By David Lev, INN
IDF Intelligence head Aviv Kochavi gave a chilling presentation Thursday morning at the Herzliya Conference on Israeli policy, telling listeners that Israel’s enemies had 200,000 rockets and missiles pointed at the country, and could reach all parts of Israel – even the ostensibly safe “center” of Tel Aviv and its suburbs.
Most of the missiles have a range of about 40 kilometers – the range of Qassam and most Katyusha rockets – but thousands of missiles have ranges of hundreds of kilometers, making every location in Israel within their reach. Not only that – but the missiles are more lethal now than ever before. “The warheads on these missiles contain hundreds of kilograms of explosives, not dozens, as in the past. And their firing precision and ability to hit specific targets is also greater,” Kochavi said. The rockets are largely located in Lebanon and Syria, with a smaller amount in Gaza – and in Iran, as well, which has thousands of missiles that could reach Israel. “Every tenth house in Lebanon is now a weapons depot,” Kochavi said.
Besides conventional weapons, Israel is also facing a nuclear threat. According to Kochavi, Israel has lost the battle to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons; Tehran already has enough uranium for four atomic bombs, with over 100 kilos enriched to a level of 20% – more than enough for the one bomb Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he would need to “rid the world of the Zionist entity.”
Whether or not Iran actually builds these bombs is not a question of technical capability, Kochavi said, but a question of political will. The ability to build the bombs is there, and whether or not they will actually be assembled is a decision that top Iranian officials, especially Supreme Leader Ali Khameini, has yet to make. “From the moment the order is given, it will take about a year to assemble the bombs,” Kochavi said. “Developing them into warheads will take a little longer.”
He added that the sanctions against Iran have not yet persuaded Tehran to change its nuclear development policy one way or the other, but that could change if the government feels it is losing control. Still, sanctions are preferable to the other alternatives, at least at this time, he said. “Only concerted international effort can persuade Tehran to halt their pursuit of the project,” he added.
Despite the fact that so far it appears that Islamists have been the big winners of the “Arab Spring,” it is not they that led the revolutions in Arab world, but the desperation of youths and young adults who face a future of unemployment and hopelessness. If the new regimes do not work quickly to raise hope for the masses, he said, the current unrest could continue for many years.
However, one aspect of the weakening of traditional Arab dictatorships in the region has negatively affected Israel; with less authority has come more porous borders, and Iran has been taking advantage of this fact to move more weapons into neighboring Arab countries. As a result, more terror attacks with Iran’s backing can be expected. Kochavi said that the attack last August on the southern Negev was orchestrated by Iran, and thanks to the large amount of weapons in the region – with the Middle East now “the world’s largest weapons warehouse” – similar attacks in the future are all but inevitable.
Ron,
Your problem is that your are living in reality. Some of the posters here would rather live in a world of fantasy, wherein Catholics are continually plotting against Jews. It justifies their hatred of Catholics, and essentially of everyone else. Let them believe what they want. Fortunately, they are the minority.
Israel made many mistakes in the Lebanon war both politically and militarily. I fought in Lebanon in the first Lebanon war and found most Christian unreliable allies. In the end most of the SLA, we created were not Christians but Shia Muslims. We didn’t fight for Christians we fought because we were attacked, our soldiers killed and kidnapped. It was one of the few times I agreed with the government.
Our goal was never to destroy Hezbollah but to damage them and punish them. For the most part the last 6 years have been mostly quiet and their leader lives underground today afraid to show his face in public. In so far as bridges and other infrastructure damage, they were attacked to deny easy transfer of weapons and terrorists along major transportation routes. That we inconvenienced some Christians and pissed them off against us? Tough….!
From my experience there is no difference between Lebanese Christians and Lebanese Muslims except the Muslims have more guts. Remember Sabra and shatila? No Lebanese individual or collective is worth the the injury of a single Jew. Where it up to me I would have bombed the whole country out of existence and annexed the place afterwards. Biblicaly it’s part of the Land of Israel and will revert to us sooner or later in any event.
As for the rest, I agree with Linda Cohn.
Randall, take my advice, if you want to really understand Jewish scriptures, first learn Classical Hebrew really well. Sans that; if you really want to understand Jewish scriptures ask a qualified Jew. After-all it’s not your scriptures but ours, the Jews.
I browsed your letter and your statement of faith and could not find a single statement. point or conclusion that any knowledgeable Jew could agree with.
Judaism says it unequivocally: “It is an eternal law, Esau (the non-Jew) hates Jacob (the Jew).” This is the eternal law – it is immutable. America is no different, nor Australia, nor Russia, nor Latin America, nor Europe, nor South Africa.
The End Of The World prophecy. According to the Jews and no one else! Remember it’s our book and our prophesy, Watch and maybe you will learn something.
You are straying from reality, while I experienced it. Growing up in a community with a large Jewish population, attending Catholic Elementary and HS, living a block from the schools and the same distance from the Jewish Community Center.
Our Jewish and Catholic neighbors got along fine in fact the good nuns at our school had great relationship with the Jewish Center, if they were in need of any assistance, a call to the center brought help. In fact our Catholic HS had no gym and our basketball team use the gym at the JCC to practice.
In HS there was a group of us who hung out with a Jewish group from the public school. The only difference we noted was the Jewish services were on Saturdays and ours was on Sunday.
I use to ride shotgun with my Jewish buddy (he passed away many years ago while was in the military)delivering kosher meat for a Jewish meat market. A big guy with a big heart, I was a skinny kid and he was twice the size of me. I miss him and he is still in my prayers. Unfortunately his weight was too much for his heart.
Bottom line, anti-Semitism was if any so rare it was barely noticed.
For me anti-Semitism exist more here on Israpundit then I ever experienced growing up.
Next time you talk to a Catholic ask him or her if they support Israel and Jews.
That goes for Lois Lane, if there is such a person as we get a lot of phonies on this site.
“it is Western propaganda that keeps on saying that Iran is seeking a bomb, but it is not true.” -Ali Larijani, chairman of the Parliament of Iran.
“If Iran turns into a nuclear power, then no one dares to challenge it because they have to pay a heavy price.” -Ali Larijani, chairman of the Parliament of Iran.
Iran wants nukes to leverage military force against potential targets and they want to supply HEU to terrorist organisations.
It’s their words, stop arguing against evidence.
I agree with Lois and Andrew, in general terms Roman Catholics tend to be the most antisemitic chrristian denomination. There are exceptions of course, but there are always exceptions in any group. Rongrand, we must face reality.
Sorry Andrew, apparently you don’t get it. The Vatican does not reflect the views of all Catholics and is not the voice of all Catholics.
The church is not a democracy and the hierarchy are not elected by or appointed by her parishioners.
Catholics are not so connected to the Vatican as you may think. They have enough on their plates to care for and maintaining their own parish churches and schools within their own diocese.
Having said that we do have a large number of good priest, bishops and cardinals who are pro Israel and Jewish.
Don’t be a spreader of nonsense and above all don’t act like a mental midget.
I agree, Lois.
Lois. I could explain it to you why this is so. But this is a Jewish site. And explaining the difference in theology of Evangelicals and Catholics would not be appropriate here. But you are on the money.
Sorry Ron. But Lois is completely correct here. Show me a survey which shows a majority of catholics support Israel. Good luck with that one!
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the Vatican still continues to spew out anti-semitic vitriol. JPII came to Israel and still couldn’t apologise on behalf of the Catholic church. The best he could do was “sorry for some things some sons of the catholic church had done to the Jews”.
The vatican has said it will never recognise Israel. And at this moment they are using Michael Corleone tactics on Israel to try and gain sovereignty over places in Israel.
Again, I suggest you read: “The Vicars of Christ: the dark side of the papacy” by Peter De Rosa.
Lois you are acting like Obama, lies and fuzzy math. Catholics by large do support both Israel and Jews.
You must be from hungry. Such nonsense. Apparently you don’t know too many Catholics.
You tell a lie often enough you will eventually believe it.
Lois the spin stops here.
Curious American: The nations of the world including the US were screaming for a ceasefire after two weeks. Israel took another week to submit to the will of the US and the world. The US who had been in Iraq for about 4 years would not give Israel 4 months to do the job. The Lebanese gov’t took three months, I think, to wipe out one Palestinian refugee camp – destroyed every house, leveled everything. Silence from the world. But the world gave Israel two weeks. NATO toppled Quadaffi and supposedly killed 50,000 Libyans, but no one, no one helped Israel destroy Hezbullah. They prevented that from happening. Yes, Israel must ignore the world’s pleas for it to commit suicide, and finish the job when it goes to war, but as an American, I would resquest you to address your own government’s complicity in Israel’s failure to complete the job, and not just blame Israel. Thank you.
What makes even less sense to me is that so many of the evangelicals are so very supportive of Israel and Jews in general and the Roman Catholics by and large still hate both Israel and Jews.
In 2006, Israel made a very grave error.
It waged a brutal air war.
What it should have done is parachute up to the Litani River, cut off retreat,
and slowly root out and destroy ALL of Hezbollah.
It would have been vicious, and yes, meant far more casualties, but the
cancer of Hezbollah would have been destroyed.
And the Christians of Lebanon would have thanked you. There were initially
on your side.
But instead you opted for an air war which destroyed Lebanon’s infrastructure,
and angered the innocent Christians in North Lebanon who were innocents, yet
had their bridges and gas stations bombed.
And it did not root out Hezbollah.
Israel ended up making Nasrallah a rock star in the Arab world, and the Maronite
Christians are now leery of Israel.
The Christians were supporting Israel in 2006 until they [Israel] started bombing their bridges.
You preferred to flatten Lebanon, most of whom was innocent, rather than root out Hezbollah,
who is mostly confined to the South and the Beqqa Valley. In the end, Lebanon was so mad
that they started rooting for Hezbollah.
You blamed the Lebanese gov’t for not rooting out Hezbollah, when Israel did not root
out Hezbollah.
As Napoleon said: “When you come to take Vienna, take Vienna.”
Israel went to destroy Hezbollah, but did not destroy Hezbollah.
Instead, its air attacks included Christian towns in the North, an Oil Storage Facility
in the center of Lebanon, and lots of damage to innocents who HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH HEZBOLLAH.
If you expect Lebanon to clean up the mess, forget it.
Lebanon has always been weak. It was too weak to get rid of the PLO in 1968. It
wanted to, but could not. It was too week in 1975. When the Christians tried to evict
the PLO, the Lebanese Civil War started and the Christians lost.
Now, the Lebanese government is too weak to evict Hezbollah. It looks like even
the IDF could not evict Hezbollah; so how can you blame Beirut.
Because you failed to do what was needed in 2006, you are suffering the consequences.
But do not blame the Lebanese. Most of them hate Hezbollah. Only the Shia
like Hezbollah.
The best you can hope for now is to pressure Hezbollah to go fight
for Assad, and hope a Sunni-Shia civil war begins.
None of this makes any sense to the average person. What the hell bothers the Arab world enough to want to destroy this small but giant Jewish Nation. These bastards are crazy with hate all driven by the mullahs. I don’t believe the Iranians as a whole are hateful, it’s those who govern and control them.
Pure jealousy, the achievements of Israel and her people, advancements in science and medicine all within a democracy, the people her greatest assets.
Take the Arab world, the leaders are control freaks, their citizens live in fear and are treated like crap, especially women. Living in fear does not promote anything worthwhile.
They see this tiny but giant nation and her free people as an annoyance and more so resenting the Jews who were led by G-d back to the Holy Land He provided for them.
They better be careful, history of Israel defending her people and land against major odds speaks volumes of G-d’s intervention.
Like the old commercial “don’t mess with mother nature” well for the record “Don’t mess with G-d and His people”.
Like my old sister in school use to say “A word to the wise should be sufficient”.
Ahmedinnerjacket, izzat you?
The t Israelis has been thtreatening to attack for the last ten years. If you intend to attack-you just attack and not make any prior announcements. We are not discussing an engagement notice.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
War at any cost describes what Israel’s enemies are doing.
Preemptive strikes are justified on the basis that Iran constantly threatens to wipe Israel off the map while developing nuclear weapons to enable it to do just that.
But as usual, those with your mindset see Israeli self-defense as problematic rather than the genocidal jihadists waging persistent war against the Jewish state.
As Andrew said, doesn’t it amount to rabble rousing when the pipsqueak Iranian dictator incites the frenzied masses to another holocaust against the Jewish people?
The following article I wrote may help you see what will happen to all those missles if they are lauched at Israel in the near future. It is entitled “The Coming CLEANSING of Israel.” There is a sound button near the middle of the pages that you can mute the sound if you desire. Please feel free to write if you have any questions or comments to JonRandall@joshcomm.org
I understand from reading comments on today’s Drudge Report that Israel’s strategic planners estimate approximately 500 civilian deaths from the rocket attacks based in Lebanon, fired as a response to Israel destroying the Iranian nuclear reactor and possibly also the known stockpile located in another location presumably more difficult but not impossible to destroy. But chances are, you either accept those likely casualties, or wait until Iran has nuclear-armed missiles deployed. After that, it would be only a matter of time before Israel will be involved in the first nuclear war since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed within three days of each other in August 1945 at the end of World War II.
Nothing about the situation on the northern front will change unless and until Zahal is sent in to conquer all southern Lebanon, then put everything south of the Litani River under military control of the State of Israel, even if that means expelling large segments of the population and annexing the land.
There are no easy choices here. By now, you all know the USA under Obama will not attack Iran. This government will bullshit endlessly about it, but all that will amount to are sanctions that never will be approved by the UNO Security Council. This is just a repeat of the middle and late 1930s in responding to the rising threat of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Certainly, large segments of the US population and most of the US Congress, now fully caught up in fits of philo-semitism, will cheer you on, while the anti-semites will gnash their teeth in hatred. But you know all that without being reminded.
Next time around, don’t be in such a big hurry to shrink the land mass that Israel needs as a permanent defensive zone around the country. As for “peace”, I don’t want to sound sarcastic, but you know by now where that will get you.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Why worry? With the likes of Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Bibi at the helm, what is there to worry about, aside from everything?
So show your REAL intelligence… Come up with a solution. Better make it a universal solution because after Israel, everyone gets a piece… including you.
Well is it true or not?
And the mad midget from Iran threatening to wipe Israel off the map isn’t “rabble rousing”.
Clearly trying to arouse Israeli citizens, to justify proactive strikes, war at any cost. Good Zionist rabble rousing.