Israeli Anti-Missiles Fail in Eilat Attack

and the Syrians came to Elath, and dwelt there unto this day… 2 Kings 16:6

By www.roytov.com

Censorship of a military operation is a thing of the past. Hiding movements of troops in an environment where most people have cellular phones and cameras is impossible, at least in the long term. The recent Israeli attack on Gaza, Operation Pillar of Cloud, provided several proofs of that. The oddest was reported on November 17, 2012, by Haaretz; Hamas’ al-Aqtsa Brigades sent text messages to many Israelis, reading: “We will turn Gaza into a cemetery for your soldiers.” Another testimony are the two videos above this paragraph.

One shows the hit of a missile in Eilat, the second shows subsequent activities by IDF personnel, both were filmed on April 17, 2013. What is clearly missing from the images is any activities of the Iron Dome Antimissile Battery, which had been urgently placed in the city on April 3, following warnings that missiles were about to be fired from the Sinai. The battery placed was the fifth operative one, which was taken away from the IDF training base and deployed urgently near Tel Aviv during Operation Pillar of Cloud.

Eilat – April 17, 2013
Eilat and the Negev
Eilat Area Map

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The Hottest Siberia

Due to the Negev Desert separating it from Israel’s main centers of population, Eilat was for many years the local version of Siberia, to where people harassed by the Zionists escaped (Mafia Explodes in Tel Aviv). The Israeli Administration never cared about what happened in that drop of desert; the State ended at the Uvda military base. In recent years, Eilat became a prime resort for people from Northern Europe seeking for warmth during their cold winters; to them there is nothing better than the hottest Siberia. Even the Bible cites Eilat as a Syrian advanced stronghold: and the Syrians came to Elath, and dwelt there unto this day… 2 Kings 16:6.

Strengthening this claim of extraterritorial status is that things changed only when Mubarak’s regime in Egypt began wobbling. Since then, The Sinai is de facto not ruled by any state. The result was that Eilat became a target, mainly of a Salafi organization named Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem.

Heating up the Hottest Siberia

The first attack took place on April 2010, when at least two rockets missed the city, falling in the sea and near the Jordanian town of Aqaba. In August of the same year, three people were hurt by rockets in Aqaba, other missiles hit the sea and Eilat. In August 2011, eight Israelis died in an attack on a bus north of the city. In April 2012, a rocket exploded next to a residential building. In June, a Grad rocket exploded next to Uvda, the military airbase north of the city. In August, a rocket was found on the rocky mountains near the city. On April 17, the recently deployed battery failed even to fire against the two rockets fired against Eilat; one of the rockets fell within a residential area.

The abovementioned organization claims that the shooting of two rockets was the result of the killing of two Palestinian youngsters near the Jewish settlement of Einav by the Haredi Battalion of the IDF on April 4. Egyptian newspaper “al-Yom al-Sabaa” reported that following the event, the Egyptian authorities asked from the Bedouins, the true sovereigns in the Sinai, to increase their control on the relevant areas; the Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem is foreign to the area.

Eilat, the Hottest Siberia

Criminal Manipulation of Data

Israel likes to make boastful declarations about its antimissiles systems. Yet, most reports on Israeli media are about failed interceptions. Israel manipulates its antimissile systems interception data; this is the result of the systems being aimed for export, mainly to South Korea and Singapore, but also due to the generous American support of the development process. The manipulation is straightforward; the system is deployed exclusively where it has optimal interception conditions.

Moreover, during Pillar of Cloud, Israel shot two anti-missiles against every missile. This leads to what in Measurement Theory is known as a bad sampling of data, which becomes unrepresentative of the overall population of the studied event. With this foiled magic, Israeli media claims that the interception rate is 90%. In Pillar of Cloud ends Unfinished, I quoted the data released by the IDF following the operation. It shows that 700 missiles out of the 1,000 fired by Hamas hit Israel. This amounts to a 70% failure of Iron Dome.

The Zionist elite was shocked by the event. Three hours after it, Ron Ben Yishay, a senior analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth, published a call (which for sure was approved by the Shin Beth secret police and the IDF; considering its content it may have been ordered by the IDF), to create a tightest and secret cooperation with Egypt that will allow the IDF to operate within the Sinai. This is an acknowledgment that Iron Dome is useless. Why? Except to its northern side, Eilat is surrounded by beautiful rocky mountains which sharply drop into the Red Sea. Unless the Iron Dome battery is strengthened by a suitable radar station on the mountains it cannot intercept even a butterfly. However, there is a cheaper solution: “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it” Psalms 34:14.

 I can imagine an Israeli general jumping on his chair after reading this and beginning a tirade against me. “Iron Dome was not deployed in the sites that were hit!” He shouts to the silent computer screen. “You are a demagogue,” he continues. Yet, he is wrong. One of the characteristics of antimissile weapons is their being non-symmetric. Building missiles is much cheaper than the antimissile system. A Qassam rocket costs less than $100 while an Iron Dome antimissile is evaluated at $50,000 per unit.

Invariably, there would be more missiles than antimissiles. It is an intrinsic characteristic of this type of events and thus must be taken into account in the sampling. Luckily enough, an event including 1,000 missiles can be easily analyzed using the entire event without recurring to statistical sampling techniques. Iron Dome has an operative 70% failure rate. My dear general, Iron Dome is a failure.

Roi Tov

Roi Tov is a graduate—among others—of Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science. In addition to his memoir, Tov is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Molecular Physics and other scientific journals. He won various travel writing and photography awards.

In his writings, he tries to reveal life in Israel as a Christian Israel Defense Force (IDF) officer—from human rights violations to the use of an extensive network of underground agents. He was recognized first as a refugee and subsequently as political prisoner of Bolivia.