Israelis Sue Government For Laser Cannons

An anonymous reader writes "Residents of a southern Israeli town want a real-life laser cannon to protect them against Palestinian rocket attacks. And they're suing the national government, for failing to provide the ray gun defense. The U.S.-Israeli Tactical High Energy Laser project was widely considered to be the most successful energy weapon ever built. But the toxic chemicals needed to generate THEL's megawatts of power made the thing a logistical nightmare. It was scrapped. Now, the residents of Sderot want it back. And they're taking Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to court to make it happen."

Re:Precision...

[wwwgregcom]

I've personally seen an impact site. They cause very little damage to structures. It's the flesh tearing shrapnel that'll get ya if it happens to land near people.

Re:Please stay on topic

[MrSteveSD]

I should imagine that the fact that a larger town like Ashkelon has also been hit by rockets might result in this Laser project being revived. It should be noted that up until 1948 Ashkelon used to be called al-Majdal and was home to some 10,000 Arabs. Their homes were taken and they were ethnically cleansed and moved to Gaza. A few years later the name al-Majdal was also erased and it was renamed Ashkelon. Don't expect the news reports to tell you any of this stuff though.

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.

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.

Re:So how well did it actually do?

[Martin Blank]

It's never been deployed, primarily for the logistical reasons mentioned. However, it's been extremely effective in tests, shooting down simultaneous salvos of artillery and even mortar shells fired in exercises. Katyusha rockets are even easier to hit.

The issue is range: THEL is effective only out to a few kilometers, and ideally a target would be destroyed over the launch territory. To protect a town of any decent size, several of these would have to be deployed, possibly within heavy rifle range of Palestinian buildings, and production costs could be several million dollars each. I'd still be interested to see the effects, particularly if Israel basically could deploy enough to cover the border with the Gaza Strip and then simply stop targeting the launch sites, which would reduce the number of incursions into Palestinian territory, and start moving the PR tide back the other way.

I wonder

[DaveAtFraud]

I wonder if a lower tech weapon system wouldn't do. Something like a grid of Phalanx point defense systems. They can shoot down mortar rounds so the low tech stuff the Palestinian are firing should be even easier to hit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsnhyTiTqk4 [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:If a country needs this much defense. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not much of a news buff, are you? Guess who's been firing the first shots (hint for the slow: not Israel). No one's denying that Israel then escalates things (attacking civilians=bad+stupid), but you're painting them to be the one's who keep starting shit. They're not. The recent fights are because some anti-semitic whack jobs blame Israel (read: scapegoat, an excuse to start a fight) because their leader died. Of course, I'm sure that was all a part of the gLoBaL zIoNiSt CoNsPiRaCy that doesn't exist, but until there's proof they didn't do it, I'm sure people like you will keep blaming Israel for everything.

Re:Bulldoze It

[lewko]

You've been modded as a troll, however your comment is relevant. It is well worth considering that most countries I can think of, with such military capability as Israel, would have almost certainly flattened any country that acted the way the Palestinians have. Think about what America did after one single terrorist attack. In Israel, it's often like 9/11 every single day.

Literally thousands of rockets, suicide bombers, daily incitement from an otherwise completely uncivilised source. Moreover, the Palestinian propagandists dishonestly accuse Israel of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" (even though their population has tripled).

Suffice it to say, Israel has had more than enough provocation and the look of surprise on the Palestinians' face as a tac-nuke headed toward them, would certainly be ironic.

However, it won't happen. You know it, I know it and (unfortunately) the Arabs know it. Israel is a Western Democracy with a decent set of values. Unfortunately, that puts them in a position which is completely exploited by a culture that celebrates death, encourages kids to die for Allah and teaches hatred instead of love.

Re:Sweet!

[oceaniv]

"The Palestinians try and kill as many babies, women, children and non-combatant civilians as possible. When it happens, they celebrate, just as they did on 9/11 and just as they did last week." I'll just pretend you sound completely rational and not like a bigoted racist who is trying to dehumanize another severely oppressed group... say what? they're intentionally killing "babies"... wont' somebody save the children? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iman_al-Hams [wikipedia.org] Iman Darweesh Al Hams was a 13-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops in a "no man's" zone near the Philadelphi Route on 5 October 2004 in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Hit by more than a dozen bullets, her death was one of series of incidents cited by human rights groups as illustrative of a "culture of impunity" among the Israel Defense Forces.[2] It is also one of the few instances, among the hundreds of cases in which Palestinian children and teenagers have been killed by army fire, in which the army actually launched an investigation.[3] Ultimately however, no one was held responsible for her death. There was no explanation from the officer or the court as to how al-Hams came to have 17 bullet wounds to her arms, legs, torso and face.

Re:Please stay on topic

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The Palestinians have never wanted peace with Israel as evidenced by Arafat's rejection of Ehud Barak's offer of land for Palestinian statehood in 2000 and then no Palestinian counteroffer.

There were two main reasons Arafat rejected Barak's offer in 2000 - it did not include the right of return of palestinians to their original land or at least a 1-to-1 swap for equivalent land and it divided the so-called "palestinian state" into 4 discontiguous islands, [palestineremembered.com] surrounded by, and thus controlled by israel. This is basic current events Zuke, why don't you know it?

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.

Re:Please stay on topic

[Eli Gottlieb]

That's why their suing the government: it refuses to deploy that 10% GDP army in the defense of not-so-wealthy border towns like Sderot and Ashkelon as long as Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem remain safe.

The current government are asses, the lot of them.

Re:Please stay on topic

[Zemran]

Ehud Barak's offer of land for Palestinian statehood in 2000

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.

Re:Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ancient right and ancient right.

The Palestines are a people, the Jews are not a people, but a religion! The Jews with Palestinian heritage have the same ancient right as the palestines, but the rest are invaders on foreign land.

Even Jewish scientists admit that Jews are not a single people when it comes to genetics, but one that's been made up by different cultures like arabs, africans, eastern and southern europeans.

Re:Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

This post is right on target. Calling the Jewish Israleans and the Muslims Palestinians is not exactly wrong, but it does take the attention away from the real reason of this war: religion.

Re:Not with some toxic device. Nope.

[snoyberg]

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:

1. People who have lived in Gaza/West Bank since before 1948. The reason they never got their state of Palestine as determined by the UN is because Egypt and Jordan stole their land.
2. Arabs who lived within the "Green Line" who voluntarily left when they didn't want to live under a Jewish government.
3. Foreigners like Yassir Arafat who were born in countries like Egypt and then claimed to be Palestinians.

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.

Re:Please stay on topic

[cowwoc2001]

So, what you are saying is, if someone takes most of your country and forces you into a tiny over crowded part of it, and then they take most of that too, then they offer you the shitty uninhabitable parts back, while keeping control of your infrastructure, they are being generous. Take a look at the map of Israel and Palestine today, all of that used to be Palestine, now it is almost all Israel, the coat the borders and the airspace are ll controlled by Israel, and this super greedy 100% that you talk about is just 100% of the land taken inside the west bank, how can you honestly say that the Palestinians didn't compromise?

  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.

1) No one took their country. Palestine was the name of a region (so named by the Romans after they defeated the Jews and renamed the region after the Jews' ancient enemy the Philistines which bare no relation to today's so-called Palestinians). The region belonged to the Ottoman Empire until the British took it over. Gaza used to belong to Egypt and the West Bank used to belong to Jordan.

2) If you actually look at history maps you will find that Palestine actually consisted of what is today Israel, the disputed territories, Jordan and parts of Lebanon and Syria. When the British and French divided the land they actually took 50% of Palestine and renamed it Trans-Jordan (today's Jordan). That was meant to be the Arab half of Palestine. The other half was promised to the Jews (refer to the Balfour declaration and others which followed in subsequent years). Then some genius decided to rename the remaining half Palestine and divide *that* in half again. It's no coincidence that most Jordanian citizens are Palestinians, because Jordan *is* Arab Palestine.

3) If you take a look at the maps in 1947 when the UN partitioned the land you will find that most land allocated to the Jews was desert. If it is blooming green today it is because they built it up to what it is. It didn't magically turn from desert to farmland over night. Now that their land is all green suddenly the Arab want a piece of it. You can't have your cake and eat it too!

4) Gaza's borders with Egypt are controlled by Egypt. Gaza's borders with Israel are controlled by Israel. How is that different from anywhere else in the world? If Egyptians won't allow Palestinians to cross it's because they have a long track recording of stirring up shit. If Israel won't let them have free reign in their airspace it's because they're launching rockets and driving car-bombs into civilian structures. When Israel fully withdrew from Gaza in 2005 many months went by when Gaza launched rockets into Israel and Israel did not respond at all. They *could* have declared independence and practiced self-rule but instead they chose to start shit up again. They're bearing the consequences of their actions.

5) How can you argue for Palestinian "right of return" (aka let's destroy Israel's democracy by swamping it full of Arabs) while simultaneously denying Jews the right to live in a future Palestinian state? Isn't that racist? So a Jew-free country is okay but a country with 20% Arabs it not? Frankly if we were playing fair I'd say it should be 100% Jew-free in Palestine and 100% Arab-free in Israel so they could both be sovereign states.