Scuds in Lebanon: Israel’s Déjà Vu, Again and Again
Sitting on my desk is a mangled chunk of steel, a large piece of shrapnel from a Scud missile that hit a Tel Aviv community center in 1991. It serves to remind me of the terror of the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein fired 39 long-range Scuds at the Tel Aviv and Haifa regions over a six-week period.
Earlier this month, Arab, American, and Israeli sources all confirmed that Syria transferred Scud missiles to Hizbullah forces in Lebanon. Immediately, several commentators and analysts minimized the Scuds’ dangers. From Time:
Scuds can be easily tracked and destroyed by the Israeli air force before launching.
The Los Angeles Times editorialized:
[The] large 1950s-era missiles are inaccurate, and Israel has the capacity to intercept them.
The Kuwaiti paper Al-Rai reported:
Hizbullah sources confirmed Thursday that the terror group received a shipment of Scud missiles from Syria. … The missiles were claimed to be old and unusable.
American officials hemmed and hawed: maybe the Syrians just “intended” to provide them … perhaps the missiles weren’t “delivered in full” yet.
Déjà vu
The media apparently has long-term memory loss and is incapable of remembering the 1991 Gulf War Scuds crashing down on Israel. But what excuse is there to forget the barrages of Hamas’ Kassam and Katyusha rockets that set off the 2009 Gaza conflagration?
Over a period of eight years, analysts and reporters described the thousands of Kassam rockets fired at Israeli civilians as primitive, inaccurate, homemade, and relatively harmless. They minimized the threats to Israeli citizens, as Jewish children in their playgrounds scurried to bomb shelters or families cowered in “safe rooms” while Kassams — and later, the bigger Katyushas — crashed into their towns.
The “primitive” missiles killed and wounded Israelis.
When Israel’s army finally responded, Israel was condemned with unprecedented opprobrium by governments, the media, the UN, J Street Jews, the self-righteous left, and the bigoted.
A recommendation to Israel: Assume the Scuds are in place and in the hands of a terrorist organization. Take the threat seriously.
Déjà vu, again
Every adult Israeli remembers lugging gas masks everywhere during the 1991 Gulf War. Many sat in long lines of cars leaving Israel’s coastal towns in the late afternoon to ferry families to the relatively safer Jerusalem or Eilat areas. Hearing an ambulance siren today still triggers for many Israelis the memory of the dreaded air raid sirens, scurrying to shelters, and squeezing their smallest children into sealed plastic coops with purified air.
The Scud missiles were supposed to be inaccurate, but at least six hit residential areas in Israel, and their one ton explosive warheads left swaths of devastation. Thousands of homes and businesses were damaged. The lethality of the missile was seen in one case in Saudi Arabia, where a Scud killed 28 U.S. soldiers in Dhahran and wounded more than 100. Moreover, if the Hizbullah Scuds are the “D model” in Syria’s arsenal, then their accuracy is supposed to be pretty good — within 50 meters of the target.
But Scuds do not have to be accurate to be effective. They just need to explode.
They are terror weapons (may one use the word “terror” today?), intended to panic Israel’s civilian population and shut down Israel’s economy. And for several years now, American intelligence has been warning that “a portion” of the hundreds of Syria’s Scuds “may have chemical warheads.”
As Iran’s proxy on the Mediterranean, Hizbullah works closely with Syria and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Hizbullah caught the Israeli navy off-guard during the 2006 war, shooting a sophisticated Iranian-produced missile at an Israeli missile boat and killing four IDF sailors. Israeli defenders were also caught by surprise when Hizbullah unmanned aerial vehicles flew over northern Galilee. In any future combat, the Israeli air force may find itself flying through a thicket of sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles provided to Hizbullah by Iran, or covering Lebanon’s airspace while based within Syria’s adjacent territory.
Since the Gulf War, Israel developed the Arrow anti-missile system to intercept weapons such as the Scud or Iran’s more advanced Shehab missile, but a massive barrage of missiles could possibly overwhelm Israel’s defenses. The new Israeli “Iron Dome” system is supposed to block Katyusha missiles such as the ones Hamas and Hizbullah rained down on Israel, but it’s not battle-tested. The United States has provided a high-powered X-band radar station to provide early warning of long-range missile launches.
But who wants to rely on such defensive systems to shoot down missiles falling on your head? Israel must have the ability to preempt.
Lebanon’s army commander, Jean Kahwaji, argued this week that it was impossible that Scuds could have been introduced into the country:
Scud rockets are not like Katyushas that are carried on the shoulder and transferred from one area to another. The rockets are 30 meters long, are carried on large vehicles, and need 40 minutes to prepare for launch.
Considering that Hizbullah has been incorporated into the Lebanese army (some claim the army was integrated into Hizbullah), no one should be surprised by his declaration of innocence. But the Scud missile is 11-12 meters long, not 30 as Kahwaji states. Moreover, Hizbullah smuggled 16-meter-long Zelzal missiles and their launchers into Lebanon in 2006.
In the first days of the 2006 war in Lebanon, the Israeli air force succeeded in destroying 54 of Hizbullah’s mid-range Zelzal missile launchers (approximately half the range and half the warhead of the Scuds). Many of the Zelzals were deployed in civilian neighborhoods.
But the Israeli army and air force could not stop the constant bombardment of other missiles and rockets. Almost 3,800 rockets were launched against Israel, with some 900 hitting Israeli towns, killing 42 civilians and wounding more than 4,200. Today, Hizbullah is reported to possess 40,000 rockets, four times the number it held in 2006. “We are at a point now,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned this week, “where Hizbullah has far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world.”
Presumably, Hizbullah will hide the Scud launchers better than it concealed the Zelzal launchers.
A recommendation to Israel: Be prepared. Consider preemption. Take the threat seriously.
Déjà vu, once more
Prior to the 1991 war, the Americans promised Israel that in the event of a Scud attack, U.S. aircraft would concentrate on knocking out the Scuds within the first 48 hours. However, as explained by Moshe Arens, who served as Israel’s defense minister at the time:
The problem of hitting mobile launchers was far more difficult than the U.S. had envisioned. Although there was intensive aerial activity directed at hitting the Scud launchers, not a single Scud launcher was hit or immobilized during the five weeks of the Gulf War.
Then the Americans sent over the Patriots. The Patriot was probably the most advanced anti-aircraft missile around at the time, and was advertised as also having anti-missile capability. As it turned out, the Patriot missiles in Israel did not succeed in intercepting a single Scud missile.
Today, senior American officials are not promising to destroy Hizbullah Scuds; they are denying that they’re in Lebanon.
After all, such a deployment would be a serious violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which prohibits the “supply of weapons to any entity in Lebanon without the consent of the Government of Lebanon.” (This raises the question of whether Lebanon’s government, cowering before a resurgent Syria, agreed to the Scud deployment. If so, that makes Lebanon, its military, and infrastructure complicit and fair game in the event of another war.)
But as far as Syria is concerned, the U.S. appears to be rewarding the Assad regime despite the transfer of the Scuds. Washington still intends to send a U.S. ambassador to Damascus as part of the commitment to “engage” Syria.
Denial of the deployment of missiles is an old American tactic in the Middle East. After negotiating a cease-fire along the Suez Canal between Israel and Egypt in 1970, American officials rejected Israeli claims that Egypt was moving anti-aircraft missile batteries to the Canal. This was in violation of the agreement that forbade either side from “changing the military status quo within zones extending 50 kilometers to the east and west of the cease-fire line.” Within weeks, however, Egypt had deployed more than 100 batteries along the Canal, anti-aircraft weaponry that would provide cover for the Egyptian attack on Israeli lines during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Israel was furious about the Egyptian violation. Henry Kissinger reported (The White House Years, Volume 1, page 587) that Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir sent a demarche via Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin with evidence of Egypt’s violations and deployment of missile batteries. Rabin was brought into President Nixon to show him the evidence and to “complain bitterly about the reluctance of our intelligence community to accept Israeli evidence.”
Kissinger continued with words that echo true 40 years later whether applied to the Iranian, Syrian, or Palestinian front:
“There was some merit,” Kissinger wrote, “in Rabin’s complaint of the reluctance of the U.S. intelligence community to find violations. As I explained to the president:
‘Israel, with her survival at stake, cannot afford to take chances. … The nature of the Israelis’ situation is bound to influence their interpretation of ambiguous events. We, on the other hand, have an incentive to minimize such evidence, since the consequences of finding violations are so unpleasant. Violations force us to choose between doing something about them and thus risk the blowup of our initiative; or doing nothing and thus renege on our promises to Israel, posing the threat of her taking military action. Accordingly, we tend to lean over backwards to avoid the conclusion that the Arabs are violating the ceasefire unless the evidence is unambiguous.’”
A recommendation to Israel: Don’t trust U.S. assurances. Take the threat seriously.
Déjà vu, once again
Despite the failure to destroy Iraq’s Scuds in 1991, “the United States was very eager that Israel not intervene in any way.” Moshe Arens recently related. He continued:
So, despite the previous U.S. assurance that Israel would be free to take action if the missile threat could not be eliminated within 48 hours, after 72 hours President Bush called Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Jim Baker called me, insisting that we not take any action, that we not in any way “spoil” the operation that was underway.
“Keeping Israel out of the conflict [was] a central strategic concern of our diplomacy,” says Secretary of State James Baker, according to a 1999 study on U.S.-Israel relations during the Gulf War. The study continued:
The prevailing conventional wisdom among American policymakers was that any direct Israeli action against Iraq or indirect participation with U.S.-led forces would likely fray the multinational coalition. If Israel took military action against Iraq, Arab members of the coalition … would withdraw. This would have both strategic political and military implications for the United States, and also hinder Washington’s operational capabilities in the Gulf.
Compare American policy under Baker 20 years ago with the present, with the American reaction to the looming threats to Israel of a nuclear Iran and Scuds in Lebanon. The U.S. administration is again warning Israel — perhaps even threatening — against undermining their fantasy policy world. Like James Baker, they fear that Israeli actions such as building in a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem, attacking Hizbullah Scuds, or taking action against Iran’s nuclear threat will have strategic political implications for the United States.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on April 15:
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has assumed a role in the global geostrategic environment that carries great weight. … Comprehensive peace is critical, not just to Israel and not just to the Palestinians and not just to the United States, but to the future of this world we share.
President Obama expressed a similar theme at the Nuclear Security Summit on April 14:
I think that the need for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the Arab states remains as critical as ever. … It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.
Years ago, a New York senator complained about a president’s “even-handed” policy in the Middle East. “Even-handedness,” he complained, “means the palm of the hand to the Arabs and the back of the hand to the Israelis.”
It appears that for now the U.S. administration recognizes that it went too far with the back of its hand and has publicly rolled back some of the pressure on Israel. Speakers from the president on down have recently praised U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation. But the harm has been done. Confidence in the relationship has been shaken, and the Arabs and Iranians probably believe that United States support for Israel has lessened.
Here’s a recommendation to Israel. Déjà vu is not only hindsight. Use it for 20-20 foresight. Take all threats seriously.
Everything you say is an accurate assessment of the situation but you don’t really think that Netanyahu & his side-kick, Ehud Barak, have the balls to do anything about it? The minute I learned that Netanyahu had brought Labour into the coalition & Ehud Barak would be Minister of Defense, I knew Israel was just going to continue the disasterous,dangerous, stupid, unsuccessful path that started with Oslo.
Netanyahu is not a leader, he’s just another of our crap politicians.
A great many Israelis, helped along by a Left-leaning media, are in a state of denial as to the threats that face us.
100% in agreement. Israel has became the commonwhealth of Israel and Netanyahu its Governor. Already in the past Netanyahu has proven incapable of whitstanding the pressures from Israel’s “ally”. The internal front isn’t strong enough either. In a recent poll 60% of israelis responded that they favored a land for peace agreement.
Carlos.
Most of the polls are total BS, concocted by Left-wing think tanks, the questions are designed to elicit the desired response. As in most things, the devil is in the details. If you ask about specifics, for example, to divide Jerusalem, you get 80% against. Another example, to cede the Golan to Syria as part of a larger ”peace” plan, again, 80% of Israelis are against. Virtually no one is for a return to the pre-1967 border. The vast majority are also against a land-link between Gaza & Judea & Samaria. Also, the vast majority want Israeli control of the Jordan Valey. Similarly, 99% of Israelis would not accept ANY phoney Arab refugees to ”return” to Israel.
What I am saying is that the differences between Israel & the Palestinians are irreconcilable.
The way it looks to me is that Obama & the Quartet will try to impose a solution & create a Palestinian state. Our concerns will be totally ignored.
TERRY: THANKS FOR YOUR CLARIFICATION REGARDING POLLS. IN THE MEANTIME NETANYAHU IS THE GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ISRAEL. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AVIGDOR LIEBERMANN THAT SAID: TO MY RIGHT IS THE WALL?
CARLOS.
”Whatever happened to Avigdor Leiberman?” That’s very funny. A great many people here ask the same question. Leiberman says the right things, publically, at least, but ……???? In circumstances that are normally the job of the Foreign Minister, we see instead Pres. Shimon Peres or Ehud Barak or someone else, Leiberman being side-lined.
During World War II, the Germans fired hundreds of V-2 rockets at Great Britain, especially London. They were the first generation of ballistic missiles, certainly “unsophisticated” by today’s standards, and they killed thousands of British citizens. Granted, we may have more sophisticated radar today, but that will only tell you that a missile is heading your way. We also have some anti-ballistic missile batteries in Israel, but nothing is 100% foolproof, especially when dealing with the smaller Katyusha rockets, for which there is really no defense.
It is not inconceivable that Hezbollah could fire a large number of Scuds just to keep the Israeli anti-ballistic missile batteries busy and then, at the same time, fire hundreds of Katyusha or, worse, cruise missiles (which fly below radar), at Israel. And we have not even considered what would happen if Syria and Iran fired their own missiles in a coordinated attack with Hezbollah. You could potentially have hundreds of missiles being fired at Israel at the same time, an attack even the best defenses could not withstand.
But I’m sure the Obama administration isn’t worried about that. The Muslims LOVE him, don’t ya know. They would never “dream” of offending Obama in this way, by attacking one of our allies, especially Israel. And we all know that Iran has been nothing but “upfront” and “honest” about their nuclear program, so their assurances that they would not attack Israel is as good as gold, right? Oh, I’m sorry, I was wrong. Wasn’t Iran the country that said they wanted to wipe Israel off the map? And we all know how much Hezbollah and Hamas “love” Israel, right? And Syria, especially, is just “itching” for better relations with Israel too, correct? Yes, Israel certainly has nothing to worry about.
The Obama regime is no more capable of protesting Syrian violations of the UN’s Hizbullah arms embargo than it is protesting Iran’s membership in the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women. Obama can only protest and criticize the United States’ allies. That’s because the United States’ allies are not Obama’s allies and its enemies are not Obama’s enemies.
Whenever it comes to Jewish human rights, especially the right to life, few give a damn. In fact, the encircling jackals who threaten to annihilate the Jewish State barely receive a rap on their knuckles for their genocidal threats.Ho hum….
With this in mind, it is a legal, moral and human imperative for Israel’s leaders to annihilate the threats on their borders. In fact, it is the wonder of all wonders that the vaunted IAF has not destroyed Hizbullahs cache, regardless of the screaming and encircling hyenas. To be sure, Israel’s military intelligence knows exactly where they are located, all that is missing are the orders to destroy them, and the will to ignore global condemnation-for trying to survive.
In tandem, Israel’s security services know the locations of Hamas terror heads, capable of dispatching them to their Allah in warp speed. The reasons they have not done so are varied and despicable, but it is what it is.
Currently, the test of all tests will come when, not if, Israeli forces (navy, air, ground) get the orders to decimate the Iranian WMD sites, as well as their leadership, and our leadership stand upright in the faces of our haters, wherever they may be.
GO IDF!!
Anat Kam is under house arrest. The orange protesters went to jail. There is pretty much the explanation for our collective frustration.
I think you’re right on all counts Adina. Furthermore, I like that, unlike many super-ardent Israel-supports (although that’s what I consider myself), you don’t try and second-guess the Israeli IDF high-level echelon and their political counterparts. They, like you say, are *well* aware of all the threats being mounted against them and they will pick the time and place of THEIR choosing as to when to strike. I support that it’s THEIR decision to do so 100%.
Since Israel will be portrayed as over-reacting and using inappropriate levels of force no matter what the provocation and if Israelis do even the slightest thing in their own defence, I say turn the IDF loose. Maybe if they actually acted like the arrogant aggressors the lefties say they are, they’d get more respect, if nothing else. Strong horse and all that.
I feel like the man portayed in the painting the SCREAM. Is anyone going to listen and will anyone hear?
Israel’s attitude toward the coming war is akin to America’s attitude toward our unsustainable debt. It is human nature to push off any hard decision into the future. Israel’s political chiefs reflect the popular will, because they follow, they do not lead. For Israel the moment of decision will most likely be forced upon Israel by the Iranians and their partners at a time of their choosing. And here in America that same decision will be made by Chinese and Arab investors, who will decide when its time to take it all down.
What can Isreal actually do about it? Short of starting a war it may lose? I think the Israeli military leadership understands much better than most and that is why there has been no action.
M Mir.
Are you joking or just being naive? Preemptive action to destroy Scud missiles is a political decision or, in this case, a political indecision. While it might or might not start a war with Syria, a debatable point (depends on Iran’s wishes actually), the IDF would smash both Hezbollah & Syria, prvided, of course, that there is no political interference in the conduct of the war. Yes, we would sustain damage in an all-out conflict but nothing compared to what we would do to Lebanon & Syria.
There will be no preemptive action, however, due to American pressure, the incompetence of our Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, & Netanyahu’s lack of real leadership.
Hezbollah handled Israel quite easily 4 years ago. I think Israelis and their supporters don’t really understand the military dimensions of a full out war with the newly configured Syrian military and a Hezbollah force several times stronger than it was in 2006. It is actually quite obvious that Israel is deterred militarily from interdicting the arms flow.
Mr Mir,
I think you are VASTLY underestimating the might of the IDF. They have come a LONG WAY since the 2006 skirmish. This time they will unleash hell on earth.
Unlike US forces fighting in a distant land, the Israelis have their backs to a wall (the ocean). They have nowhere to go. And it’s wholly unclear whether Obama (unlike Nixon in ’73) will resupply weaponry during a war. All that tends to… focus the mind as they say.
Also, while I understand Terry’s frustration with Israeli politicians, I’d say, “be patient Terry — while they may be inept at certain internal political moves, both Netanyahu AND Barak have Israel’s best interest at heart when it comes to saving the skin of the country as a whole! To think otherwise implies that they are actual traitors — which I simply do not believe. You may disagree with this or that decision, but I am SURE they are taking ALL threats VERY seriously (as is the IDF).”
During the first gulf war, the US was successful in locating and knocking out stationary Scud launchers. They were totally unable to locate and knock out any of the mobile launchers. A 2000 lb warhead is equivalent to the 2000 lb bombs used by the US during WWII. These were better known as block busters because of the extensive damage they would inflict. The prospect of somebody lobbing block busters at populated centers such as Tel Aviv or Haifa is chilling. Should Hezzbolah do such a thing, they will get the war they’ve wanted being that Israel would probably respond on a level undreamed of.
Seeing the Obama administration cuddle up to the Syrians makes me nauseous. It speaks volumes as to what Obama really is.
Osama Bin Laden and Ayeman Alzawahiri died in Afghanistan when a female detonated a bomb at 04:42 pm Nigeria time which is convertable to Aghapak time 25th Ekeh/11th Orie-2001 Afor, November Nkwor.
#8 -I hate to burst your superiority complex but Israel had no problem blowing Syrias nuclear reactor to smithereens.They had no problem blowing up Iraqs reactor back in ’81.Hezbollah and Syria are not major players since they are both being controlled/supplied by Iran.Iran only exists because of oil and no other reason.(well maybe heroin too).I know quite a few folks from Iran and they tell a very different story and actually support the Israelis.Youll never get them to admit it openly though.They arent stupid.