
Pictured: Rabbi Yossi Friedman and Ari Sacher
Chabad of Alabama and USIEA hosted an event in which I spoke about “Iron Dome – Some History and Some Thoughts.” The talk traced the history of the system from the 2006 Second Lebanon War in which Israel was the recipient of 4,500 Hezbollah rockets for which we had absolutely no solution. 55 Israelis were killed, hundreds were injured and nearly a million fled their homes in Northern Israel to the relative safety of the center of the country.
I spoke about why the Iron Dome was chosen as the desired system and described a day in the life of the system in a way that even a non-rocket-scientist from Capitol Hill could understand. People began to internalize how many things must go right for the system to intercept a rocket and how miraculous the system’s performance has been. Acknowledging that the system had saved countless lives, I spoke about Israel’s growing dependance on defensive systems like the Iron Dome and the Gaza Wall and how this dependency was impacting Israeli deterrence and our willingness to project force. If there is one thing that October 7 and the ensuing war has taught us, it is that peace can sometimes be achieved only when the enemy has been utterly defeated.
The talk ended with a picture of an Iron Dome intercept over a beaming bride and groom (my nephew) and words I had with a congressman at a briefing on Capitol Hill in 2015 with USIEA. When I told him that Iron Dome gives us security, he begged to differ. “How can a rocket being fired at these newlyweds be called ‘security’?”, he asked. I answered that if Iron Dome does not give us security, at least in the way you understand the meaning of the word, it gives us a sense of security. And for an Israeli, that is all that we need not only to live, but to thrive. I know this, I told him, because ever since I was a child I was taught that “Am Yisrael Chai” – “The Nation of Israel lives!” This, I told him, is precisely what we fully intend on doing.
And this, my friends, is how we will claw our way back from the atrocities of October 7. We have much to fix and we have much to change, but believe you me, we are here for the long run. And I’m already looking forward to my next trip across the pond.
Good Things,
Ari Sacher
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