
What, you mean "import missingvariables" isn't enough?
Both proponents and opponents argued about high hits rates during the US Star Wars program. (Started by Reagan, but not yet over.) Proponents would claim even if just some lives would saved, it would be a success. Opponents would claim that if only one nuke got through, it would be a disastrous failure. I lean toward the former.
If the US decided tomorrow to take over Toronto and start rounding up the existing residents and putting them in what amounts to a concentration camp, I'd expect at some point they'd fight back and try to reclaim their houses/businesses/schools. I'm not sure if I'm more dumbfounded that you really just suggested that an entire race of people be exterminated in order to more easily steal their land and belongings, or that someone upvoted you for doing so. I guess the Jewish social media brigade is out in full force this week.
The problem with your example is that the land of the US was never part of Canada. It would make sense if some other country came along and told Canada "This land is no longer yours. It now belongs to the Americans." And for the next few decades Canada puts up Americans crossing its borders, settling on its land claiming it for themselves. All the while the US government does nothing. So in a way Canada does have a right to be pissed at the US. But its more complex than that, the Americans were there first, a few thousand years prior, before the Canadians kicked them out by force. Plus god told the Americans that it was their promise land, so by right the land belongs to the americans. So who is right in this case? The Americans who want their "god given" land back or the Canadians who have settled and claimed that land for over 1300 years?
Another example would be if Native Americans launched missiles from their reservations into surrounding US communities. Another parallel were the IRA attacks on Northern Ireland. People get pissed when you take their land away.
And that is the truth behind Israel and Palestine. The Jews were there first about 3000+ years ago. Then the Arabs forced them out around 650 AD. 1300 years later, during WWI, the British gained control of Palestine and the Jews started coming back. After WWII it became apparent the displaced Jews and Holocost survivors needed a place to go and the British would not let them all into Palestine as there was an immigration quota in place. After the Jewish Zionist Terrorist organization, Lehi, carried out assassinations and bombings against the British in protest, the US and UN eventually forced Britain into establishing Israel in order to stop the violence.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Palestine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(group)
No matter whose side you look at, each has a point. Its a catch 22 situation. The Jews established that land as theirs first. But the Arabs had control over the land for well over a 1000 years. After that much times passes you would think the Jews would just say fuck it, we can settle in the west. But the Zionist mentality is firmly rooted in the belief of the Jewish state, the "promise land". Basically no matter who says what, god gave them the deed to Israel and there is no higher authority that can tell them otherwise.
Sounds like he was also one of the guys responsible for breaking those cease fires.
Also, if these things works like the Phalanx missile defense system, you have to prioritize your shots because the gun needs to pivot (on up to three axis) to line up the shot. You could wait for two missiles to be closer so you have to adjust your gun less, but it might mean you lose the chance to hit another missile.
AFAIK, it basically works like a disk scheduler in your OS; you optimize to get as much as you can with the least amount of mechanical movement (since you can crunch numbers faster than the mechanical part can move).
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Agreed, it has to be a two way street. He can't take responsibility for being able to broker ceasefires as and when he wants and then not also blame him when firing starts again. Either he has the power to prevent rocket fire from Gaza or he doesn't, which is it?
An alternative and equally valid reading of the situation to the GPs is hence, if Israel really wanted a long lasting ceasefire, it was clear this guy wasn't going to be the one to give it to them having allowed rocket fire to commence once again against Israel time and time again.
But meh, I don't know why I bother with discussions like this, they're far too partisan to include this kind of rational balancing of alternative theories. Taking a quote from someone on one side of a conflict, and using it as damning evidence against the other side without considering both sides of the argument, is about as stupid, partisan, and ignorant as it gets.
Absolutely America is occupying Canadian land. Sense 1776. Bastards. They will get theirs.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not to be pedantic, but the Germans actually had better then a 1:1 kill ratio against the Americans in WWII.
Before that it 1812 and the Brits. Other then that, we have always been better trained and equipped.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How is parent offtopic? The legitimacy of Hamas' government is a real concern here. Whose interests do they have in mind -- Palestinians' or their own? What's served by practically daring Israel to launch a ground invasion instead of seeking a peaceful resolution?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Their leader, in a car, on a public street, is a legitimate military target in your mind?
Of course. Why wouldn't it be?
If Hamas hit Netanyahu or Lieberman this way you would call that a fair strike then?
If they followed the rules of war in doing so, then yes, I would. First, they have to declare war in some way. Then they have to send in their guys in uniform so that they are clearly distinguished from civilians. Do you see where I'm going with this?
Actually, it is a relatively cheap computation on modern computing hardware. The specification for many modern tactical intercept systems is that the complete decision cycle has an upper bound of 20-50 milliseconds. You can do an amazing amount of computation on sensor data in that amount of time.
Remember, sophisticated multi-target tracking and engagement systems were built in the 1970s and 1980s with much less processing power than your cell phone has today.
And in fact, if you look at the chipsets used in state-of-the-art terminal guidance packages for hypersonic kinetic intercept of agile targets, they are embedded systems chips that would have been obsolete as desktop CPUs even a decade ago. Think MIPS R3000 or R4000 class CPUs and a modest DSP.
Basically, CPUs can drive computation at a much higher rate than material physics allows targets to change their behavior. We passed the threshold where computation is the bottleneck decades ago.
Buffer zone? That's good. For any German readers out there: that translates to Lebensraum.
And let's not forget that during past conflicts:
Hamas have conspired to lend themselves a false legitimacy by claiming high civilian losses, when in fact they used human shields during ground offenses by deploying armed soldiers dressed as civilians in violation of the Geneva Convention rules of engagement. Hamas leadership has sought shelter underneath hospitals, putting the population least able to defend themselves at great risk. They even used a captured Red Cross vehicle to launch attacks, a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention. Hamas have used mosques, schools, and civilian homes as hideouts and to store weapons and rocket launch sites or have placed their storage and/or sites adjacent to those dwellings.
The collateral damage was stragetically planned and such tactics had been previously used by Saddam Hussein during Operation Desert Storm of the 1991 Iraq-Kuwait conflict. They have attempted to deceive and manipulate international press and public opinion by staging rocket damaged areas in civilian areas and exploiting image manipulation, and the international press now carefully scrutinizes photographs and sources of information from those war zones.
Hamas has been planning a campaign of deceit from the beginning. While neither side are angels in this conflict, the greater sin is upon Hamas for their deceit.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
One caveat:
Artillery rockets are so called because they essentially act just like artillery: straight (as in nominally, not linearly straight) ballistic arc. They reason they aren't called "ballistic" is because that word is typically applied to larger, more preciesely targeted, strategic level weapons rather than smaller, tactical scale, primarily untargeted/unguided rocket warheads.
and "ballistic missile" trajectories, even unsophisticated barely targeted ones like the scud, tend to have more vertiacl than artillery rockets; artillery rockets tend to have a more "artillery" like, ie, flatter, less vertical, trajectory. it's still ballistic (scientific term) in nature, but not "ballistic" (military term).
So still using a ballistic trajectory simplifies the math. Big difference from a scud is, being a shorter range, more tactical scale munition, there's less time for the intercept computation.
(scud was considered a tactical scale ballistic missle, but its considerably larger than the ones used in the past week, using .
scud: http://notesfromamedinah.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/scud3a.jpg
fajr-5: http://varifrank.com/images/mrl-iran-thumb.jpg)
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
rocket engine != guided.
the rocket engine simply replaces the gun barrel and powder charge of a normal artillery shell.
otherwise there's little difference beyond potentially (not always) longer range.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
History epic fail.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We'd throw them a puck and 12 pack of nasty Canadian can beer. They would forget they had rockets, modify rocket parts to be hockey sticks etc.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Hamas is firing dumb rockets in a general direction. They lack the capability to target military targets or civilians. They prefer to hit military targets, but the chance is much higher for hitting a civilian target or nothing at all. This is irresponsible and ineffective, but the rockets are simple enough to be built in a workshop by a few people.
A blog? From 'newleftproject'? That's credible. /sarc
Do you have a credible citation?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Let me guess, you were one of the kids that didn't fight back?
Pussy. You never learned a few valuable lessons. First: Parents and teachers live in a dream world where you should not fight back and all will be well. Second: Only when the bastards get a bloody nose they will stop picking on you. Third: Once you have bloodied a nose or two the rest of the bastards will leave you alone.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
and conservatives are all about reducing the debt and cutting entitlements, until it involves raising taxes or reducing funds for medicare.
Any organization of people is hypocritical if you conglomerate the views of every participating individual into one mass.
Hamas: radical, but not a corrupt puppet government that the US and Israel were trying to set up.
Fatah: said puppet group.
Those were the only two choices in the election that the US forced.
Intercepting the V2 rocket was impossible - waaayyyy too fast, but there weren't nearly as many V2s as there were V1s.
Intercepting a V1 wasn't as hard, that thing flew like an airplane, basically. It could be intercepted by using height - dive down using altitude to make the intercepting airplane faster, because otherwise it would have had problems catching the pretty fast V1.
V1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb
V2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2
I do not trust the "semitic" information one iota more than the "antisemitic" kind.
You need a different adjective. Both sides in this conflict are Semitic.
From dictionary.com:
Semitic
a subfamily of Afroasiatic languages that includes Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic, hebrew, and Phoenician.
Considering the fact that the Palestinian rockets have the level of sophistication of technology typically found in an average machine shop, it's good that a multi-billion dollar defense system is actually able to defend against them.
And where sir do the pilots that drop the bombs go after they finish work for the day?
The crucial fact to establish is where they are when they are in combat.
The pilots are up there alone, in clearly marked, distinctive military aircraft, and they can be shot down without any civilian casualties.
The terrorists shoot mortars from the vicinity of schools and hospitals.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
American Indians cross the Bering Strait when exactly? Oh that's right, they're not indigenous at all.
well, their (and your) great great great grandma was from africa
Ain't religion great?
Cetero censeo civitates Palestinenses delendas esse. Usque ad ultimam.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Oi. Fine, I'm naive, but, seriously?
Might doesn't always make right.
People shouldn't be thought of as prizes, especially in the barbaric ways the above implies.
Also, 'Playing for keeps' and working in absolutes... these things don't work in the real world.
The big problem with lasers is that atmosphere scatters them quite a bit, so while they're great in space combat, they have pretty short range on the ground. The US military has experimented with mounting them on a 747 (or some similar sized jet) with some success, but the power requirements are huge and there's a lot of technical obstacles that still need to be overcome before they're practical for shooting down a lot of rockets.
In theory, you can pick out an aggressor and a defender by who started the conflict, but the conflict goes so far back it's meaningless to use this as a measure of justness. It goes back at least to the Zionist Commission following WW1. Pretty much everyone from the start of the conflict is dead.
SDI also included space based lasers (obstructed and distorted by cloud and atmospherics) ...
I believe the space based lasers were supposed to hit intercontinental ballistic missiles when they left the atmosphere. The upper part of such a missile's parabolic trajectory is beyond the atmosphere.
If your neighbors were madmen who wish your death above all else, wouldn't you barge in and show them who's boss, if you could?
It's not necessarily right, but it's understandable, unlike the pure hatred coming from the other side.
So the Soviet Union was the aggressor against Nazi Germany?
Untrue. Wikipedia says:
>By 20 November, Gaza health officials said that 113 Palestinians had been killed since the operation began, of which: 53 were civilians, 49 militants and 1 a policeman
Note that is an estimate from a Palestinian source.
Carpet-bombing, or anything close to it, would have resulted in a far higher number of Palestinian deaths. Any loss of innocent life is tragic but these numbers show a commitment to minimizing civilian casualties on the part of the IDF. Unlike Hamas which intentionally targets civilians with their rocket strikes.
But all the black folks in the US who are American all have some African lineage. If you are black, were born in the Dominican Republic or Haiti, for example, move to the US and become a naturalized citizen, you are still an African American.
In case you don't know - Israel kept occupying Palestinian territories, rockets or not.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11611658
What would Mexico or Canada do if the US kept occupying it?
No, he means "cornichon", or a small pickle.
I was just going to comment that Americans, historically, have not been as tolerant as Israelis. We may not have invented the death march or the "reservation", but we did have some pretty solid examples.
I'd also like to point out that Egypt and Jordan are, not coincidentally, the two neighbors that signed a peace treaty with Israel AND who aren't asking for their territory back.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
How do you know they prefer to hit military targets? Do you have any evidence to back up this claim?
Let me guess, you were one of the kids that didn't fight back?
Pussy. You never learned a few valuable lessons. First: Parents and teachers live in a dream world where you should not fight back and all will be well. Second: Only when the bastards get a bloody nose they will stop picking on you. Third: Once you have bloodied a nose or two the rest of the bastards will leave you alone.
It didn't really come up very often, so I don't remember the question ever being raised. I think somehow all the bastards must have gone to your school...
But yes, for you "the right to retaliate" is really a right to be savored? That's how you feel when you get hurt? That you finally have the right to retaliate? Interesting. You see, one of the hardest things is to understand how other people think, because we all think that we all think the same way.
Maybe you could ask them not to launch rockets from playgrounds, next to hospitals, the front yards of homes, and mosques too. You know, the places where other "civilized" powers consider them off limits in all forms of war. Oh wait...that only counts if you're a western power, if you're anyone else it's okay. Along with child soldiers, and strapping bombs on to the mentally retarded and sending them off to be remotely blown up at check points.
Om, nomnomnom...
Exactly. If someone attacks you and instead of responding with violence, you don't respond and you instead *die*, then you will then be at peace.
Idiot.
Well let's say you condone their actions. Then this is the type of stuff you support. Oh and that's Hamas dragging a guy's body through the streets on the back of a motor cycle, and then there's the other stuff about the supposed "jewish collaborator" that they executed in the middle of the street.
Yeah, good guys to support. If Israel's attacks are heavy handed(over 1200 missile attacks and less than 140 dead with direct targeting) vs the palestinians 12000+ missile attacks directly targeting civilians. You've got a screw loose.
Om, nomnomnom...
I foresee suicide bombings all over israel as that is their last possible act of desperation
Suicide bombings have been happening in Israel as long as I can remember. Israel's ability to stop them is frankly impressive.
Some of Israel's methods, perhaps less so.
I actually knew this, that's why i put the quotation marks there.
I just had to choose between what was the issue and commenting on the great grandparents usage of some expression.
Baboons are cute.
I have little love for Israel.
The Israeli death tolls are low because Israel wants her people to live. The Arab death tolls are high because Hamas wants their people to die. I quote from Hamas "we love death like the Jews love life". Every dead Arab child is a victory for Hamas.
could it be?
Then, dont complain, if your enemy takes the same stance, and tries to use all their might to get back their lands.
Penguins are well-known anti-Semites.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Why does Hamas have to do that before they hit the IDF, but the IDF doesnt have to do that before hitting Hamas?
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You can also look up "anti-Semitic" in dictionary.com or any other standard reference and see that in the word specifically denotes hostility or hatred of Jews. A lot of people are genuinely confused by this terminology, ...
In particular you and the GGP. The palestinian terrorist and murderer of Israeli civilians Yasser Arafat famous corrected someone who tried to label him an anti-semite, pointing out that Palestinians are also semites.
... but you can be pretty sure that when someone argues that "anti-Seimtism" is a meaningless term, ...
Straw man. The GP did not do so, all he said was that the wrong adjective was used. That fact remains that palestinians consider themselves semites.
... even after having been shown a the dictionary definition and history of the term, it is pretty good evidence that he or she is an anti-Semite.
Obviously someone who points out that palestinians are also semites must be a nazi. Your logic is breathtaking ... as in people are laughing at you so hard that they can not breathe.
Except they keep giving them lands back in exchange for peace.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Those negotiations never had a representative of the Israeli government present. It was a 3rd party, not authorized to negotiate.
...I'm fairly sure it's only Hamas who've been launching the missiles, but hey, why not just fire indiscriminately into a heavily populated city anyway in retaliation? Sure you'll kill a large number of civilians and children, but hey they're just Palestinians so who cares?
One problem is that Hamas troops are not dressing in uniform, and operating from civilian areas - which is itself a war crime. (because it put civilians at risk.)
The article you linked is highly speculative and written by someone with a vested interest in criticizing Jabari's assassination. Jabari's death basically cuts Baskin out of the loop, so I'm not convinced Baskin is free of any conflict of interest here. Baskin has no idea how Jabari would have responded to the draft of his deal, but it certainly serves a political purpose to imply Israel deliberately murdered the one man who could negotiate and enforce a cease-fire.
Or, you know, it was simply an attack on a military target (given that he was second-in-command of Hamas' military wing), as well as retribution for the kidnapping and detention of Gilad Shalit.
It strikes me as much more likely that the Israeli government simply didn't care whether Jabari was interested in a cease-fire. Once this conflict flared up, his fate was sealed.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I have no doubt that most of the powers-that-be know where the missiles are from and who's generally responsible, but by the same time, right now one could look at the situation that there are multiple players that Islamic Jihad could get their missiles from, and stopping Iran from providing relatively unsophisticated missiles won't stop the militants from lobbing explosives into Israel, and also right now the weapons are unsophisticated enough to make defense fairly practical and to make damage fairly small. Escalating by attacking other countries in the region could result in more sophisticated missiles or in ground war.
At the moment the material cost and the cost in lives is fairly small, and steps to address it on multiple fronts are being tried. If other efforts fail then perhaps there could be an escalation to a more active war, but for the moment I'd rather they try other methods first.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You can also look up "anti-Semitic" in dictionary.com or any other standard reference and see that in the word specifically denotes hostility or hatred of Jews. A lot of people are genuinely confused by this terminology, ...
In particular you and the GGP. The palestinian terrorist and murderer of Israeli civilians Yasser Arafat famous corrected someone who tried to label him an anti-semite, pointing out that Palestinians are also semites.
I would say you're the one confused on this. "Semitic" covers a broader range of peoples
... but you can be pretty sure that when someone argues that "anti-Seimtism" is a meaningless term, ...
Straw man. The GP did not do so, all he said was that the wrong adjective was used. That fact remains that palestinians consider themselves semites.
Reading isn't your strong suit, and I know perfectly well what "Semite" and "anti-Semite" mean. Nor have I said GP (now GGP) has said anything different.
... even after having been shown a the dictionary definition and history of the term, it is pretty good evidence that he or she is an anti-Semite.
To which you just provided an example, namely Arafat.
Obviously someone who points out that palestinians are also semites must be a nazi. Your logic is breathtaking ... as in people are laughing at you so hard that they can not breathe.
Not my logic. When you get a break from laughing out loud and take a breath, go back and re-read your post.
You make it sound like Hamas is the only faction in the Gaza Strip, but there are actually other even more militant subgroups that Hamas does not have control over. Note how many more rockets are now flying at Israel, and how they're getting close to Tel Aviv. I don't necessarily believe Hamas was endorsing the launching of rockets during ceasefires.
For that matter, I've also heard (with no verification) that Hamas will intentionally shoot rockets into open space in Israel, so that they can satisfy the more militant subgroups while also not pushing Israel too hard to retaliate.
:(){
Savored is your word, you are projecting. I don't savor the right to defend myself. But I won't give it up. That said, it is satisfying to kick the shit out of someone who has been fucking with you for months and who finally does something aggressive enough to rate an ass kicking. The main satisfaction is knowing that he won't fuck with you again (they _never_ do if you beat them hard enough, if they do, it's a sign you were too light).
Like I said, you missed many important life lessons. Too late now.
I don't believe your school was full of civilized little shits. You just hid behind the teachers skirts.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's just intercepted more missiles in the last week then the previous 2 years combine. Since there are only 4 Iron Dome Batteries operational, with a 5th that just came on line 11/17/2012, and 2 more scheduled for 2013, I always thought Hamas could overwhelm Iron Dome. It seems Hamas has tried that but Israel UAV's have been able to spot these attempts and that's where the IAF comes in. They are able to use their Air Power to bomb these attempts before any missiles are launched. Each Iron Dome Battery cost around $37million US Dollars with the Tamir missiles around $40,000 each. I feel this has just been a test by Hamas to see the capabilities of Iron Dome. They probably realized they lost this round days ago but are unable to stop now without loosing face. (A very important point in the Arab world.) A truce will be worked out and Hamas will re-evaluate where they must be in 2, 5, 10 years from now before they can attempt a successful attack. Of course Israel won't sit still during that time. All just very, very sad.
... the innocent civilian refugees dying in Gaza...
...and you can tell they're "innocent civilians" because they are not dressed in official Hamas army uniforms...
Link to the wiki article? I couldn't find it. I'm also curious to know what the Israeli casualty count is. I'm betting it's in the single digits.
I did find these:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/nov/19/gaza-israel-verified-incidents-mapped
I'm not sure about this one, but figured I'd include it.
http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2012.html
My problem is that the terrorists are firing completely uncontrolled rockets. If they're lucky, the rockets will hit the broad side of a barn. It would be comical if they weren't managing to kill people. The Israelis on the other hand are using top of the line ordinance to perform devastating targeted attacks.
I admit I was exaggerating by calling it carpet-bombing, but the whole affair is still very one sided, and assuming your numbers are accurate, are still killing more civilians than terrorists. And how many surviving family members of those killed become so overwhelmed by grief that they strike back at Israel, repeating the circle ad nauseum?
My point is that with this technology, Israel has the opportunity to stop the war cold. They can prevent militant attacks from hitting them, which means they no longer have to retaliate. They can just sot down, cross their arms, and watch as the terrorists flail uselessly. After letting them terrorists do that for a while they can stand up again and say, "Look. It's gone. Can we please stop now?"
But I'm afraid that won't happen.
The one I've been using is Cuba.
If Cuba started launching rockets into US territory. I'd like everyone here to picture how "proportional" a response they could expect from the USA.
Computer assisted snipers strategically spread throughout gaza. If they have the technology to shoot down rockets mid-flight, then they have the technology to quickly determine their source. If they can do that fast enough, then they can:
a) record who fired the rocket, for evidence, before they can drop the casing and run
b) take them out
Why does Hamas have to do that before they hit the IDF, but the IDF doesnt have to do that before hitting Hamas?
Because Hamas attacked first or there was a clear and present danger provoking an Israeli attack (such as happened during the Six Days War in 1967).
Because Hamas isn't following the rules of war, I can't be bothered to be concerned about what happens to them or their supporters.
My comment was about the statement that Israel has a "right to retaliate". Which, I think, is very different from
saying that Israel has a "right to defend itself". I think countries, people, and even kids in kindergarten, have a right to defend themselves. Saying that someone has a right to retaliate is very different.
But, since I obviously lack the experience, could you please explain how you distinguish the agression of the ass kicker from that of the ass kickee? How come they "_never_ come back to fuck with you again"? Don't they see your agression also as a reason to retaliate, and finally kick your ass? Or is it that your ass kicking finally convinced them that they were right and you were wrong? Or maybe you were just stronger than everybody else?
Except one believes in one flavour of invisible sky-fairy, and the other believes in another. As we know, that perfectly reasonable grounds for war, and bad behaviour of all kinds generally.
I was going by a translation of a fighter's words who was interviewed by Al Jazeera. Obviously, he can't speak for every fighter.
False.
Neither is Israel.
A most inhumane position. If you must apply it, you should at least do so consistently, and care nothing for what happens to either side.
Personally I am concerned for all unjustly harmed regardless of which semitic language they speak.
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Or they are considered freedom fighters if you agree if with their cause. You just named the Americans in the American Civil war terrorists.
Don't worry.
Judging by the state of our military hardware the rockets will either fall apart after launch, blow up on the launchpad or lose some parts and fall on a big city.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Reading isn't your strong suit, and I know perfectly well what "Semite" and "anti-Semite" mean. Nor have I said GP (now GGP) has said anything different.
Or perhaps writing is not your strong suit. Your post absolutely gave the impression that you were disagreeing with the previous post and suggesting that it was racist.
To which you just provided an example, namely Arafat.
Arafat described himself as being anti-zionist, claiming that as a semite himself his is not anti-semite. One could also reasonably describe him as anti-Israeli or anti-jewish. You are hanging your argument on an obviously flawed definition, a definition that embeds a certain amount of imprecision into itself. When using the word in the context of a European or a Persian then the imprecision is somewhat tolerable, but unworkable in the context of a fellow semitic.
i hope they're not using Siemens PLCs in this Iron Dome thing.
No it doesn't. Lebensraum translates into 'living space' not buffer zone.
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
... with the notion being that "You'll get this back when you've learned your lesson".
Never giving it back would be an excellent lesson. Losing wars tend to result in things like territory loss. Giving invaders a "freebie" is a horrible idea.
The world wouldn't stand for the US invading Canada.
Just like the entire middle east would swamp Israel if they tried to occupy Palestine.
In ancient times, there was an attempt to exterminate all Jews. You can read about how that turned out in the biblical book of Esther. In modern times, the Nazis had their final solution and the Holocaust attempting to wipe the Jews out. Next in the parade of history we have the Islamists that tried to exterminate Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973. It did not work then and it is not going to work now. In fact it will never work. God writes history in advance. Read Isaiah 17, where it clearly says that Damascus will be destroyed. After the war chronicled in advance in Ezekiel 38 and 39, the war of Armageddon takes place just north of Jerusalem. It is the final war of humanity. In the Bible it is written that ALL armies of ALL nations will participate and be destroyed by an invading army from outer space, namely the armies of heaven from God. After having cleansed the world from evil, Jesus Christ will rule over the whole earth. Jerusalem will be the capital city of the world.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
You don't think they've come up with delayed launch mechanisms so they can vacate the area hours or days in advance?
Why? Did I encourage my son to blow up a shopping mall? Did I provide my neighbor with the bombs to do it? Did I myself shoot up a movie theater? Or did call the police and tell them that someone was going to do those things? Because, you know, in Palestine you get a death sentence for turning in mass murderers of civilians.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Because Hamas isn't following the rules of war
Neither is Israel.
Then show the evidence for this claim. Don't just say it. Keep in mind that because Hamas isn't following the rules of war as specified by the Geneva Conventions, then they waive most of the protections granted by the Geneva Conventions.
In this situation Israel and Israel alone has the power to stop this. Period.
Actually, no. No one does.
The Israelis are in the Hell they created.
No. This particular brand of hell on the heads of the British. It is they who fractured the middle east and put dictators in charge. Democracies don't fight wars with each other. Dictatorships fight everyone to maintain their relevance.
Go ahead and rationalize the treatment of the Palestinians.
Anyone who demands that Israel commit suicide doesn't get to have a high moral ground. And that is exactly the alternative to what they are doing.
Karma is a bitch, dude.
Tell that to the terrorists.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
No, I didn't get the order wrong. Weapons WERE smuggled into Gaza. That's why attacks out of Gaza are so prolific. So yeah, they blockade a territory used to attack them in order to prevent weapons from coming in. The odd part is that they still supply their electricity. I mean, I can't think of any other nation which out of humanitarian reasons would supply electricity to their active enemy in war. Can you?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
'The Palestinians have been encouraged to believe that murdering innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic for advancing their cause....They blame suicide bombing on "desperation of occupation." ....The first major terror bombing committed by Arabs against the Jewish state occurred ten weeks before Israel even became independent.On Sunday morning, February 22, 1948, in anticipation of Israel's independence, a triple truck bomb was detonated by Arab terrorists on Ben Yehuda Street, in what was then the Jewish section of Jerusalem. Fifty-four people were killed, and hundreds were wounded. Thus, it is obvious that Arab terrorism is caused not by the "desperation" of "occupation" but by the VERY THOUGHT of a Jewish state.'
Somehow it seems to make a difference to people when it's THEIR country being taken.
that translates to Lebensraum.
Only if it grows a lot faster than this particular instance has.
And the Sinai. Wasn't pretty in either instance. And I thought they didn't let anyone settle in the Golan?
Justified anger != moral high ground
The PLO/PA under Arafat made the choices that lead to that situation. Go back and read through the mid-late 90's history of the conflict, and especially what went on in 2000. It's almost entirely a one-sided history of violent Palestinian provocation followed by increasingly violent Israeli response, not the other way around.
"In our school, when a kid gets punched, he gains the right to retaliate."
I wish I had gone to that kind of school. Not only would I have not gotten in trouble for punching back, I might have gotten punched back myself a few times and learned faster to stop picking on people.
Trouble is, you tend to have to use realtime friendly CPU's when you do this stuff. So things like pipeline optimization, predictive branching, cache management, etc, tend to not always be present on CPUs that are designed for determinism. So realistically, I would not be surprised if the heaviest computing in that thing is done on a single core 500MHz-1GHz CPU, and the rockets aren't probably running anything fancier than a 100 MHz single core machine either. They may or may not have memory management in hardware (I know some higher end 1GHz SBCs I've worked with don't, they just have a single flat address space).
It's still way overkill for what it needs to do, but in order to get the cycle times down under the 10 msec mark (order of magnitude), you have to pick and chose what language you work in (anything with non determinism like Java or something with a heap like the C++ run time may well be a no-no), and you have to pick and choose which algorithms you implement.
The latest-and-greatest randomized algorithm you see in IEEE may not be suitable for realtime implementation because while the average time is 1msec, there exist execution paths which take 15 msec to run. So you're safer going with the sub-optimal thing that executes in 5 msec every time.
It's not really unreasonable for them to want a buffer zone they control access to around their main populated region.
And then, it's not unreasonable for them to want to build settlements there. After all they're growing, and there's all that land just sitting there. Hey wait, now there's no buffer zone! Oh well, it's not unreasonable for them to want a buffer zone. Repeat as needed.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
But then you find out that they're displacing the people living in those areas and then just gifting that land to Israeli settlers and you're like "WTF?!?! How are they ever going to undo that? You can't just go to the settlers and say 'Okay. Time to come back home, we are giving that land back to the Palestinians...'".
Mmm perhaps like this?
That's an interesting point. Many of the blond hair, blue eyed Israeli citizens hail from Germany, Poland, Russia, the U.S. Because they are currently Jewish, they have rights.
But those brown people, the Christians and Muslims, could they not have also been Jews too once? Jews that later converted to Christianity and Islam. The original people that lived in the land called Israel, 2000+ years ago.
Look around the neighborhood (Leb, Egypt,, Syria, etc.), they're all pretty brown too.
Just thinking...
Not all jews are white, there are black jews too and they are treated the same way with the same rights.
In 1991 there was a military operation in which 34 israeli airplanes were sent to rescue the Ethiopian jews from Eritrean and Tigrean rebels, they transported more than 14,000 black jews to Israel, in my opinion that is quite impressive. I know if I was in a similar situation my own country wouldn't move a finger for me.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Solomon
No, but justified self-defense is a whole different story. Unfortunately, the media is so pro-Israeli that it it is impossible to have the actions of the Palestinians seen in light of self-defense. Every military action by them is labelled as "terrorist aggression", every military action by Israel is labelled "justified pre-emptive strike".
Let's not forget that this current round of bombing was started when Ahmed al-Jabari was assassinated, despite the fact that he was about to sign (the very morning he was killed, in fact) a cease fire agreement he and his Israeli counterpart had been working on for some time. Being about the only man on the Palestinian side with the respect of the actual soldiers on the ground needed to actuall give effect to a cease fire, one can only wonder why Israel killed him, and at that precise moment in time.
On Wednesday morning, letting him get to work like any other morning would have resulted in a long-term ceasefire plan, designed and agreed to by both Hamas leaders as well as Israeli government officials. Instead, they blew up his car on the way to work, triggering the current round of fighting.
I hate printers.
"You make it sound like Hamas is the only faction in the Gaza Strip, but there are actually other even more militant subgroups that Hamas does not have control over. Note how many more rockets are now flying at Israel, and how they're getting close to Tel Aviv. I don't necessarily believe Hamas was endorsing the launching of rockets during ceasefires."
It doesn't really matter, if he has the power to stop launches on demand like he claims, then he has the power to make sure there are no launches full stop. Either they're lying about what he could really actually achieve or they're admitting that the flip side of the argument is that he also allowed rocket fire to happen in the first place. It's got to be one or the other.
Also, whilst you're right, there are other militant groups there, some far more hard line, ultimately Hamas is the elected representative of the people there, and is by far the strongest armed group. As such, they could easily incapacitate these groups, or force them into their own ranks if they so chose to. In Gaza, you can only operate with Hamas' permission.
If they take the glory for this guy of being able to stop rocket fire the hard fact is that it means it's also on them when it starts. There's no getting away from that, the original post was a highly partisan one-sided peice of propaganda and nothing more.
When are the Palestinians going to explicitly recognize Israel's right to exist?
When Israel recognises Palestines right to exist?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I presume it is a different problem. You don't know when and where it will launch, and have only very little time to do the whole thing. It's not the same as having a PID controller following the heat signature of a large plane.
In any case, we can only speculate. Previous systems did not work, so there is reason to assume that the whole thing is very challenging and needs number crunching.
I don't know what a "computer assisted sniper" is, and even if such a thing existed, how exactly do you spread military equipment in enemy territory without the enemy destroying it once it's left there unattended?
And back to reality, what do you do when the enemy is shooting rockets from within schools and city rooftops? How do you "take them out" while guaranteeing the safety of the civilians they are hiding behind?
Israel has offered the Golan in return for peace several times, only to be turned down. Perhaps some day an agreement with Syria can be reached, but until that day Israelis can and do live on that land.
Nothing anyone ever says would convince me that rocket attacks aimed at civilian populations are justified-- with the sole exception of the presence of guerrilla forces.
When Israel shells or bombs civilian populations that have no Hamas presence, then yea, they have also crossed a line. But thats not whats happening here.
Yeah it's not like Israel is also knowingly breaking the Geneva Convention...
The settlements in the West Bank is a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, such actions are explicitly forbidden.
Using White Phosphorus is also explicitly forbidden, which Israel has been seen using in the 2008 conflict.
Collective Punishment is also explicitly forbidden, such as for example bulldozing the houses of know suicide bombers as a revenge for their actions. Any and all bombings that are preceded by leaflet notices that bombings take place also is nothing but collective punishment because any military importance will be long gone by the time the bombs arrive, the only outcome will be the pointless destruction of the homes of innocent civilians.
It is also explicitly forbidden to use indiscriminate weapons such as missiles, rockets and bombs in densely populated civilian areas(both Hamas and Israel is guilty of this but Israel does it on a scale 10 times larger than anything Hamas can even hope to accomplish)
I'd say that the greater sin definitely lies on Israel because as a democracy and a working nation they have a greater responsibility, they actually signed and ratified the Geneva convention, also Israel is occupying legitimate Palestinian territory, therefore the armed resistance of Hamas is both righteous and warranted, I might not agree with their methods but the means they have available are limited. Israel is the aggressor, they are an invader, and as long as they are occupying territory they have no reasonable claim of ever acting in self defense.
Yes, they screwed up with their settlement program. They should have cleared everyone out of the occupied territories and made them proper no man's lands.
It's funny, I was having this discussion with the daughter of Greek expats yesterday morning. Her parents were forcibly moved as part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. It wasn't nice for them to lose their home but in the end it worked out best for everyone.
People think of the current situation between the Israelis and Palestinians as a result of Israel's occupation though. It's not. The Palestinians (and others) were bombing Israel before 1967. The only difference is that Israel can control the flow of weapons into Palestine moderately better now.
I do not condone the actions of Hamas but lets face it, Israel doesn't really give anyone due process either before their drone, helicopter or air strikes. If you wanna look at the death tolls Israel causes something on the scale of >10 times more deaths and injuries(and yes those numbers matter A LOT more than the number of weapons fired). Plus Israel is an invader, they are the aggressor, and are occupying land that legitimately belongs to the Palestinians, they have the right to resist occupation with the means they have at hand, Israel as an invader has no credible claim of self defense until they withdraw to the borders outlined in the 1947 UN partition plan.
"No, but America did blockade Cuba. Was it at fault that Soviets were trying to place missiles in Cuba? No. The Soviets were at fault."
Ah, the jolly game of 'they-did-it-first'...
That was an answer to the US putting their missiles in Turkey right next to the Soviet border. Your turn.
I doubt this system works as claimed. The numbers in various articles quote different percentage success rates. And then they say it will only fire when the system determines if the targetted area is populated. Sounds like this is a tactic to inflate success numbers when really it fails to operate. Further, these are largely funded with the help of US funds and yet the US has no information about the technology. What is this? This all just sounds like a PR mechanism designed to garner more funding. Ill believe it when it is tested by multiple countries... until then, Ill remember that there is a war going on and news from the front is often propiganda.
There were 250,000 people in Gaza in 1969 and 1.5 Million today. It's pretty obvious they don't want to murder everyone in Gaza .
WMDs today aren't really nukes. There are genetic weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, psytronic weapons, cybernetic weapons, laser weapons, all which are more dangerous than nuke and all paradigm shifting.
Nukes were state of the art in the 1940s-50s. It's 2012 and now the weapons are like nukes only invisible or so secret people don't know what they are to recognize whether or not it's being used. Russia has a zombie-gun weapon now for which there are no defenses against. Let's also not rule out lasers and other space weapons which could defeat a lot of these so called missile defense systems with ease. We have to worry about clone armies, cybernetic warfare, and other exotic weapons. Fortunately Iran doesn't have these weapons yet but I do think they have a satellite in space and probably are smart enough to figure out how to put weapons into space or just a guidance system from space. Missile defense systems wont work in an actual war, it will take more but that is my opinion and I don't know what different governments have I only know it wont work against China, Russia or Iran.
Nuclear attacks aren't actually very useful in war. They destroy everything, not just the enemy. The best weapons in war destroy infrastructure while not taking out much else. An EMP type of bomb would be more damaging than a nuke even though a nuke would take more lives because EMP would destroy electronic equipment and infrastructure but not to the point that the enemy couldn't take the territory and use it.
I can't find the quote at the moment, but I think Feynman once said that the problem was like trying to use a flash light to track and hit a running person that is holding a small mirror ... from a football field away ... in the dark (i.e., only way to track them is by the reflection when you hit).
(Disclaimer: IIRC, the original quote was in reference to the Star Wars program where the distances involved made things like radar less precise/effective and the use of lazers required a prolonged "hit".)
Because 'The' Iron Dome is actually several trucks parked in several locations and Hamas probably doesn't even know where all those locations are. Not to mention, a missile coming at it, head on, would probably be one of the easiest to shoot down.