What is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trying to tell us? If we don’t raise taxes, if Israelis pay saner and fairer taxes, they will have to leave home carrying iron umbrellas because it won't be possible to intercept incoming missiles from Gaza?
This is Netanyahu's latest excuse to exploit taxes, for his constant awkward effort to put his hands into the public's pockets, which were emptied long ago. He is now recruiting the Iron Dome anti-missile system to his campaign to justify his exploitation, claiming, "We need taxes to buy another Iron Dome."
Earlier this week, he said exactly what anonymous Ministry of Defense sources said a few weeks ago, when they asserted that Iron Dome was under threat of a procurement freeze as part of their eternal war against the Ministry of Finance officials over the defense budget. Just like those anonymous sources, Netanyahu continues to use demagoguery about the defense system that has saved the lives of Israel's threatened citizens, who now include people who do not just live in the south.
Last week, the Israel Air Force deployed the fourth Iron Dome battery outside a city in metropolitan Tel Aviv. It was no coincidence: it is like the gun that appears in the first scene and fired in the last. Israel does not have to wait for the last scene. Netanyahu knows that it could come much sooner than what people stirring their cappuccino in a trendy Tel Aviv café think.
US military aid
When there are more than 200,000 rockets targeting Israel's home front, according to Military Intelligence, the IDF will obviously need more Iron Dome batteries - at least 15. The Air Force has just four right now, and it will have six in 2013. The batteries have been ordered from Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., and financing has been found for all of them. The US is funding four of the batteries. Last year, the Obama administration approved $205 million in US taxpayer money for the initial procurement of Iron Domes.
The US will shortly release hundreds of millions of dollars more for the procurement of more batteries, more interceptor rockets, and more radar systems to track incoming Grad missiles fired against Israel's home front by terrorist organizations in Gaza. Is it possible that Netanyahu has forgotten that, just a week ago, a Pentagon spokesman warned, in a special celebratory announcement, that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta would shortly ask Congress to release funds for Israel because the latest flare-up in Gaza proved that Iron Dome was essential?
For months, the Ministry of Defense has bewailed that it has no money, that with the current budget, the IDF cannot maintain its size or maintain its capabilities, which will cost us blood and tears. The ministry frightens us by claiming that the IDF will have to forego some weapon systems, and that it will knowingly not be ready to counter some threats.
It is true that, in the Middle East, things happen which require the defense establishment to prepare for dealing with new extraordinary threats that require a lot of money, even more than what will be freed up by cutting the salaries of career officers or selling their company cars forcing them to arrive at IDF HQ by hitchhiking. These costly tasks include building the fence along the Egyptian border in Sinai and along the Jordanian border in the Arava; the procurement of powerful bombs and jet fuel for planes; the training of cyber warriors to protect Israel's critical infrastructures from hackers in the service of Israel's enemies and to counterattack, the procurement of state-of-the-art stealth weapon systems, and to investment in Arrow missiles to intercept Iran's Shahab, Ashura, and Sajil ballistic missiles, Syria's Scuds, and Hizbullah's Zilzal rockets.
Netanyahu has things to do with the taxpayers' money, which he insists must be constantly raised, but why put all the blame on Iron Dome? Why not simply tell the truth: life is hard here, it's complicated, we're all experts who know how to assess what will happen here - but it will cost money.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 5, 2012
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2012