The reports questioning the success rate of the Iron Dome were issued by Robert Lloyd, a weapons scientist with Tesla Laboratories, which is a defense contractor in Virginia and Ted Postel, an MIT professor. Both reports call into question the purported 90% success rate of the Iron Dome missile defense system and suggest that the actual success rate of the system in intercepting and destroying incoming rockets is actually far lower. If true, this would indicate that the Iron Dome is not only a massive failure but also a studied deception.
The Iron Dome was developed and manufactured by Rafael Defense Systems, an Israeli based defense contractor. Subsequent funding has been provided by the United States. It has been in use since 2011.
As stated by Dr. Postel in his introduction to an article published in the MIT Technology Review on July 15, 2014, “In the early weeks of July 2014 the conflict between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza has again flared up. This has resulted in a new round of large-scale rocket attacks launched by Hamas, operating from Gaza, against Israeli population centers. The last time such large-scale rocket attacks occurred between Hamas and Israel was in November 2012. During the November 2012 conflict a large number of photographs of Iron Dome interceptor contrails were observed in the sky. These contrails revealed that the Iron Dome interceptor rate was very low—perhaps as low as 5 percent or below.
“This paper explains why the geometry of the contrails photographed in the sky indicates whether or not an Iron Dome intercept attempt had any chance of intercepting an artillery rocket target.”
The questions that of necessity arise are:
1) why would the US take over the funding of an expensive and useless defense system for its purported ally, Israel and
2) why would Israel go along with this?
The answer to these questions lie in history and point to a deeply dysfunctional relationship which has been plagued with self-deception, betrayal and false intent from its inception. To begin with, one must understand that the State of Israel was in large part created by those who despised the Jews.
This is not a story that history books usually tell. The fact that the partition plan approved by the UN in 1947 was launched by a group of individuals who disliked the Jewish people is something one has to dig a bit to uncover. Lord Arthur Balfour, the author of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which was the foundational stepping stone to creating the state of Israel, was a known anti-Semite. Mark Sykes’s eager involvement in the creation of Israel was underscored by his own anti-Jewish sentiments.
The lukewarm response by the US government to the knowledge of Hitler’s extermination programs highlights the problematic relationship between the US and the Jewish people. The fact that Jews and other targeted groups were perishing in concentration camps in Europe was not a secret to the leadership of the United States and its Allies. The recent uncovering of FDR’s multiple racially tinged statements against not only Jews but also against Asians raises troubling questions as to President Roosevelt’s public persona as a humanitarian.
In fact, Roosevelt’s own personal racial ideas might be considered to be somewhat aligned with Hitler’s. His refusal to raise immigration quotas for Jews helped to ensure that Jews would be trapped in Eastern Europe. As reported by Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in an article for the Los Angeles Times: “In 1923, as a member of the Harvard board of directors, Roosevelt decided there were too many Jewish students at the college and helped institute a quota to limit the number admitted. In 1938, he privately suggested that Jews in Poland were dominating the economy and were therefore to blame for provoking anti-Semitism there. In 1941, he remarked at a Cabinet meeting that there were too many Jews among federal employees in Oregon. In 1943, he told government officials in Allied-liberated North Africa that the number of local Jews in various professions “should be definitely limited” so as to “eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany.”
Equally, Roosevelt’s perception of the taint born by Asians was consonant with his decision to imprison over a hundred thousand Japanese in internment camps. Medoff, who has authored a book entitled FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith, reports that Roosevelt perceived Asians as having innate racial characteristics that made them “untrustworthy” and also desired to keep their immigration quotas low.
Historically, the Jewish state has been in a symbiotic relationship with the government of the United States. In a series of books which focus on the sabotage of Israel by US government agencies, author and former DOJ prosecutor John Loftus documented the attempts by American intelligence forces to repeatedly undermine the state of Israel as well as to give safe harbor to Eastern European Nazis and war criminals. From day one, the relationship of the State of Israel with the United States was tainted with US betrayal and sabotage.
This is a relationship, however, which some sectors of the Jewish community have encouraged and nurtured. A highly problematic agreement between Zionist groups and Hitler essentially derailed a Jewish boycott of German goods which was threatening the economic viability of the Third Reich. As reported by Edwin Black in his book, The Transfer Agreement, the agreement detailed that Jews leaving Germany would have their assets used to buy German goods, thereby providing much needed financial support to the Reich.
American Jews also collaborated. One only has to look at the actions of the American Jewish Congress during the slaughterhouse years to realize that the Jewish leadership was to some degree accommodating the Nazi agenda. American Jewish leader Stephen Wise sat on a report revealing Hitler’s plan to murder Jews. Some of the Jewish press has sought to soften Wise’s failure to apply pressure to Roosevelt, concerning not only quotas but also concerning the growing plight of Eastern European Jews. Wise certainly had the President’s ear but did not substantially utilize his position to the benefit of those trapped in Eastern Europe.
Today, conservative estimates state that the US provides 3 billion dollars in aid to Israel each year. The actual figure, according to some commentators, might be much higher. However, the Middle Eastern policies of the United States government are increasingly putting Israel at risk. The fact that the attacks of 911 were used as a rationale to go to war, first against Afghanistan and Iraq, then in a domino effect to attack Libya and threaten war against Syria and Iran, can only be seen as an effort to destabilize the entire region, an effort which may have fatal blowback for Israel.
Case in point was Obama’s trigger- happy decision to attack Syria after the alleged gas attack in Damascus last year, an intent derailed by President Putin. If Obama had been able to go ahead with the attack on Syria this might have resulted in the fulfillment of Assad’s promise to then bomb Israel. The fact that the gas attack appeared to have homegrown American military roots also raises questions as to what the actual motive here would be.
The subsequent deployment of neo-Nazi forces in the Ukraine also raises questions as to whom the West considers to be its allies—and why.
Certain questions must be asked:
- Why were the attacks of 911 not handled as a law enforcement issue but instead as a rallying call to war?
- Is the subsequent destabilization of the Middle East in part another effort by the United States to subvert the state of Israel?
- Is the government of Israel adding fuel to the destabilization of the region by its treatment of the Palestinians?
- If so, why?
With all the billions of US dollars pumped into Israel’s purported protection, do you think it might be possible to come up with a working missile defense system?
In Part Two, we will discuss the US Holocaust Museum’s mandate to “prevent genocide” and discuss its Stephen Wise-type failure to act.
Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook
