It's not just "rain"

I'm going to mention rockets again. I know, you're bored of me mentioning rockets. What's a few rockets? It's just like rain, right? There's Iron Dome, why are Israelis making such a deal of a few rockets?

Well, first of all, it's not "a few", we're talking more than 13,500 in the last six months.

Second, Iron Dome isn't 100%. It's an incredible system, it's saved countless lives, but it isn't perfect.

For example, during the October 7th attacks the Hamas barrage at Israel's Gaza border region was so intense that a local Iron Dome battery ran out of anti-rocket missiles. More than 3,500 rockets were fired by Hamas at Israel in the first 24 hours of the war on October 7th, as cover for the Hamas invasion. The Iron Dome commander had to drive to a nearby base to restock their munitions and while she was on the road she was murdered in a Hamas ambush. Israel lost an experienced Iron Dome commander and until it was possible to resupply that battery was out of commission.

Iron Dome and Israel's other excellent anti-missile defence systems do amazing work, but they aren't 100%. Each system is a defence against a specific type of projectile, different ranges, different altitudes. And Israel's enemies aren't stupid, knowing Israel has a layered defence framework they attempt layered attacks, different kinds of rockets, different kinds of drones, slower, faster, higher, lower, anti-tank missiles who's trajectory and shorter range make them hard to intercept.

Today in the northern Israeli village of Arab el-Aramshe, right near the Lebanese border, their luck ran out. For months this village has been one of the Israeli communities most heavily targeted by Hizballah from southern Lebanon. Its proximity to the border gives Hizballah easy line of sight to terrorise the residents.

There were several direct hits on the village today, including on their local community centre. While the wounded from that strike were being evacuated another round hit the entrance area outside the building. Fourteen have been wounded, three seriously.

These are far from Israel's first casualties from enemy rocket fire.

For years now Israel has been targeted by thousands and thousands of rockets and missiles, more recently drones, from Hamas, from Hizballah and now also from the Houthis in Yemen.

This isn't rain, it's a growing existential threat which has only increased over the years, exploding into the thousands we've seen in recent months, killing Israelis, wounding Israelis, destroying countless Israeli homes, farms and workplaces.

These rockets were a deadly part of Hamas' October 7th invasion of Israel, keeping millions of Israelis pinned down in shelters, providing cover for the drone attacks which took out Israeli motion sensors and cameras guarding the border fence and herding hundreds of party goers at the Nova festival in to public shelters where they were easily picked off by Hamas gunmen who turned these places of refuge in to death traps. If Israelis had not been conditioned to be so used to rocket fire as just "something that happens" the response to the initial volleys fired at Israel that morning might have been very different.

The potential destruction could of course have been much worse, but this besides the point, If someone is trying to destroy you but you succeed in blocking them most of the time that doesn't remove the murderous intent of those who keep trying to kill you.

Meanwhile Israel has to plough vast amounts of resources, time, people, research and money, into a complex anti-missile defense system. How many hospitals, educational frameworks and scientific research of all kinds could have been funded with this, used to make the world better for everyone instead. But Israel doesn't have a choice, without Iron Dome and other systems we would be sitting ducks for this massive rocket and drone onslaught.

And then this week we had 350 ICBMs, attack drones and cruise missiles fired at us from Iran.

And once again our friends and allies overseas respond with "it's just rain", the anti-missile defence intercepted 99% of the missiles and drones, just ignore it" and "don't respond, it's been and gone, you can always intercept any more missiles". Tell that to the little Israeli girl fighting for her life in hospital after her home was hit by shrapnel from one of those ballistic missiles.

The upshot of all this "don't respond" talk is that Iranian ICBMs and attack drones with their hundreds of kilos and many tons of explosive warheads should just be "normalised" the way Hamas and Hizballah short range rockets have been until now. We should just accept this new deadly "rain".

This is why many Israelis feel there is a need to respond. This time we were "lucky". This time there was a coalition and enough anti-missile defences to stave off the massive Iranian onslaught.

How long can we keep that up now? How many billions do we have to keep restocking these incredibly expensive defences? How many times will Iran now follow the Hamas and Hizballah playbook of gradually testing our defences, upping the number of lethal projectiles until they God Forbid find a chink?

No one wants to talk about it but Israel can't allow this to be normalised because it sets a precedent for more attacks like this and creates an accepted level at which we are expected to just accept that people will shoot missiles and drones at our population.

Would any other country be expected to just accept this?