generalspeaking

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

The Mother of all Rough Neighbourhoods

The base is here to stay. It involved a significant allocation of resources, in the understanding that this was right and necessary and part of the United States’ assets in Israel."
"It's a message that says Israel is better prepared. It's a message that says Israel is improving the response to threats."
"[Along with other recent improvements to Israel’s air defense program, this] will improve our abilities significantly. It won’t get us to 100 percent, but it will get us much closer to achieving important things during war."
Brig. Gen. Zvi Haimovich, defense division commander

U.S. X-band radar of the type stationed in Israel Missile Defense Agency

"[The base] symbolizes the strong bond that exists between the United States and Israel."
"The United States and Israel have long planned together, exercised together and trained together." "And now, with the opening of this site, these crucial interactions will happen every day."
Maj. Gen. John Gronski, deputy commander, US Army National Guard in Europe

Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovitch, the head of Israel’s Aerial Defense Command, left, and Maj. Gen. John Gronski, head of US Army National Guard in Europe, hold a document marking the establishment of the first American military base in Israel inside the Mashabim Air Base in southern Israel on September 18, 2017. (Israel Defense Forces)

Surrounded by a number of Arab-state neighbours who remain determined to wrench the geography on which Israel has re-established its ancient presence in the Middle East, from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Syria and Iran directing both as proxy militias whose munitions are designed to destroy the presence of a Jewish state in the midst of Arab and Persian Muslim communities, Israel, despite the formidable reputation gained by its fighting forces, needs all the help it can get, and the United States has been for many years a staunch supporter of its right to exist.

For the most part, these are failed states; Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Gaza as a state-in-waiting, eager to move into the geography that Israel's footprint marks as a portion of its original presence in the Middle East. Lebanon's bloody civil war where Sunni and Shia, Druze and Christians battled one another to a bloody pulp, destroying a country that had once been proudly touted as the most peaceful and cosmopolitan in the region, exists in a turmoil of an official state military and an unofficial Hezbollah military answerable to Iran where the 'political arm' of the terrorist group forms part of government.

Syria's disastrous meltdown has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its citizens in a sectarian conflict of brutal barbarity, enabling battle-hardened terrorists to leave Libya and Afghanistan to take up shop in a dismantled Syria and its neighbouring Iraq, where utter destabilization caused by tribal and sectarian hatreds have given birth to the most atrocity-loving of the terrorist Islamofascists, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The sole issue of primary importance on which all of these murderous human outcasts can agree upon is their mutual loathing of Israel.

Iran's irrevocable advances in nuclear weaponry and the ongoing technical advances in ever-more powerful ballistic missiles have a twofold purpose; to enable it to achieve the power and control it aspires to over the entire Middle East, as a Shiite conquest over majority Sunni rule. And to consolidate its position as the ruling power by its connections with other Shiite-majority nations in a hegemonic power play, including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen; a Shiite crescent.

The Islamic Republic of Iran's collegial and useful relations with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea in exchanging scientific personnel and breakthroughs in intercontinental ballistic missile technology, able to fly faster, further and more accurately, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, for each to become the newest albeit outlawed members of the international nuclear club represents a direct threat both to the U.S. and to Israel.

It makes practical sense for both these countries, the macro- and the micro-power, to join forces in the inauguration of a partial U.S. military base within an existing Israeli base to serve soldiers operating a critical missile defence system in lock-step with growing Israeli concerns with Iran's long-range missile development. The multilayered system of defences is meant to secure against long-range guided missile attacks from Iran as well as the crude rockets from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, fired into Israel.

The Arrow, part of Israel's multi-tier missile defence system, is designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles potentially incoming from Iran. The Iron Dome defends against the short-range rockets streaming in from Gaza, while David's Sling's purpose is to counter medium-range missiles now in the possession of Hezbollah militants. To remark on Israel's singular and perpetual need to remain vigilant and capable of instant response to ongoing threats is to repeat an understatement of fact that few countries live under such constant threats to their existence.