Preparedness Takes Lots of Preparation

Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
26 May '10

We're having a week-long nationwide Home Front defense drill. Granted, the entire nation is a bit small, about the size of New Jersey with fewer people, but it's hard to overestimate the importance of such preparations. A drill such as this is planned for an entire year, and thousands of people are involved in the process. Should a missile land on a water station it's not obvious that the water company's teams will know, and will know what to do about it, and will know how to equip themselves, and will know how to get there; if the phone system, the electric system and the mobile phone system have all crashed, and the roads are jammed with vehicles trying to reach the hospitals, how does that water company team come together and fix the problem? And if the problem can't be fixed today, how will water be distributed and who announces it how?

This is merely one scenario, for one municipal water company. Multiply it by all the other things that can go wrong all over the country, and throw in the need to fight and win a war as quickly as possible because the enemy has more rockets and will keep on shooting them for as long as it can unless it's stopped.

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Talks of Peace -- Threats of War

C. Hart
American Thinker
19 May '10

Behind all the optimism that is being expressed in regard to the new Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks, there is great concern of a looming war in the Middle East. While reports have focused on the possibility of a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, few analysts have considered that the next war might be more limited in scope -- one that could occur, instead, between Israel and Iran's proxies in the region.

Recently, an Israeli think-tank, the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, launched simulated war games, gauging international reaction to a possible long-range missile attack on Tel Aviv. Such an attack might be aimed at Israel's Defense Ministry, and Middle East experts at IDC developed possible scenarios to prepare for such developments.

Also on Israel's military agenda is a national war drill called Turning Point 4, which will be held May 23-27. The purpose of the drill is to see how civilians might respond to rocket attacks fired on the home front. Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai says the drill is not linked to fears of a looming war, and that Israel has sent messages to allay tensions that could be caused by the exercise.

In fact, Israeli leaders have been engaged in sending messages to Lebanon and Syria for several weeks now, claiming that Israel wants peace, not war, on its northern border. This follows rumors, presumably started by Iran, that Israel may attack trucks carrying massive arms from Syria to Hezb'allah. The transfer of these arms, many originating in Iran, has been going on for four years now, in defiance of U.N. Security Resolution 1701, which was implemented at the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Iran's reason for trying to provoke Israel to spark a new war in the Middle East may be to detract the international community from imposing further U.N. sanctions on the Islamic state.

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