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Israelis Sue Government For Laser Cannons
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Mar 12, 2008 08:56 PM
from the we-all-want-a-laser-cannon dept.
from the we-all-want-a-laser-cannon dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Residents of a southern Israeli town want a real-life laser cannon to protect them against Palestinian rocket attacks. And they're suing the national government, for failing to provide the ray gun defense.
The U.S.-Israeli Tactical High Energy Laser project was widely considered to be the most successful energy weapon ever built. But the toxic chemicals needed to generate THEL's megawatts of power made the thing a logistical nightmare. It was scrapped. Now, the residents of Sderot want it back. And they're taking Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to court to make it happen."
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[+]
Science: Anti-Missile Laser Weapon Successfully Tested 636 comments
xPertCodert writes "A latest attempt to build a futuristic laser weapon appears to be a success.
Joint Israeli-US developed laser destroyed a large caliber rocket in a latest New Mexico test. The press release also contains links to some interesting video and photo material, related to THEL (Tactical High Energy Lasers) defense systems."
Submission: Israelis Sue Government for Laser Cannons by Anonymous Coward
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It Was Scraped? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It Was Scraped? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:It Was Scraped? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:It Was Scraped? (Score:5, Insightful)
With the added irony that if the Israelis do deploy these it'll most likely be the US paying the bill.
Parent
Re:Not with some toxic device. Nope. (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but when you refer to people evicted from that land, it's not who you think. No Arabs were required to leave in 1948. Who do you think Israeli Arabs are? The ones who stayed. The "Palestinians" are one of three groups of people:
No, in fact the only people to be evicted from the land were the Jewish residents of Gush Katif (the settlements in Gaza that Sharon's government evicted in 2005).
Besides, comparing the situation to Texas and the Mexicans is inaccurate; both Jews and Arabs have been living in the land for centuries.
Parent
Re:Hahaha... (Score:4, Insightful)
B. Millions of other refugees were created by WWII around that time, none of which remained refugees 30 years later. These Palestinian refugees are still considered refugees 60 years later! They should assimilate into whatever lands they live in, they are not refugees anymore.
C. Even if any wrong was done 60 years ago, the grandchildren of the refugees from 1948 are indeed "bad" to be shooting rockets at the grandchildren of the Jews from 1948, who were born to parents who were born there. Whatever happened 60 years ago is now irrelevant to who the lands belong to.
D. They are not really trying to "conquer back the lands", which would, if successful, require another holocaust, but are just trying to kill as many civilians as they can. They know they cannot conquer the lands or achieve anything but propaganda success with violence, and are indeed focusing on the propaganda side.
Parent
Re:It Was Scraped? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
I'll burn the karma (Score:5, Funny)
I'm in ur lazerz (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
"scraped"? (Score:5, Funny)
"Oy, for you, only the best lasers will do. You don't want this one, it's scraped. Let me get you one with a fresh paint job, good as new, I'll have my brother Manny bring it around Tuesday."
Please stay on topic (Score:5, Insightful)
The residents of Sderot have every right to expect their government to protect them and if the government is refusing to take any preventative action, while over 7,000 rockets have fallen on the town, then suing the government seems a very reasonable action.
Please note that they're not strapping bombs to themselves and running into cafes or government buildings - they're taking a legal action in a desperate request for help.
To pre-empt the comments that will follow, it's not relevant to point out Israeli action in Gaza and get into a debate over whether it's justified or not - this topic is about residents of Sderot taking completely non-violent, legal action, over repeated aggressive and violent attacks from a neighbouring region.
If only everyone in the region sought such a solution, instead of violence meets violence.
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, we should stick to the track of "Palestinians/Muslims are evil", right?
over 7,000 rockets have fallen on the town, then suing the government seems a very reasonable action.
So New York citizens should also sue over the WTC attacks?
Sderot taking completely non-violent, legal action, over repeated aggressive and violent attacks from a neighbouring region.
should probably read "over repeated aggressive and violent attacks from a neighbouring region, over repeated aggressive and violent attacks from its nation, over repeated aggressive and violent attacks from a neighbouring region, over
If only everyone in the region sought such a solution, instead of violence meets violence.
Agreed. It's a circle of violence that is not restricted to one side, and the only way to break it is for one side to just stop. Unfortunately, the Palestinian side is probably too disorganised to commonly decide on anything. That means the only hope is for Israel to stop it, but I'm not too hopeful that will happen.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Interesting)
They have. We also invaded at least one country because of it*. Do you suggest that Israel invade and take more territory to solve this problem?
They're also not suing the Palestinians over this, instead are suing their own government for failing to provide a defense.
It's a circle of violence that is not restricted to one side, and the only way to break it is for one side to just stop. Unfortunately, the Palestinian side is probably too disorganised to commonly decide on anything. That means the only hope is for Israel to stop it, but I'm not too hopeful that will happen.
I have to agree, but I'll also point out that going by quite a bit of the propaganda on the Palestinian side says that there won't be any peace until all Israelites are 'pushed into the sea'.
History in the area generally shows that any ceasing of aggression on Israel's part is seen more of a sign of impending victory, time to push forward even more.
Maybe something like this laser system might push them to enough despair to actually give it up.
*I figure Iraq wasn't caused by 9/11, but delayed by it. But I know some disagree.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe the solution is for Palestinians to kill Israeli civilians for every hectare taken until the Israelis figure it out and stop?
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet, they are still establishing colonies and have yet to comply with UN resolutions.
The Palestinians decided that launching rockets from their new land at the Israelis was a fine thing.
Obviously now the best idea I can think of. Even when only thinking in terms of Palestinians' good.
We (the U.S. and Europe) have poured billions of dollars into the hands of the Palestinians.
I would suggest you first compare the amount of money the US sent to the Palestinians to the amount of money it sent Israel (hint, at least an order of magnitude difference). An even more interesting thing to look at is the amount the US gives Israel (billions *per year*) vs Israel's military budget. Basically, the US is pretty much paying for all the military gear Israel uses to kill Palestinians.
I've always thought that if the US had been on the Palestinians' side, we'd see Palestinians bombing Israel with F-16s and Israelis blowing themselves up in Palestine while throwing home-made rockets. Hell, put any two nations in the same economic/political context and you'll see pretty much the same outcome.
Fuck the Palestinians. They don't want peace. They only wish to kill more Jews, no matter what the cost.
This is exactly why this conflict isn't going to be solved any time soon. You've got a majority of people on each side who *do* want peace, while at the same time there's a vocal minority that doesn't want peace and blames it on the other side.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Informative)
As for a counter-offer? The counter-offer was on the table and already agreed to by israel over a decade earlier - UN resolutions 242 and 338 which both israel and palestine accepted in 1991 and reaffirmed at Oslo in 1993.
To say that palestinians have "never wanted peace" when they had agreed to a plan a decade earlier is completely facetious. Now, a right-winger will respond that the palestinians didn't agree to oslo in good faith. A left-winger will respond that israel didn't agree to oslo in good faith either. My opinion is that each side let themselves be over-come by their own radical elements - bombers on the palestinian side and militant settlers on the israeli side.
Clearly there is plenty of opportunity for peace. But as long as opinions like yours are prevalent, they become a self-fullfilling prophecy.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Informative)
The land offer was a very clever con trick. There was no way that it could have been accepted because it was so stupid. The trouble is that the general public do not read it, they just want sound bites. They read that 95% of the land was offered back to the Muslims and that sounds good but the 5% was the settlements and the roads to those settlements. The roads being the main problem as that means that even though you can see your neighbours house or the local shop, it may be across the road and if you step on to that road you are liable to be shot. So you have to travel many miles up to the settlement, go around the settlement and travel back down the other side of the road just to visit your neighbour or shop. The problem of the settlements is not just the land they are on, it is also the roads that the Muslims are not allowed to step on. Give the Muslims the roads?
Arafat did counteroffer, he wanted the settlements to go but that was not on offer, therefore the roads were still no go areas.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Palestinians got what was fair, they would split the entire country 50/50 with equal access to the sea, and air, and equal rights to govern themselves and allow the right of return for Palestinians.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Informative)
Plenty of Palestinians think that non-violent methods such as protests are the best way forward as well. The problem is they often get beaten up or shot either with real or plastic bullets. In the recent crisis the IDF shot dead an unarmed 13 year old boy at a protest. A while back I watched a video of the IDF spokeswoman trying to explain why they had fired tank shells at unarmed protesters. She said they were just firing near to them to "warn them". Tanks shells for crowd control?
It's good that the people of Sderot can use legal action. If they were Palestinians they would have far less options and that anger would find other more bloody ways of expressing itself. Indeed, if you go back to the 40s in Israel, you will find exactly that situation.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Interesting)
They evacuated the country and collaborated with Egypt to exterminate their former neighbors. The Arabs who stayed in Israel rather than doing that became citizens and continue to hold full civil rights, as do their descendants.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Interesting)
The Palestinian collaboration with Egypt in 1948 wasn't what pissed the Israelis off - it was the wider Arab collaboration with the Nazis during WWII. When WWII concluded and the Israelis were able to secure arms from Soviet sources (not to mention a huge influx of pissed off European Jews), it was payback time. The Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem was instrumental in banning the immigration of German Jews to the Palestinian Mandate during WWII, and so was directly responsible for the murder of thousands of German Jews during the Holocaust.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:4, Insightful)
Which centuries? The 3rd and the 20th? Because there wasn't a lot of it in between.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so let me start by saying that I think suicide bombings and random rocket attacks on civilians are wrong, immoral, and inexcusable.
Now that I've gotten the obligatory "I'm not a terrorist apologist" crap out of the way, let me say this:
They should be suing to force their dumbshit government to start a serious peace process with the Palestinians and develop a working 2-state solution which provides security and prosperity for both peoples. The Israel's government's actions against the Palestinians - the harsh, collective punishment and indiscriminate killings - need to stop, and the Hamas government needs to be taken seriously and negotiated with.
And before anybody comments that Hamas has pledged to destroy Israel and how you negotiate with someone that believes that, I say, big fucking deal. The Soviets pledged to bury the US, and spent the better part of 50 years pointing enough nuclear weaponry at the other half of the earth to wipe out humanity several times over. Still, there were talks, and attempts to reduce the hostility and bring peace about. You can and must deal with your enemies.
Terrorism is a bad thing. But terrorism is just a tactic, and one that's used when the warfare situation is asymmetrical. The Israelis have a very modern, well equipped and well trained army, and they make extensive use of it in what they see as a battle to ensure their survival. The Palestinians have no military to speak of, and so it makes sense to them to resort to terrorist attacks in what they see as a battle to gain the right to self determination and freedom the control of Israel.
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Please stay on topic (Score:5, Insightful)
The people of the village of Sderot want to take that bet.
Please pay attention.
Parent
Precision... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, has anyone of you ever seen the damage katyushas make? Calling those things rockets or spending money to intercept them is ludicrous.
Re:Precision... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
They're going about it all wrong. (Score:4, Funny)
Toxic chemicals? Don't they know that it's possible to synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix. Yes, its an excimer, frozen in its excited state.
It's a chemical laser but in solid, not gaseous, form. Put simply, in deference to you, Slashdot, it's like lasing a stick of dynamite. As soon as we apply a field we couple to a state, it is radiatively coupled to the ground state.
I figure we can extract at least 10 to the 21st photons per cubic centimeter which will give one kilojoule per cubic centimeter at 600 nanometers, or, one megajoule per liter.
I worked on this project (Score:5, Interesting)
A few months later, hezbollah in Lebanon started firing katyushas again, oh well.
It was the most awesome project I've worked on so far. I actually got to see it take out mortars in flight on monitors while sitting in command and control 5 km away. (The system in new mexico doesn't have very good output scrubbers, so to avoid NF3 poisoning, humans have to be 5km away while it is firing.)
There's also more problems with it than just chemicals. For instance, the glass window in the front that the beam exits from costs 1 million dollars and takes a year to make (got to withstand a vacuum and a very powerful laser).
And the biggest problem is, they overwhelm it by sending lots of rockets, and then send several directly at the device itself. One rocket gets through, and there goes years of work and millions of dollars.
Anyway, thought the slashdot crowd might find some of that interesting.
I have a workable solution (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-RAM [wikipedia.org]
I won't say anything about its specifics, but I can tell you that it DOES work. It IS loud and you WILL crap your pants every time it goes off without warning, but that's a small price to pay for a WORKING product that shoots mortars and rockets out of the sky. This would be the perfect solution to their problem and frankly I'm surprised that I haven't heard more about it. Ah, I just answered my own question from my wiki link- it looks like they are in fact looking into these. Good for them.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196847389509&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter [jpost.com]
I don't know what the retail is on these things, but I'm sure we could squeeze a few into the multi-billion-dollar defense support that we give to Israel every year.
-b
I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsnhyTiTqk4 [youtube.com]
A little more digging with Google indicates the system has already been fielded for that purpose. Just set up a perimeter and be careful about where the misses come down.
Cheers,
Dave
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Funny)
LL
AA
WW
YY
EE
RR
SS,
but that would be stereo typing.
Parent
Re:If a country needs this much defense. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
A few points:
- There are Arabs living happily in Israel. The Druze are happy Israeli citizens, and the Bedouin are generally friendly with Israelis.
- Even the Arabs living in Israel who AREN'T happy with Israel would rather live in Israel than in Palastine (West Bank/Gaza).
- The Palastinian refugees living in Arab countries (like Lebanon) are treated much worse by the Arabs than those in Palastine are by the Jews.
It's true perhaps that Israel goes a little overboard in their responses to people attacking them, however, they do have at least one neighbor who has sworn explicitly to destroy them, so it is kind of understandable.Parent
Re:If a country needs this much defense. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
For the record: I do not condone attacks on civilians by either side, and am as disgusted at the Arab militants as I am at the Israelis. It's just that you're making it sound like Arabs are welcome to live in Israel, whereas this is obviously not true "by definition". Indeed, that's what the whole right-of-return issue with the Palestinian Arabs is all about.
Parent
Re:Serriously? Israelis with FREAKING lasers! (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably not, seeing as how the laser has been proposed as a strictly defensive weapon, to shoot down the rockets/missiles that are ALREADY raining down on a 'pretty regular basis'. Matter of fact, the citizens of the town could suddenly decide to start lobbing explosives back the other way and the attacks wouldn't increase significantly, as Palestine is already throwing as much as they can at them.
Parent
Re:So how well did it actually do? (Score:5, Informative)
The issue is range: THEL is effective only out to a few kilometers, and ideally a target would be destroyed over the launch territory. To protect a town of any decent size, several of these would have to be deployed, possibly within heavy rifle range of Palestinian buildings, and production costs could be several million dollars each. I'd still be interested to see the effects, particularly if Israel basically could deploy enough to cover the border with the Gaza Strip and then simply stop targeting the launch sites, which would reduce the number of incursions into Palestinian territory, and start moving the PR tide back the other way.
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
The part where "terrorist" is defined as "whoever we killed"?
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Insightful)
Those same people frequently believe that armed rebel terrorists firing the rockets at them do not deserve to be shot back at by the Israeli military.
I don't understand it myself, but I'll tell you when I do.
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
And there are just as many idiots that believe that unarmed Palestinians deserve to be shelled. A Jewish soldier shoots and kills a few Muslims boys playing football so a Muslim soldier (we call them terrorists because we don't like Muslims) fires a rocket at a Jewish village so the Jewish army send in a helicopter to blow up a Muslim market and the Muslims go and blow up a Jewish market...
and the plebs take sides. Why can't people see that until we stop killing each other there will never be peace. The people in power, both Jewish and Muslim, do not want peace. They are not stupid. They make their money from the fighting. All the shouts of "He started it" just sound like 10 year old boys fighting in the playground. They are both killing each others children and the fighting will not stop until those in power give peace a chance.
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you take the same attitude to WWII?
When people's countries are occupied by others who believe they have some ancient right to lebensraum, you can't expect to be able to scold both sides and tell them to play nicely. This is life, not the playground.
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they are called terrorists since they are not legal combatants, and their targets are explicitly civilians. A legal combatant is not allowed to conceal his identity as such prior to an attack.
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, are you talking about the Israelis or the Palestinians there? Both?
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I didn't think so.
If Palestinian children are being hit by gunfire, perhaps Palestinian gunmen shouldn't be firing from near children.
It happens all the time in Israel and abroad. Islamists know dead children and crying mothers are good shields when alive and good propaganda when dead.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/05/22/lebanon-battles-070522.html [www.cbc.ca]
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2006/06/index.html [typepad.com]
http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2007/03/iraqi_jihadists.php [yalibnan.com]
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody, for some reason, can admit that BOTH are wrong, and probably share equal blame in the matter. The Israelis invades already occupied land and expects them to hold the Israelis sovereign because some ancient book says so, of course the Palestinians fought back. In this Israel is wrong. The Palestinians purposely targetting civilians is ALSO wrong. The Israelis near genocidal clamp down on said Palestinians is ALSO wrong. And so it goes.
My problem with this is when someone has the balls to criticize Israel they get branded either pro-Palestinian, or worse, anti-Semitic. To entertain a probable straw-man, don't say that EVERYONE does this, you rarely hear of the Israeli terrorists, or the Palestinian freedom fighters, these terms are just as valid this way, as the way they are commonly used thanks to the brutal tactics on BOTH sides. And yes, both sides can be looked on with sypathetic rhetoric, the Israelis are fighting for their existence, and the Palestinians are fighting against tyranny. Fine... To me this is an indicator that siding with one faction is impossible, since both are semi-justified, and semi-evil.
Neither side wants compromise, so bloodshed they shall get, and probably deserve.
The only point of policy I can come down on is that the U.S. has no right to assist either side. Either way we are left morally tainted and bloodied. This is especially true today when our support of Israel is a major contributing factor to the hatred of the West. I'd support which ever side decided to deal with things in accord with international law, and humanistic values, and for the time being it looks like neither even want to come close to this.
The only fair (albeit now dated) version of this conflict I've seen way David K. Shipler's Arab And Jew [amazon.com]. Both sides are indoctrinating each other towards pure hatred and violence, there will never be a valid conversation on this until that stops.
Parent
Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a variant of this type of game that disallows communication between teams. It's been shown that with that setup, there is exactly one way to play:
1st round: no information is available, so assume maximal cooperation from all other teams, and play your turn accordingly.
2nd round: Reciprocate the other teams' play: if they played greedy, play greedy. If they played nice, play nice.
3rd round: repeat approach from round 2 until the end.
The logic behind this is that greedy players will only play nice when they see the exact consequences of their actions imposed on themselves, and when they see that playing nice is rewarded.
Applied to the Israel/Palestine conflict, it could mean that the appropriate response to random rocket launches is an immediate retaliatory strike with equal destructive power, aimed at the source of the rockets. On the other hand, the appropriate response to suicide bombers is a little more fuzzy. Send in robot-bombers? Drop a bomb in a random place? Also, it is unclear what the positive feedback for no rocket launches or suicide bombers would be. Resume normal conditions? Stay put? Unlock frozen support funds for hamas?
I definitely think though that Palestinians in general have to understand that rockets being launched from their territory means that rockets will be launched against them in general as well. It'd be difficult to implement, as it's a completely different approach to dealing with rocket attacks and suicide bombers: personal responsibility and punishment is out, collective punishment is in. Not to mention that a lot of the current preventive measures would have to go out the window as well.
I doubt that anybody in Israel has the courage to experiment with that.
Parent