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Moshe Feiglin is head of the Jewish Leadership faction in the Likud and can be reached via the web site.
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By Moshe Feiglin
August 12, 2004
We are once again seeing an example of the methods used by countries to prop up their crumbling regimes.
To the question "Will the State of Israel continue to exist in another 30 years?" most of those asked answered in the negative. This is something unique to Israel. Most Israelis regard their country as a fleeting incident, and the great efforts made to acquire foreign citizenship are evidence of this. Such a popular feeling of emptiness considerably worries the leadership.
Governments aspire to present as rosy a picture as possible, since a lack of physical and economic security present a threat to them. When it becomes impossible to prevent the public from sensing the approaching disaster, the leadership begins to resort to magical solutions, such as inventing an enemy that can be easily pursued. It's always a good idea to send the ignorant masses to hunt down witches, Jews, or the extreme Right.
Or, alternatively, you can hide the enemy from the people. You can build a Wall of China, so that the Mongols disappear, or a Maginot Line behind which the Germans will simply evaporate, or a Bar-Lev Line, behind which the Egyptians will vanish and every Israeli will feel secure under Golda's apron. And now, of course, we have the separation fence.
Quite a few leaders have promised their nations, when on the brink of disaster, that they possess a secret weapon that will reverse the situation. To admit a mistake, to present the public with the naked truth and to propose a difficult, demanding, path, is something that very few leaders are capable of doing. Such Churchill-like figures are not very thick on the ground here.
Last week we were told of the successful trial of the Arrow missile. The Arrow is the best weapon system of its kind in the world. It incorporates the most advanced technologies of the 21st Century, something that only 3,000 Jews working together on a single objective are capable of achieving.
This prestigious system faces the Scud missile, a flying barrel based on the V2 missile, after the German engineers who built it were taken prisoner by the Russians at the end of the Second World War. However, the Arrow has no chance in this struggle. Despite the world fear of the missile threat, no country is purchasing it, not even the Americans who have aided in its development.
The Arrow is the last word from the technological aspect, but ridiculous from the conceptual one.
Aryeh Stav, editor of Nativ, has compared the interception to two gunmen fighting a duel. One of then can fire whenever, in whatever direction, and as often as he wants. His opponent is only permitted to fire after the first has pulled the trigger, and then only at the bullet leaving the first gunman's barrel, at the final stage of its trajectory.
Amazingly enough the Arrow system succeeds in doing so. Unfortunately, laboratory conditions do not reflect the real-life situation in the future battlefield. According to the data published it is necessary to fire at least two Arrow missiles to guarantee hitting a single Scud missile. This means investing at least five million dollars to down a single Scud (that costs about five percent of this). If you calculate the total number of Egyptian and Syrian missiles currently threatening Israel, and try and deploy against them an effective number of Arrow missiles, you reach a cost exceeding the entire Israeli defense budget. In other words, even if you totally disband the IDF and spend all the money on Arrow missiles, you still can't provide a 100% solution to the greatest threat to the existence of the State of Israel.
Just keep in mind that the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area is a single soft target, whose destruction with non-conventional weapons would bring an end to the Israeli story.
This means that a 50-60% effective solution is worse than none at all, since it creates an illusion of security and diverts resources to an impossible path.
We have addressed the economic aspect only, and not the tactical issues of the conception. A missile carrying a chemical warfare warhead, intercepted by an Arrow missile over Kfar Saba, will cause damage even if it does not complete its planned trajectory and reach Tel Aviv. And what will the Arrow do if it encounters missiles with multiple independently targeted warheads (MIRV)? It is only a question of time until these appear, and what will the Arrow do then? Split up to intercept them?
In fact, both the separation fence and the Arrow missile (that is also a kind of separation fence in the sky) are systems intended to create an illusion of confrontation with reality, that a leadership lacking moral direction cannot understand, and whose challenges it is certainly incapable of confronting.
Our leaders will continue to spend many billions in order to buy time in power, using false solutions. The economic price is the least important part of the issue. The billions wasted on these white elephants are taken from the mouths of hungry children, but the even more serious result is that Israel has been left exposed to a threat to its very existence, and its citizens have been sold the idea that the State is providing the required security.
A real solution actually exists, but it is associated with a totally different concept.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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