Iron Dome (2020): Season 1, Episode 3 - Episode #1.3 - full transcript
but it caused no damage
and it seemed like nobody cared.
Imagine a town of over 20,000
inhabitants,
in the middle of nowhere,
and a shell lands without warning.
Red alert! Red alert!
His eyes were closed
but I saw him.
The axe fell.
My life is divided into
"before" and "after."
After endless debates
over whether the defense system
would be the Iron Dome or the laser,
Iron Dome was chosen.
They finally signed a contract.
Iron Dome had fund
Israel will be safe from all
types of missile fire,
from Qassams to Shihabs.
Meanwhile, Hamas took over
the Gaza Strip
and Ahmed Jabari became
Chief of Staff of the State of Hamas.
Hamas is free to do
as it pleases
n the Gaza Strip.
The sky used to belong to the birds,
but in 2008 lots of rockets
filled the sky
and we were constantly afraid
they'd land on us.
And what did we want?
A smart missile
that would chase a stupid rocket
and hit it while still airborne.
Is that asking too much?
The Iron Dome project
was finally underway.
A group of people whose only connection
was their mission.
Hundreds of civilians and soldiers
of all ages and backgrounds
pitched in to meet the challenge.
How do you make a missile fired
from the ground intercept an airborne rocket,
all within 15 seconds?
When I joined the project,
I was very worried.
I have to meet a schedule
with a simply absurd budget
from the Defense Ministry.
At first it seemed like
an impossible mission.
I meet with all the team managers,
22 team managers,
and at the very beginning I say:
We need to provide a solution
for the people of Sderot,
a solution for their problem,
and we have 3 years to do it.
The people there are very dedicated.
I know most of them
because I raised them.
Most of the folks who worked on Iron Dome,
I was their boss,
and I'd brought many of them
to my department at Rafael.
wice was apartment ea
When they officially got the job,
after the Nagel Committee, it was 2007.
They promised to finish by 2010,
an unprecedented timetable.
It was impossible.
What are th rep yearns *.foj>a task like that?
Nbthingj.
They worked on the'Arrow' rni’ssile
for 15 years, but who had time to'.complain
when in Gaza they were rushing into
the next war?
Courageous Jihad warriors,
you're sacrificing your lives
for God's sake...
Until the rats (Israelis)
go back to their holes.
Ahmed Jabari, Hamas Chief of Staff,
Israel's number-one wanted man,
the man who held abducted soldier
Gilad Shalit, didn't stop threatening.
Today, Gaza,
tomorrow, God willing, Jerusalem.
Tomorrow, the West Bank.
Tomorrow, Haifa, Jaffa and Tel Aviv.
Until the homeland, all of Palestine,
is liberated.
Jabari looked for someone to help him
manufacture sophisticated rockets
that would reach more distant
targets within Israel,
and found Dirar Abu Sisi.
Dirar Abu Sisi is an engineer who studied
electrical engineering in Ukraine.
He submitted his doctorate paper
to the Ukrainian professor
who was in charge of developing
the Russian Scud rocket.
I'm at the Gaza power station
and I'm in charge of running the station.
e haven't received
all the transformers we need...
Missile engineer or local
power station manager?
In Israel's opinion
there was no question at all.
Dirar Abu Sisi wasn't just an engineer,
not even not just a missile engineer.
He's a strategic figure in the history
of the military arm of Hamas.
He did two important things.
One, he helped them increase the range
of their missiles to 40 kilometers,
deep into Israeli territory,
and two, he improved
the production capabilities
of the rocket factories in Gaza.
Jabari's way of testing
Abu Sisi's new developments
was to fire them at Sderot,
and we, of course, responded.
In November 2008,
the Gaza border heats up again.
Things gradually went downhill.
"Sprinkles," to use a word
that annoys a lot of people,
because I don't think it's a sprinkle
either. It's a rocket.
The sprinkles were continual
but a process of escalation began.
They fired about 400 missiles, a number
that was considered totally unacceptable,
so it was decided to launch
Operation Cast Lead.
A few hours ago, IDF troops
invaded the Gaza Strip
as part of Operation Cast Lead.
e aren't happy about attacking,
but we aren't afraid, either.
A time for peace and a time for combat,
and now's the time for combat.
The dreidels of Hanukkah 2008
gave the operation its name, Cast Lead.
The operation began
with heavy bombardments
and plenty of Palestinian casualties
and fatalities on the very first day.
Dozens of Hamas policemen were hit.
Among the fatalities, police commander
Taufik Jabbar.
There is no god but Allah.
The war began with the bombing
of a parade of police
from Hamas' internal security system,
which killed many people.
That's why it was called
a murderous war.
e had a set of written goals,
to dramatically reduce
the amount of rocket fire from Gaza,
to create an arrangement that would
facilitate a long-term respite,
and to make normal life
in the South possible.
The Gazans were very surprised
by Israel's actions.
t was the first time
Israel gave up the idea
of not harming civilians.
Israel also stated explicitly:
We're striking terrorists,
and if there are terrorists
among the civilian population,
we'll strike them.
Jabari hides, of course,
and orders his troops
to fire as much as possible.
Abu Sisi's rocK^tS.reached
further into Israel,
enabling Jaban/for the first time,
xto strike the bigwcjities,
where Housing is’dense and people
aren't prepared to proteoKthemselves.
1:30 p.m., the horrifying scenario
the people of Netivot feared
reaches here as well.
One rocket scores a direct hit
on an apartment house.
Suddenly I hear a boom
and see black smoke.
This is how the morning looks in Be'er Sheva.
Sirens repeatedly warned of
Grad rocket fire on the city
and citizens who don't have secure rooms
in their homes
had to run to bomb shelters
each time.
There's been a lot of talk
in the past week
of the possibility of Katyusha fire
on Be'er Sheva, capital of the Negev,
just within range,
40 kilometers away, more or less.
Hamas is definitely trying to show
that it's able to fire
and able to hit its targets.
We'd never experienced it
in Ashdod.
e heard it on the news,
in the Gaza periphery, in Sderot.
We'd never experienced it.
I didn't really take it seriously.
I didn't realize
what the sirens meant.
e were going to the gym
and my sister Irit called to say
she was outside.
I went out, she picked me up,
we went to the gym,
we did our aerobic workout
and left.
e were waiting at the light
when the siren sounded.
She got scared and said:
"Yalus, it's a siren."
I said: "Okay, just drive.
She turned right and stopped -
at the bus stop,
put on the handbrake, grabbed
her phone and got out of the car.
The first images just in
from the 122-millimeter
Katyusha attack on Ashdod.
Two people standing at the bus stop
try to take cover,
the rocket strikes very close by,
they both sustain wounds,
one severe and one fatal,
and three other people standing nearby
are mildly wounded.
e got to the hospital.
Irit arrived just a few seconds
before me.
I saw all the bloodstains
and realized that something
terrible had happened.
The four hours in ER
were like an eternity.
By then it was 2 a.m.
Two doctors, four nurses,
my mother and my aunt came in
and said: "We have something
to tell you."
I remember I plugged my ears
and said:
"I don't want to hear it."
"Please don't tell me,
I don't want to hear it."
"I know what you're going to say."
And she said: "Listen,
you have to be strong
and come say farewell
to Irit now."
I remember I didn't want to hear it,
I didn't want...
I didn't believe that was
what they had to say,
I didn't think that that day,
which was such a fun day,
would end that way
after simply going to the gym.
Wrapped in a prayer shawl
and accompanied by cries of grief,
Irit Sheetrit, victim of
the Qassam attack,
was laid to rest this afternoon.
At her fresh grave,
her husband Herzl Sheetrit
found it hard to part from the person
who was his whole world.
Irit, 39, left behind
a loving family and four children
who'll be going to sleep tonight
without a mother.
Mommy's darling
God, bless their memory.
May God have mercy on them,
forgive them and ease their way.
May God have mercy on them.
Praise God.
When combat was over,
we'd buried 13 fatalities
and in Gaza the Palestinians
mourned some 1,000 dead.
They literally found themselves
beneath the rubble.
Most of the fatalities in Gaza
were innocent civilians
who had nothing to do with the war.
All the factories in Gaza
were totally destroyed.
Small businesses
were also destroyed.
The businessmen in Gaza
went bankrupt.
Gaza's economy was ruined.
After a war we usually
stop and think:
What did we achieve?
How will we prevent the next war?
But here there was no time
for pondering.
The rockets kept drizzling in
after Operation Cast Lead,
elections were coming up,
Benjamin Netanyahu, a new-old
candidate, returned to the fray,
and on election day he promised that,
if elected,
he would do differently
and put an end to the rockets.
Netanyahu, how symbolic,
went south to Sderot.
The drizzle of Qassams
still continues,
and that symbolizes, sad to say,
the failure of Kadima's policy.
Nobody in Israel is as smart as you.
We're live on TV
with the 2009 elections.
In first place, according
to the Channel 10 News sampling,
the Kadima party with 30 mandates.
Next, Likud with 28 parliament members.
Uh-oh, look who's coming:
the next prime minister!
The Israeli nation has spoken its piece
clearly and plainly!
Bibi has lost tonight's elections,
he knows that,
but he's the only one who can
put a coalition together.
Bibi became Prime Minister
mainly thanks to Ehud Barak,
who only earned 13 mandated.
But, surprisingly, joined ferces with him
in order to remain Defense Minister.
The developers of Iron Dome
breathed a sigh of relief.
Who knows if a new defense minister
wouldn't have put a halt to their work?
The main task, which Rafael
updated us on from time to time,
was proving its operational capability
and our ability to build it.
The rule of thumb for insiders
dealing with research and development
is what we call:
"the rule of two out of three."
You plan something. Between the planning
stage and the implementation stage,
it will cost twice as much,
take twice as long,
and performance will be
half of what you expected,
and that was what worried me most.
Hanoch and his team
faced quite a challenge.
Time was short and it was very doubtful
that it was even possible
to build a missile that could hit
such small rockets.
Rocket scientist Moti Shefer
thought it was impossible.
Two days and 50 years ago,
I walked into Rafael, okay?
So for 50 years I've dealt with..
I also flayed a lot of violin, but...
that's my area of expertise, okay?
ere is no missi e in t e wor to ay
that can intercept missiles like those.
There is no missile in the world today
that can intercept missiles, period.
A lot of people there said:
"of course it can be done."
Personally, I thought it was totally
different from an air-to-air missile,
which strikes a huge airplane.
Here you have to hit a pipe as wide
as a Coca-Cola bottle, no bigger,
moving through the air
at tremendous speed,
which is essentially science fiction.
Until then, thousands of cheap rockets
had been fired from Gaza.
The missile that would
intercept them
couldn't be too expensive.
The Defense Ministry stipulated
that each Iron Dome missile
shouldn't cost more than $50,000.
For comparison's sake, each Arrow missile
costs over $1 million.
I call the people in and say: Listen,
we aren't going to make
the smartest missile in the world.
We're going to make
an average missile.
Don't try to make it the best,
make it simple and cheap.
One day I was at home,
I went up to the attic
and found an old model car
that my son used to play with,
with a remote control.
I saw some very interesting parts
that are also used in missiles.
I removed the parts,
brought them to Rafael
and had them lab-tested.
The missile has certain parts
which cost about...
$50 per unit.
The part in the car
cost about 80 cents.
As it turned out,
all the parts met regulations.
It's the first missile in the world
with parts from Toys R Us.
While the scientists dealt with science,
patents and remote controlled cars,
the big money had its say in Gaza.
Following the success of rocket attacks on
the Israeli hinterland in Operation Cast Lead,
the Iranians paid for Jabari
to reestablish his missile supply.
Jabari didn't stop at putting together
a fighting force.
He also started his famous
tunnel project at the Egyptian border
and the tunnels
that he and his men built
gave them access to
the special missiles from Iran.
The report states that an arms shipment
came by ship from Iran to Port Sudan
on the Red Sea coast.
The arms, apparently including
long-range rockets,
were transferred to a truck convoy
which headed north to Egypt.
The destination: The arms-smuggling
tunnels in southern Gaza.
Hamas managed to build many tunnels
between Gaza and Egypt
and managed to smuggle in a lot of goods
and a lot of advanced weapons and missiles.
They even smuggled in cars.
Jabari and Abu Sisi's rocket system
shifted up a gear.
Iranian rocket parts
came in via the tunnels
and Hamas used them to build
bigger, more deadly rockets
that could fulfill the dream
of reaching even Tel Aviv.
They worked on the missiles' range
so they'd reach as far as possible,
in order to make Israel
halt obmbat sooner,
and also to garner support
and power from the people.
The disturbing news of the possible
existence of long-range rockets
made Barak nervous,
so when Jabari asked for help
from his rich Iranian uncle,
Barak decided to ask for help
from our even richer uncle.
My thought was that the army
should set reasonable goals
in terms of installing batteries,
manpower
and timetables
because we weren't sure
when we'd need it even more.
And then we realized it was too big
and expensive a burden,
so we decided to turn to
the Americans.
Barak instructed our military attache
in Washington
to try to get the Americans to partner
with us on developing Iron Dome.
I'm in Washington
as our military attache
during the transition
from Bush to Obama
as the development projects
begin to progress
and we need the Americans'
cooperation
and they have their own
industrial interests,
pressure groups, capabilities
and agenda.
They're deployed...
We're insignificant to them.
They're deployed all over the world.
Gantz turned to the American leaders
and found a sympathetic ear
with Eric Lynn, a young Jewish lawyer
who was the President's advisor
on the Middle East at the Pentagon.
After General Gantz had said that the IDF
would love support by the US for this system,
I actually went back to my desk
and went through the old files
from the team that had worked
on the US-lsrael defense relationship
during the Bush administration
and I found a classified file.
The request for support
by the US for Iron Dome
was rejected
by the Bush administration Pentagon.
The Americans were
very, very skeptical
about our technological ability
to do what we were doing.
Actually, when you look at the system,
it makes sense that
people won't believe it works,
so the decision whether to invest
or not is a weighty one.
Since it still hadn't been proved
that Iron Dome works,
the Americans refused to partner
with the duck that might never learn to fly.
They asked for proof.
You can't force physics
or the engineers' work,
and these are gifted engineers,
and there were times when they
worked 24/7, weekends,
and you need patience
and constant pushing.
Ehud Barak realized that in order
to change the Americans' minds,
he had to show them
a successful test, and soon.
Under pressure from Barak, Hanoch
and his team, they sped up work on the .missile,
and after 18 months
of intensive work,
they'd come up with the Tamir,
an interceptor missile.
It wasn't just a tall,
handsome missile,
it had a super-smart (brain
that could home in on its target.
But compared to other missiles
it had a strange flaw.
it had a tail.
In recent years, low-smoke
engines were being made.
When you fire a missile, you don't want
people to see where it came from.
I thought the opposite.
I want an engine
that emits lots of smoke
so Israelis will see a missile
with a lot of smoke flying through the sky.
That's what I wanted.
Once the missile sprouted wings,
although the system
wasn't totally ready,
Rafael's development team headed south
to the Shdema test grounds
for a test that would determine
Iron Dome's fate.
Something called "Iron Dome"
comes to the base for testing,
we'd never heard of it until then,
and I understand
that the system is nearly ready
and I'm given a task: to run
the Iron Dome test.
Going to Shdema for testing,
especially the kind of testing
Iron Dome required,
where you have to fire a target
as well as an interceptor,
is an operation
that takes hundreds of people.
Bringing this whole gang
down to Shdema
costs a fortune.
We're in tremendous suspense,
which increases as the time to fire
the rocket and the interceptor approaches,
and we're praying the thing will work.
I had great faith in the system.
There was something compelling
about the team that developed it,
as well as their abilities.
It felt like it was going to work.
At the first test, in the South,
we launched a target, a rocket.
we waited for the radar to detect it,
then started the countdown
to fire the interceptor missile,
the Iron Dome.
We start the countdown,
five, four, three, two, one...
Nothing happens.
No missile.
I turned pale,
my blood pressure rose and I was
about to have a heart attack.
We try to fire the missile
and it doesn't work,
and naturally we were worried.
Maybe it's you,
maybe you did something wrong,
maybe you made a mistake.
It was decided
to do a second test.
The target took off,
the computer indicated that we could
launch our missile,
countdown, five, four, three,
two, one...
Same thing. Nothing happens.
Everyone looks at: each other,
anotlaier countdown,
same thing. Nothing happens.
At this point, if I was Japanese
and I had a sword,
i'd commit hara-kiri.
we were; very concerned
that we'd missed something,
done something wrong,
maybe our models didn't match
the actual physics.
we considered
sending everyone home.
we go home feeling awful.
We're lucky we didn't crash our cars.
Take the failed test,
add a recent scathing report
by the State Comptroller
and media that spares no criticism,
and you get one worried Hanoch Levin.
Very worried.
The home front is exposed. The State
Comptroller's report points ®u,t serious flaws
in the development process
of the anti-rocket system.
we could've had a solution in 2006
and certainly in 2009.
At the end of 2007,
after the trauma of Lebanon,
the IDF decided to arm itself
with Iron Dome,
but, so writes the Comptroller,
the system may not meet
the country's needs.
Everything was done late
and not thoroughly.
The operational solution
will be expensive
and may not be completed.
Was the whole effort a mistake?
Hanoch and his team ignored the report
that addressed the past.
They had to deal with the present
and figure out why the test
was unsuccessful, and fast.
Rafael's management said:
we want a few months
to look into the system and see.;.
what happened, check it in-depth,
let's form 15 different committees
and see if we can figure out what went wrong.
Three days later, I had a visit
from an engineer from the electronic
system, at 9:00 at night,
and he says: I have a feeling
I know what went wrong.
Israel, are you sure?
We're working here 24/7
trying to figure out
what went wrong.
He says: I think I know.
He explained the problem.
A cable near the launcher
was attached the wrong way,
with the plus to the minus
and the minus to the plus.
That was the problem, apparently.
I had a feeling that was the answer.
I was even called in to the CEO.
The CEO asked me: Are you sure?
I said yes.
If this doesn't work, I'll have to
drop out of this project.
That Sunday morning,
we were going to conduct a test
and I start speaking in short sentences,
at high volume,
very focused on my goal.
There was a different kind of
excitement in the air,
we knew we had to
get this baby out.
First we launch the target,
the target's in the air,
we start the countdown,
the announcer, a guy named Dori,
starts counting,
five, four, three...
One, zero.
It's a launch.
-The last interceptor is launched.
Smoke comes out of the launcher,
a missile blasts into the air.
People are already applauding.
I say: Folks, there hasn't even
been an interception yet.
There are a few seconds of panic.
Everyone's sitting there,
glued to the computer.
We want to see if we can
see t>he missile,
if we can see the rocket, if this thing
works as we expected.
The tension is unbearable.
You keep looking to see if the interceptor
is on the course you planned for it,
and as long as it's there
you hope they collide.
t's on track.
At a certain point we see
lots of fragments in the air,
one collided with the other
and blew it up.
The people in the room are ecstatic,
they're jumping and hugging each other.
We realize that almost two years' work
was a success.
When it struck,
it was really...
We all sprang from our seats
and hugged
it was...
an extraordinary feeling.
The Defense Minister watched the test today
and thanked the developers from Rafael
and, unusually, his predecessor
who made the decision, Amir Peretz.
Iron Dome will undoubtedly
become, in coming years,
part of the IDF's system for protecting
citizens of the homeland,
as well as military targets.
They achieved their goal.
Right on schedule
they conducted the test
that proved its viability,
the viability of something amazing.
I mean,
from a technological perspective,
two objects fly through the air
in a three-dimensional space
at speeds...
Anyway, it's a complex problem
and they solved it.
And that's an extraordinary achievement,
and I drank a toast and celebrated.
And while the military brass
clinked glasses,
Moti Shefer, from the outside,
claimed it was all a hoax
and that there wasn't even
a backwards cable.
Rafael made a missile
that can intercept missiles.
Barak came along at the end of 2010
and told the people at Rafael:
Let's go, folks, you said 2010,
it's 2010.
Come on,
give us Iron Dome.
We want to deploy it.
But it didn't work.
it didn't work.
They worked and worked
and it didn't work
because it can't work
and they didn't know why.
Those clowns went to
Ehud Baraik and said:
Listen, Ehud, it won't work.
it won't work.
Don't deploy it, it doesn't work.
So he said: Relax, folks.
What doesn't work?
Did the missile launch?
Did it make a pretty white trail?
it already works.
Did it go "boom?"
it works fine.
Gould Shefer have been right?
Depends who you ask.
Fabricating test results
doesn't sound so outlandish.
But did Barak and Rafael
really do that?
I find it hard to believe.
In any case, Barak barreled ahead.
He pressured Gantz
to contact the Americans again,
and to reach out for the bucks
this time.
Once the first missile intercepts a rocket,
it's no longer a dream, it's a capability,
and you realize that now,
not without setbacks, it's going to work,
no doubt about it.
General Gantz came back
for another meeting at the Pentagon
and said: Now that we know
that this is very effective,
we would like US support
for the Iron Dome system,
and that gave us the ammunition,
no pun intended,
to go further up to the leadership and take it
to the White House, to President Obama himself.
Once the American officials
were convinced,
all that was missing
was one person's signature,
that of President Barack Obama,
who was, not by chance, the only president
who knew Sderot's woes personally,
since back in 2008,
before he was elected president,
he visited us, that's right,
right here in Sderot.
There he is.
After Senator Obama
won the nomination,
he decided to do something very bold
and a bit risky, as a presidential candidate,
and that was to take
an international trip.
He decided to visit Sderot,
the main target of the rockets
that Hamas was firing from Gaza.
First we visited a family in their home
that had been destroyed by a rocket.
They were in the home at the time
it fell, some of them were wounded,
the home was completely gutted.
There he had a chance to speak with
a boy, Osher Tuito,
who had been wounded in a rocket attack
and had lost part of his leg.
The impact on Senator Obama
was very intense, very emotional.
At that moment he understood,
as a parent,
how terrifying it was to know that your
children were not even safe iq your own home.
This afternoon in Sderot,
the candidate's main press conference
is broadcast live in the US and Europe.
I said to him: Tell me, Mr. Obama,
what would happen if you were at home
at 11 p.m., your daughters are asleep,
you're watching TV, and suddenly,
in the middle of nowhere,
a shell lands on your daughters' room?
What would you do?
You krnow who fired the shell,
you know how far away he is,
you knew it all.
What would you do?
He told me in English:
I will kill them all.
I bring to Sderot an unshakeable
commitment to Israel's security.
The State of Israel faces determined
enemies who seek its destruction,
but it also has a friend and ally, the US, that
will always stand by the people of Israel.
I assume that that visit
influenced Obama's view
of Iron Dome.
There was a profound willingness to help, which
manifested as hundreds of millions of dollars.
The House of Representatives
in Washington
approved $205 million in aid tonight
for equipping Israel with four
Iron Dome batteries.
Once the Americans
gave their okay for aid,
the two first Iron Dome batteries
could be delivered to IDF soldiers,
so they could learn
to operate them.
This usually takes a long time,
but in Israel there's always a non-stop,
high-speed chain of defense-related events.
We may now report that Israel
is holding Hamas activist
Dirar Abu Sisi, who was abducted
from Ukraine last month.
According to the charges pressed
against Dirar Abu Sisi today,
this man isn't just another innocent
manager of the power station in Gaza,
but a high-ranking engineer
in Hamas' arms industry.
He was wanted for questioning in Israel.
Israel wanted him.
It was very hard to go into Gaza
and get him out alive.
You can kill him in Gaza,
but getting him out of Gaza alive
is very hard.
Then he made his big mistake.
Under pressure from his wife,
who said:
"Let's go to Ukraine,"
her native country,
they went there and he was
much more accessible there.
They got to him there,
and to this day he's being held
in Israel.
What does Palestinian engineer Dirar Abu Sisi
really know and what is he hiding?
According to the Mossad,
a whole lot.
According to Abu Sisi, who's talking today
for the first time, nothing.
What's wrong with me? I'm just
an engineer for the electric company.
In court, Abu Sisi claimed he only
ran the Gazan power station
and didn't develop any rockets
for Hamas.
Israel wants to hang all its helplessness
against bombings from Gaza
on this man.
Under interrogation, Abu Sisi
confessed to the charges.
His attorneys claim that he was
coerced to confess.
Was he tricked?
In my terms he was tricked.
Abu Sisi's abduction
was a heavy blow
to Jabari's greatest
strategic asset,
the Hamas rocket industry.
Jabari obviously couldn't just
let it slide
and a serious reprisal
was inevitable.
It was only a question
of when and how.
Just then the new Chief of Staff
took office
and right away
he had to make a decision:
How to deal with
the tension in the South.
When I was appointed
Chief of Staff,
Iron Dome was ready
to be deployed
and put into action.
It wasn't completely operational
and the development process
was curtailed,
but we did it.
I was called in for discussion
along with the Air Force Commander,
Benny Gantz, who was Chief of Staff
for a short while,
and we knew the subject was
when to deploy Iron Dome.
The proper process for
deploying a system
requires testing it mechanically
and technically,
making sure the system can do
everything it's expected to do,
it's a fairly long process,
and only then can you say
the system is operational.
I remember Benny's expression,
he expected an honest answer.
You realize that the preparation phase
is over
and there's no more time for talk.
It's money time.
And here it comes,
after a year and three months
of training and briefings
and preparations,
the moment finally comes
and we split up, we take
half the battery down south.
Our mission is to deploy
in Be'er Sheva,
but at the same time, Maor's battery
is deployed in Ashkelon.
we were ready, we'd trained,
we were in the field and we knew the system.
we felt a need to implement
everything we'd trained to do.
You have two batteries deployed
in Be'er Sheva and in Ashkelon,
protecting those regions.
We're all on edge and nobody got
more than a minute's sleep
because you can't sleep
before a night like this.
But we feel good and ready.
And we wait. And I, as a young,
motivated battery commander,
hope I have the first interception.
Naturally, it was important to me
to be in charge of the first interception
and take this thing
from concept to reality.
There was a healthy competition
within the battalion.
e were the second battery,
we were the second to deploy,
and we wanted to be
the first to intercept.
It was a few weeks
before my wedding
and I decided to take advantage of
those weeks to take leave without pay
because I hadn't really prepared.
We to marry in springtime,
so we chose April 7th.
We wanted to marry in springtime,
so we chose April 7th.
April 7th, 2011 was a historic day,
not only for Hila.
After Abu Sisi's abduction,
the IDF realized that Jabari's response
wouldn't be long in coming,
but they chose not to frighten
us civilians just before Passover.
Go
It was the Passover holidays
and we thought:
What would Daniel do?
He had free vacation time
so I thought to myself, I thought,
why doesn't he go and visit Grandma?
Grandma was a widow
and she was by herself in the kibbutz
and he was very attached to grandma
and we thought, he's gonna make her happy.
It was a safe time,
there was no risks or anything,
so Grandma agreed,
and I took him by car,
drove him to Kibbutz Ruchama.
It's the first time Daniel actually
ever went anywhere by himself
to stay over.
So I remember just leaving,
and I said goodbye to Daniel,
and he came running to me
just before I got in the car
and I said to him:
Daniel, I'll see you in a few days.
Why are you so...? You know...
He gave me a hug,
gave me a kiss,
he said: I just want to say goodbye.
That morning a very close family friend,
the driver for Sha'ar HaNegev,
the school bus driver,
said to him: Listen, I'm doing
my route later,
come join me.
Just after 3:00, near Oz River,
this school bus is struck directly
by an anti-tank missile
in its rear section.
There's a mortar attack
on the region.
Just a few minutes earlier,
the bus let off
dozens of local students,
thus saving their lives.
But the driver, who was mildly wounded,
along with a 16-year-old boy,
remained on the bus.
The boy was rushed by helicopter
to Soroka Hospital.
4 o'clock in the afternoon
we got a call from my mother-in-law.
Something happened to Daniel,
to his bus.
we tried to call
Daniel's cellphone.
He didn't answer.
So I said to her: Let's go,
I think we should go see
what's going on.
So we started driving
and after 10 or 15
minutes on the road,
the hospital called to say
that the situation wasn't good.
A doctor who saw him said he came in
in very serious condition.
They'd managed to stabilize his condition
and he was now undergoing head surgery.
The IDF's response to
the strike on a civilian school bus
was speedy and deadly.
Gantz ordered the IDF to bomb Gaza.
On my wedding day, April 7th,
an incident is brewing.
Then my phone starts ringing,
including the guys from my unit
who really wanted to be with me,
but they were preparing
and probably wouldn't make it.
In the bombings in Gaza, three Palestinians
were killed and 14 wounded,
including children.
Jabari didn't wait,
and that very night he retaliated
by firing rockets at Ashkelon.
Red alert! Red alert!
Red alert! Red alert!
Targets appear on the screen
for the first time.
For the first time
I see an actual target,
a radar spotting,
not just a simulation.
I order the crew to fire at the target,
on the screen we see it head out,
and the first thing I do is call
the launch site commander
to make sure the missile fired,
and the launch site commander
shouts that the missile fired.
Everyone cheers,
it's a successful interception
and it's an amazing feeling,
we made history.
On the other hand, you realize
that the next target is soon to come
and you have to be ready for it.
go to the battery
where I meet Maor, who's coming
toward me with a big smile.
we both realize this is
a slice of history.
Because an actual interception of a missile
fired from outside of the country
had never actually happened,
only in books and tests,
but not in reality.
And that's dramatic.
It's an event.
It's like when Armstrong
set foot on the moon and said:
"One small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind."
It was only the interception
of a Qassam or Grad missile,
but it was a giant leap
for Israeli security.
During the wedding, a friend
ran to me excitedly
to tell me Iron Dome
scored its first interception.
we looked for a TV where we could see
if the interception was filmed.
The guests couldn't quite understand
why the bride was dropping everything
to watch the news.
Everyone there congratulated me,
for both the wedding
and the interception.
Iron Dome ulfflderwent its first
and successful baptism of fire today.
We're proud to be the first
to carry out this important mission
and we feel prepared for it.
I have full trust in our soldiers
and what we went through this week
was gratifying,
but we realize it's just the beginning
and we have a lot of work ahead.
For four days Tamar and Yitzhak,
16-year-old Daniel's parents,
have been hoping for a miracle.
May all Jews pray for my son,
Rafael Daniel Ariel, son of Tamar.
Anyone who can pray for him,
pray strong,
and with faith.
Faith. Please.
When I used to go out of the room,
his signals would go down on the monitor.
I didn't know, my husband told me this.
When I'd come back, he'd go up,
his signals would go up.
So we knew, you know? He was there
with us, but he wasn't totally...
His...
He could feel us there.
Then he gradually
grew weaker and weaker.
And we were both there when..
e saw it when...
his soul left him. Just like that.
I saw it.
He was 16.
He'll always stay 16.
And you see people
and everyone's happy,
and...
we have a hole.
And among the rounds of battle of 2011,
a ray of light suddenly shines out.
A deal is made.
I'm Gilad, son of Noam and Aviva Shalit,
brother of Hadas and Yoel,
I live in Mitzpe Hila..
After five years in captivity,
abducted soldier Gilad Shalit
finally comes home.
We're landing in seven minutes,
bringing Gilad home.
Welcome.
Gilad, well done. Be strong.
Come to Mama.
Cheers were heard in Gaza, too.
We released over 1,000
Palestinian prisoners
including Yahya Sinwar,
future Hamas leader
and major threat to Israel.
Jabari was responsible
for Gilad Shalit
and he was responsible for
negotiations with Israel.
Everyone saw Jabari as a hero
because he got Israel
to release 20 "big fish."
The release of prisoners
is more important than anything else
among Palestinians.
We're talking about
over 800,000 instances
of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
It touches every Palestinian family.
Although it was proven that we could
do business with Jabari,
once Gilad Shalit was released,
he had no bargaining chips left.
Jabari was no longer safe.
He was living on borrowed time.
Last night's disruption in the south
marks another escalation.
Two Grad missiles were fired
at Ashkelon and Kiryat Gat.
Parents are concerned about
another summer of war in the region.
Everyone hoped that after
such a deal we could move on
toward a ceasefire,
but the opposite happened.
The IDF attacked and killed terrorists,
some of whom were released
in the Shalit deal and returned to Hamas ranks.
The lockdown remained in place
and fear returned to the lives
of the citizens of the South
with just one small difference: Iron Dome.
In Ashdod, two people were mildly wounded
as they ran for shelter
but all in all, in the big cities,
the Iron Dome has provided
perfect defense, intercepting
about 30 Grad missiles.
However, many residents of
the western Negev remain in danger.
At that point I was pregnant
and I found myself
right in the midst
of producing as many batteries
as fast as possible.
There was a round
about every two months
and our goal was to have
one more battery each time.
e started with three,
the third came soon after,
and the target date was ASAP,
before the school year began.
The fourth was ASAP,
before Passover.
Rockets were also fired at settlements
that weren't usually fired at before
and Iron Dome batteries,
which could only defend a small area,
were moved from place to place.
A small country
with not enough domes.
e joked that the Dome
had a new feature,
it was deployed wherever
the mayor shouted loudest.
Everyone wanted the Dome,
Ashkelon wanted the Dome,
Rehovot wanted the Dome
and Be'er Sheva wanted the Dome.
Nobody knows how well tour batteries
can protect us
from a bombardment of rockets,
but Iron Dome's real test
was fast approaching.
We know the next round is coming
but we don't know when,
so our strategy is to
achieve longer intervals
between the bigger
confrontations in Gaza
and if a confrontation is inevitable,
we want to make the opening move,
which we can cut as short as we want.
Then came November 2012.
Hamas fired rockets at Israel again.
But despite the rocket fire
on the South,
Barak and Netanyahu found time
for a well-covered jaunt
to the other end of the country,
the Syrian border in the Golan Heights.
They didn't seem to care about
all the missile fire in the South.
Was it because we could
rely on Iron Dome?
We've seen a sharp increase
in both the range and number
of rocket attacks on Israel.
As you can see here,
Iron Dome batteries
are deployed in Ashkelon,
Ashdod and Beersheva.
The Northern Command
is doing a fine job here.
We must be as alert and prepared here
as in other regions.
The Voice of Israel from Jerusalem,
and this is Zvi Sarton with the news.
Minister Benny Begin estimates that the latest
exchange of fire in the South is behind us.
As he left the Forum of Nine discussion,
Begin told the Voice of Israel
that the government must act
with restraint and discretion.
At 3:45 in the afternoon,
Hamas Chief of Staff Ahmed Jabari
was killed in central Gaza
when a missile struck
his car directly.
Operation Pillar of Defense
is off and running.
Ahmed al-Jabari had foreseen this day
for a long time and prepared for it.
The Zionist foe will pay, with God's help,
for this cowardly murder.
The Palestinians: Israel has declared war.
We will respond full-force.
It came as a surprise.
Israel misled Hamas,
they didn't think Israel
would go to war.
We pulled a few devious tricks
to create a situation
where we could take him
by surprise.
We struck only one man,
the Chief of Staff of Hamas.
Netanyahu and Barak's trick
may have worked.
Jabari felt safe driving his car
that day,
exposed to Israeli aircraft.
Our determined foe was buried
and his new successors' response
came immediately.
There it is! Yikes!
When they killed
the high-ranking Hamas agent,
the war began that very night.
I was worried.
You don't know
where it'll come from.
My brother always said:
"It won't happen, not here
in Kiryat Malachi,
"what are the chances?
They've never even come close."
Itzik was a father figure to me.
Like a father. My dad was at work
most of the time.
He came to parent-teacher meetings,
annual field trips,
he gave me money when it needed it
to go out and take the burden
off my parents.
Sirens sounded all day,
but in Kiryat Malachi there are
no shelters and nowhere to hide.
In the attack on Kiryat Malachi,
we see
that one of the batteries
is faulty.
Missiles aren't intercepted
and we realize something's wrong.
The first siren sounded
at about 8 a.m.
We heard the rocket fall,
we even saw it outside our house.
We saw the little dome of fire.
minutes later, another siren.
My mom didn't want to go out.
She said: Do I have to keep
going in and out?
I just grabbed her
and dragged her outside.
The "boom" came two seconds later.
Blood, a lot of blood.
I see a neighbor leave his house
with his arm nearly blown off,
blood spurting, a 13-year-old boy
I didn't know how my brother was.
He stayed home.
He hadn't really woken up,
he didn't realize what was happening.
it was a matter of seconds.
A Grad missile struck the living room
on the fourth floor
of a four-story building
at the edge of town.
The damage was tremendous.
No one in the apartment
stood a chance of surviving.
They saw it as a technical mishap
that caused Iron Dome
not to spot the missile
and nobody told us
what the problem was.
What could I do?
It's destiny.
Itzik Amsalem, 27,
Aaron Smadga, 50,
and Mira Scharf,
a Chabad emissary to India,
are the first casualties
of Operation Pillar of Defense.
It's a very upsetting feeling.
And the events are so intense
that you soon move on
to the next one.
You don't have time
to think about it.
School has been cancelled
throughout the South.
Citizens are required to
stay near shelters
as Hamas threatens to strike
the Israeli hinterland,
Tel Aviv and further north.
After three people were killed in Kiryat
Malachi without Iron Dome's protection,
one big question remained.
What will happen if Hamas' rockets
actually reach Tel Aviv?
What will we do if they put a stop
to the city that never stops?
When missiles actually land
in populated areas,
in Tel Aviv and other major cities,
in centers of population
and important locations,
such as the airport,
it could cause great upheaval.
It was a tough decision.
Whose blood is redder?
Should one of the four batteries
be moved to central Israel,
abandoning the residents of the South
for the sake of Tel Aviv,
or is there another,
out-of-the-box option?
A meeting was scheduled
for a Thursday night,
with the Air. Force bureau chief
to decide
whether to go for
a fifth battery.
We attended that meeting.
The first red alert in Tel Aviv
took place during the meeting.
It seems to be a barrage
of two missiles.
Neither of them landed
in the Tel Aviv area.
Sirens were sounded
throughout the Tel Aviv area.
t's 5:00
and I remember going to
the war room
as the first rocket
struck Rishon LeTsiyon.
There was no discussion.
It was clear that a fifth battery was needed
to protect Tel Aviv.
we were instructed to be prepared,
on Sunday morning, as I recall.
Okay, it's a new situation,
we need a new battery
for the Tel Aviv area
with ammunition and operators,
so I tour the area,
each site, on foot,
the first launcher will be here,
the second will be here,
an exposed site will be here,
and as I went I realized
how much work had to be done.
The integration of a battery
should take a few weeks
because things must be done
in order,
first Rafael comes
and installs the carriage,
then Alta comes and installs
the radar,
then the Air Force and so on.
At the same time, we recruit manpower.
There is no battery.
Then at 6 p.m. on Thursday,
we start to call around the battalion
for soldiers, technicians, administrators.
In order to expedite things,
all the entities were together at the battery,
each worked on its own component,
Alta, Rafael, the Air Force,
Air Force communications,
they were all on site,
enabling us to get the battery
up and running
in almost zero time.
Toward 9 a.m. soldiers start
to arrive in their own cars,
and reserves soldiers,
and toward 11 a.m. you realize, wow,
there may be even more people
than we wanted.
I remember arriving at the hill
in the Tel Aviv area.
There's an operation battery
prepared to defend the Tel Aviv area.
24 hours earlier there was nothing.
That's Israel and its ability
to improvise,
while at war, the Air Force,
the defense industries,
the Ministry of Defense.
Search, find and install components
and build batteries on the fly.
The battery was up and running,
the Air Force Commander came to
the site, looked at me,
saw my belly and said:
What are you doing here?
I said: I don't know,
I hear if you give birth on site
you get one free.
Eventually I had to
go home and rest.
After about 20 minutes
sitting on th’e .couch, watching TV,
20 or 30 minutes,
I see on the screen:
Red alert in Tel Aviv.
We're hearing about red alerts
in Tel Aviv,
in Holon, in Ashdod,
in three different locations.
Here you see the Ayalon Freeway,
deserted,
the cars stopped at the roadside.
We're prepared to fire.
We're at the screens and two rockets
are fired at the Tel Aviv area
and it's an event that we..
it's happening
Rockets are approaching,
the interceptors are fired and
start to fly toward the targets.
Two interceptors for each rocket.
It's the first time,
no option for mistakes.
And the whole crew is silent.
On our screens, we see the rocket
and the interceptor approaching.
Then they collide.
It was like landing on the moon.
Both targets were destroyed
in the air.
The fifth Iron Dome battery,
which was deployed only today
in the Tel Aviv area
and became operational
less than an hour ago,
scored its first successful
interception.
This interception is now taking place
above the Tel Aviv area.
The first interception,
I phone everyone
and start yelling like a madwoman.
My husband came downstairs...
"What's going on?
"I was sure you were giving birth.
"What are you shouting about?"
We were thrilled.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
not er one.
At the end of the fifth day
of the operation,
it can be declared that Iron Dome
is probably the hero of the war.
Over 300 successful interceptions
of some 900 rockets
fired into Israeli territory
have been chalked up by
the aerial defense system.
Beautiful!
here they come.
Partush!
So many
here they come.
See how many!
Whoa, whoa...!
Check this out!
Partush, check this out!
In the middle of the operation,
I go to the IDF headquarters,
I get a call from Gadi Eizenkot,
then Deputy Chief of Staff, and he says:
Didi, I need more missiles.
I said: You didn't pay for them.
How do you expect me
to make you more missiles?
Come up with some money.
Do a crash program,
as we say in the army.
We did our best,
the operation was over before
we used up our inventory,
but it was immediately clear
that there was no more room for play.
Besides a few rockets
that weren't intercepted
and caused great damage
and dozens of casualties,
again today we see the capabilities
of the Iron Dome batteries.
What can I tell you?
Iron Dome was a huge success.
The IDF Spokesman reported
90-percent success
in interceptions in
Operation Pillar of Defense
and the heroes who developed
the system earned national recognition.
One day I get a call
from the Rafael management:
"You've been awarded
the Israel Defense Prize.
I worked my whole life
for that prize.
The State of Israel thanks the Iron Dome
development team.
This evening the President awarded them
the Israel Defense Prize.
You have this dramatic,
impressive capability,
and with all the pain
of the civilian fatalities,
and the soldiers who were
wounded by steep-trajectory fire,
it's so different than
it could've been
without the system
that you can't say anything
that would detract from the power
it's given Israel.
Iron Dome is a unique creation.
It was clear to everyone involved
that if it was a success, its creators
would win the Israel Defense Prize.
The prize is actually awarded
to just a few chosen people,
but the thing itself is the work
of thousands of people
without whom it wouldn't work.
I wasn't the only winner.
There were all the industries
and the Air Force
and the Defense Ministry.
We didn't do it for the prize,
we did it for Israel's security.
It raised the people's morale.
On the streets you see
proud, happy, smiling people.
Once I received the Israel Defense Prize
at the President's Residence,
I felt I'd fully realized
my engineering abilities
and I had no more challeng
I can retire now.
I'll probably never have
another challenge
like Iron Dome.
But Moti Shefer, the missile scientist,
refused to be convinced.
He continued to claim
that it was a hoax
and that Iron Dome
is one big piece of fake news.
People see the missiles
and you say it's all a big hoax?
Yes.
What happens is,
because of the conceptual flaws
in the design,
Iron Dome can't
collide with its targets,
so it doesn't intercept
a single target.
Iron Dome goes up,
then comes down, down, down,
does something at low speed,
then explodes.
It doesn't strike any target.
The Israelis were led to believe that every
aerial explosion is a successful interception.
You're watching a live launch
of Iron Dome
at one of the rockets.
The Tamir missile is now heading for
the rocket and we'll soon see if it's a hit.
Yes, you're seeing the interception
live on TV,
it destroyed the rocket.
They tell you it was
a successful interception
when what happened was,
the Dome destroyed itself.
The emperor is naked?
-Listen...
And you're the only one who sees it?
-That's right, sad to say.
Iron Dome made lovely
puffs of smoke in the sky,
they fell onto houses and cars
and trees, you name it,
and...
all 70 million shekels paid in damages
after Operation Pillar of Defense,
were for damage made by
Iron Dome.
One fact is known,
when the rockets land they aren't whole,
they're in pieces,
so something does happen in the air.
It intercepts. It collides and blows up
the rocket in the air.
Iron Dome works
100 percent of the time,
don't listen to what people say.
It's electronics, not some
moody person.
It works perfectly.
Since Iron Dome
came into our lives,
it's intercepted thousands of rockets,
saved many, many lives
and become Israel's
most successful brand name.
We finally have our own superhero,
one you can photograph
as it flies,
post on the social media
and get "likes."
we all fell in love with Iron Dome,
bless its soul.
Even the kids.
Hello, kids. I'm Missile Man.
That's right, from Iron Dome.
I protect everyone in Israel
when someone from Gaza
tries to send missiles to hurt us.
Look,
i'm flying toward an enemy missile
and I'm going to collide with it
so it doesn't hurt you.
Stay down.
In a single day,
the red alert was sounded
twice in Sderot
and the Gaza periphery,
sending the citizens back
to this impossible situation.
Even now in 2020
rockets are still flying toward Sderot
and people- are still flying
to the bomb shelters
so how has life changed since we got
the defense system we all love so much?
We aren't happy with Iron Dome.
We want a different solution,
one that will allow us to live
in peace, without red alerts,
because when a Sderot resident
hears even a false alarm
it makes him...
panic.
That's all, that's the last one!
One of this town's
biggest problems,
besides the casualties
and fatalities,
are the trauma victims.
i'm a trauma victim.
And when I say "trauma victims"
I mean a whole generation
of children
who were three or four in 2001
and are now 18.
Their childhood was stolen from them.
Look at that.
Whoa... Are you filming
Sure.
Beautiful.
That's Iron Dome kicking butt.
It's like Independence Day.
Iron Dome is a device,
not a policy.
Iron Dome addressed a need,
but it isn't a policy.
Make no mistake.
In order to solve the problem
with Gaza, we need a policy.
Either use all our might
in a military operation
and uproot the problem, or strive
for peace with all our might.
But not in-between.
And in Gaza?
What's happening in Gaza?
Hamas is still in power,
trying out new war weapons,
the IDF still attacks and the lockdown
is still a lockdown.
The situation in Gaza is bad,
inhumane,
it can only blow up,
and it affects me especially
as a man from the Gaza Strip.
Much of my family is there
and I worry about them.
Whenever Hamas feels
public pressure,
it chooses to fight Israel
rather than confront the people.
It's the people who lose out.
The Palestinian people loses out.
The story of Iron Dome
is a patchwork blanket, patch upon patch,
one person and another,
woven together,
many people who have all
impacted our security.
Maybe one day the great respite
will come, rockets will cease to fly,
and Iron Dome will grow old, like a page
of history where a moral may be hiding.
Or maybe it's the opposite,
what began in Sderot
and reached all of Israel
is only the promo, the "coming soon,"
of what will happen the world over.
Until then, the power of life is stronger
than anything and we must carry on.
Even Ruthie Zehavi,
who lost her son Afik
to the first deadly rocket.
About three years after Afik
was killed, I met Ofer,
now my dear husband.
we have four children,
our wonderful Shai-Li, Nevo,
Tamir and Dor.
They know they have a brother
named Afik.
The little ones, less,
but the older ones know.
It's selfish to have children
after a tragedy.
It's selfish to bring them
into a life like this, but...
without them, what are we?
What am I?
They are my life.
May the heavens bless you
and it seemed like nobody cared.
Imagine a town of over 20,000
inhabitants,
in the middle of nowhere,
and a shell lands without warning.
Red alert! Red alert!
His eyes were closed
but I saw him.
The axe fell.
My life is divided into
"before" and "after."
After endless debates
over whether the defense system
would be the Iron Dome or the laser,
Iron Dome was chosen.
They finally signed a contract.
Iron Dome had fund
Israel will be safe from all
types of missile fire,
from Qassams to Shihabs.
Meanwhile, Hamas took over
the Gaza Strip
and Ahmed Jabari became
Chief of Staff of the State of Hamas.
Hamas is free to do
as it pleases
n the Gaza Strip.
The sky used to belong to the birds,
but in 2008 lots of rockets
filled the sky
and we were constantly afraid
they'd land on us.
And what did we want?
A smart missile
that would chase a stupid rocket
and hit it while still airborne.
Is that asking too much?
The Iron Dome project
was finally underway.
A group of people whose only connection
was their mission.
Hundreds of civilians and soldiers
of all ages and backgrounds
pitched in to meet the challenge.
How do you make a missile fired
from the ground intercept an airborne rocket,
all within 15 seconds?
When I joined the project,
I was very worried.
I have to meet a schedule
with a simply absurd budget
from the Defense Ministry.
At first it seemed like
an impossible mission.
I meet with all the team managers,
22 team managers,
and at the very beginning I say:
We need to provide a solution
for the people of Sderot,
a solution for their problem,
and we have 3 years to do it.
The people there are very dedicated.
I know most of them
because I raised them.
Most of the folks who worked on Iron Dome,
I was their boss,
and I'd brought many of them
to my department at Rafael.
wice was apartment ea
When they officially got the job,
after the Nagel Committee, it was 2007.
They promised to finish by 2010,
an unprecedented timetable.
It was impossible.
What are th rep yearns *.foj>a task like that?
Nbthingj.
They worked on the'Arrow' rni’ssile
for 15 years, but who had time to'.complain
when in Gaza they were rushing into
the next war?
Courageous Jihad warriors,
you're sacrificing your lives
for God's sake...
Until the rats (Israelis)
go back to their holes.
Ahmed Jabari, Hamas Chief of Staff,
Israel's number-one wanted man,
the man who held abducted soldier
Gilad Shalit, didn't stop threatening.
Today, Gaza,
tomorrow, God willing, Jerusalem.
Tomorrow, the West Bank.
Tomorrow, Haifa, Jaffa and Tel Aviv.
Until the homeland, all of Palestine,
is liberated.
Jabari looked for someone to help him
manufacture sophisticated rockets
that would reach more distant
targets within Israel,
and found Dirar Abu Sisi.
Dirar Abu Sisi is an engineer who studied
electrical engineering in Ukraine.
He submitted his doctorate paper
to the Ukrainian professor
who was in charge of developing
the Russian Scud rocket.
I'm at the Gaza power station
and I'm in charge of running the station.
e haven't received
all the transformers we need...
Missile engineer or local
power station manager?
In Israel's opinion
there was no question at all.
Dirar Abu Sisi wasn't just an engineer,
not even not just a missile engineer.
He's a strategic figure in the history
of the military arm of Hamas.
He did two important things.
One, he helped them increase the range
of their missiles to 40 kilometers,
deep into Israeli territory,
and two, he improved
the production capabilities
of the rocket factories in Gaza.
Jabari's way of testing
Abu Sisi's new developments
was to fire them at Sderot,
and we, of course, responded.
In November 2008,
the Gaza border heats up again.
Things gradually went downhill.
"Sprinkles," to use a word
that annoys a lot of people,
because I don't think it's a sprinkle
either. It's a rocket.
The sprinkles were continual
but a process of escalation began.
They fired about 400 missiles, a number
that was considered totally unacceptable,
so it was decided to launch
Operation Cast Lead.
A few hours ago, IDF troops
invaded the Gaza Strip
as part of Operation Cast Lead.
e aren't happy about attacking,
but we aren't afraid, either.
A time for peace and a time for combat,
and now's the time for combat.
The dreidels of Hanukkah 2008
gave the operation its name, Cast Lead.
The operation began
with heavy bombardments
and plenty of Palestinian casualties
and fatalities on the very first day.
Dozens of Hamas policemen were hit.
Among the fatalities, police commander
Taufik Jabbar.
There is no god but Allah.
The war began with the bombing
of a parade of police
from Hamas' internal security system,
which killed many people.
That's why it was called
a murderous war.
e had a set of written goals,
to dramatically reduce
the amount of rocket fire from Gaza,
to create an arrangement that would
facilitate a long-term respite,
and to make normal life
in the South possible.
The Gazans were very surprised
by Israel's actions.
t was the first time
Israel gave up the idea
of not harming civilians.
Israel also stated explicitly:
We're striking terrorists,
and if there are terrorists
among the civilian population,
we'll strike them.
Jabari hides, of course,
and orders his troops
to fire as much as possible.
Abu Sisi's rocK^tS.reached
further into Israel,
enabling Jaban/for the first time,
xto strike the bigwcjities,
where Housing is’dense and people
aren't prepared to proteoKthemselves.
1:30 p.m., the horrifying scenario
the people of Netivot feared
reaches here as well.
One rocket scores a direct hit
on an apartment house.
Suddenly I hear a boom
and see black smoke.
This is how the morning looks in Be'er Sheva.
Sirens repeatedly warned of
Grad rocket fire on the city
and citizens who don't have secure rooms
in their homes
had to run to bomb shelters
each time.
There's been a lot of talk
in the past week
of the possibility of Katyusha fire
on Be'er Sheva, capital of the Negev,
just within range,
40 kilometers away, more or less.
Hamas is definitely trying to show
that it's able to fire
and able to hit its targets.
We'd never experienced it
in Ashdod.
e heard it on the news,
in the Gaza periphery, in Sderot.
We'd never experienced it.
I didn't really take it seriously.
I didn't realize
what the sirens meant.
e were going to the gym
and my sister Irit called to say
she was outside.
I went out, she picked me up,
we went to the gym,
we did our aerobic workout
and left.
e were waiting at the light
when the siren sounded.
She got scared and said:
"Yalus, it's a siren."
I said: "Okay, just drive.
She turned right and stopped -
at the bus stop,
put on the handbrake, grabbed
her phone and got out of the car.
The first images just in
from the 122-millimeter
Katyusha attack on Ashdod.
Two people standing at the bus stop
try to take cover,
the rocket strikes very close by,
they both sustain wounds,
one severe and one fatal,
and three other people standing nearby
are mildly wounded.
e got to the hospital.
Irit arrived just a few seconds
before me.
I saw all the bloodstains
and realized that something
terrible had happened.
The four hours in ER
were like an eternity.
By then it was 2 a.m.
Two doctors, four nurses,
my mother and my aunt came in
and said: "We have something
to tell you."
I remember I plugged my ears
and said:
"I don't want to hear it."
"Please don't tell me,
I don't want to hear it."
"I know what you're going to say."
And she said: "Listen,
you have to be strong
and come say farewell
to Irit now."
I remember I didn't want to hear it,
I didn't want...
I didn't believe that was
what they had to say,
I didn't think that that day,
which was such a fun day,
would end that way
after simply going to the gym.
Wrapped in a prayer shawl
and accompanied by cries of grief,
Irit Sheetrit, victim of
the Qassam attack,
was laid to rest this afternoon.
At her fresh grave,
her husband Herzl Sheetrit
found it hard to part from the person
who was his whole world.
Irit, 39, left behind
a loving family and four children
who'll be going to sleep tonight
without a mother.
Mommy's darling
God, bless their memory.
May God have mercy on them,
forgive them and ease their way.
May God have mercy on them.
Praise God.
When combat was over,
we'd buried 13 fatalities
and in Gaza the Palestinians
mourned some 1,000 dead.
They literally found themselves
beneath the rubble.
Most of the fatalities in Gaza
were innocent civilians
who had nothing to do with the war.
All the factories in Gaza
were totally destroyed.
Small businesses
were also destroyed.
The businessmen in Gaza
went bankrupt.
Gaza's economy was ruined.
After a war we usually
stop and think:
What did we achieve?
How will we prevent the next war?
But here there was no time
for pondering.
The rockets kept drizzling in
after Operation Cast Lead,
elections were coming up,
Benjamin Netanyahu, a new-old
candidate, returned to the fray,
and on election day he promised that,
if elected,
he would do differently
and put an end to the rockets.
Netanyahu, how symbolic,
went south to Sderot.
The drizzle of Qassams
still continues,
and that symbolizes, sad to say,
the failure of Kadima's policy.
Nobody in Israel is as smart as you.
We're live on TV
with the 2009 elections.
In first place, according
to the Channel 10 News sampling,
the Kadima party with 30 mandates.
Next, Likud with 28 parliament members.
Uh-oh, look who's coming:
the next prime minister!
The Israeli nation has spoken its piece
clearly and plainly!
Bibi has lost tonight's elections,
he knows that,
but he's the only one who can
put a coalition together.
Bibi became Prime Minister
mainly thanks to Ehud Barak,
who only earned 13 mandated.
But, surprisingly, joined ferces with him
in order to remain Defense Minister.
The developers of Iron Dome
breathed a sigh of relief.
Who knows if a new defense minister
wouldn't have put a halt to their work?
The main task, which Rafael
updated us on from time to time,
was proving its operational capability
and our ability to build it.
The rule of thumb for insiders
dealing with research and development
is what we call:
"the rule of two out of three."
You plan something. Between the planning
stage and the implementation stage,
it will cost twice as much,
take twice as long,
and performance will be
half of what you expected,
and that was what worried me most.
Hanoch and his team
faced quite a challenge.
Time was short and it was very doubtful
that it was even possible
to build a missile that could hit
such small rockets.
Rocket scientist Moti Shefer
thought it was impossible.
Two days and 50 years ago,
I walked into Rafael, okay?
So for 50 years I've dealt with..
I also flayed a lot of violin, but...
that's my area of expertise, okay?
ere is no missi e in t e wor to ay
that can intercept missiles like those.
There is no missile in the world today
that can intercept missiles, period.
A lot of people there said:
"of course it can be done."
Personally, I thought it was totally
different from an air-to-air missile,
which strikes a huge airplane.
Here you have to hit a pipe as wide
as a Coca-Cola bottle, no bigger,
moving through the air
at tremendous speed,
which is essentially science fiction.
Until then, thousands of cheap rockets
had been fired from Gaza.
The missile that would
intercept them
couldn't be too expensive.
The Defense Ministry stipulated
that each Iron Dome missile
shouldn't cost more than $50,000.
For comparison's sake, each Arrow missile
costs over $1 million.
I call the people in and say: Listen,
we aren't going to make
the smartest missile in the world.
We're going to make
an average missile.
Don't try to make it the best,
make it simple and cheap.
One day I was at home,
I went up to the attic
and found an old model car
that my son used to play with,
with a remote control.
I saw some very interesting parts
that are also used in missiles.
I removed the parts,
brought them to Rafael
and had them lab-tested.
The missile has certain parts
which cost about...
$50 per unit.
The part in the car
cost about 80 cents.
As it turned out,
all the parts met regulations.
It's the first missile in the world
with parts from Toys R Us.
While the scientists dealt with science,
patents and remote controlled cars,
the big money had its say in Gaza.
Following the success of rocket attacks on
the Israeli hinterland in Operation Cast Lead,
the Iranians paid for Jabari
to reestablish his missile supply.
Jabari didn't stop at putting together
a fighting force.
He also started his famous
tunnel project at the Egyptian border
and the tunnels
that he and his men built
gave them access to
the special missiles from Iran.
The report states that an arms shipment
came by ship from Iran to Port Sudan
on the Red Sea coast.
The arms, apparently including
long-range rockets,
were transferred to a truck convoy
which headed north to Egypt.
The destination: The arms-smuggling
tunnels in southern Gaza.
Hamas managed to build many tunnels
between Gaza and Egypt
and managed to smuggle in a lot of goods
and a lot of advanced weapons and missiles.
They even smuggled in cars.
Jabari and Abu Sisi's rocket system
shifted up a gear.
Iranian rocket parts
came in via the tunnels
and Hamas used them to build
bigger, more deadly rockets
that could fulfill the dream
of reaching even Tel Aviv.
They worked on the missiles' range
so they'd reach as far as possible,
in order to make Israel
halt obmbat sooner,
and also to garner support
and power from the people.
The disturbing news of the possible
existence of long-range rockets
made Barak nervous,
so when Jabari asked for help
from his rich Iranian uncle,
Barak decided to ask for help
from our even richer uncle.
My thought was that the army
should set reasonable goals
in terms of installing batteries,
manpower
and timetables
because we weren't sure
when we'd need it even more.
And then we realized it was too big
and expensive a burden,
so we decided to turn to
the Americans.
Barak instructed our military attache
in Washington
to try to get the Americans to partner
with us on developing Iron Dome.
I'm in Washington
as our military attache
during the transition
from Bush to Obama
as the development projects
begin to progress
and we need the Americans'
cooperation
and they have their own
industrial interests,
pressure groups, capabilities
and agenda.
They're deployed...
We're insignificant to them.
They're deployed all over the world.
Gantz turned to the American leaders
and found a sympathetic ear
with Eric Lynn, a young Jewish lawyer
who was the President's advisor
on the Middle East at the Pentagon.
After General Gantz had said that the IDF
would love support by the US for this system,
I actually went back to my desk
and went through the old files
from the team that had worked
on the US-lsrael defense relationship
during the Bush administration
and I found a classified file.
The request for support
by the US for Iron Dome
was rejected
by the Bush administration Pentagon.
The Americans were
very, very skeptical
about our technological ability
to do what we were doing.
Actually, when you look at the system,
it makes sense that
people won't believe it works,
so the decision whether to invest
or not is a weighty one.
Since it still hadn't been proved
that Iron Dome works,
the Americans refused to partner
with the duck that might never learn to fly.
They asked for proof.
You can't force physics
or the engineers' work,
and these are gifted engineers,
and there were times when they
worked 24/7, weekends,
and you need patience
and constant pushing.
Ehud Barak realized that in order
to change the Americans' minds,
he had to show them
a successful test, and soon.
Under pressure from Barak, Hanoch
and his team, they sped up work on the .missile,
and after 18 months
of intensive work,
they'd come up with the Tamir,
an interceptor missile.
It wasn't just a tall,
handsome missile,
it had a super-smart (brain
that could home in on its target.
But compared to other missiles
it had a strange flaw.
it had a tail.
In recent years, low-smoke
engines were being made.
When you fire a missile, you don't want
people to see where it came from.
I thought the opposite.
I want an engine
that emits lots of smoke
so Israelis will see a missile
with a lot of smoke flying through the sky.
That's what I wanted.
Once the missile sprouted wings,
although the system
wasn't totally ready,
Rafael's development team headed south
to the Shdema test grounds
for a test that would determine
Iron Dome's fate.
Something called "Iron Dome"
comes to the base for testing,
we'd never heard of it until then,
and I understand
that the system is nearly ready
and I'm given a task: to run
the Iron Dome test.
Going to Shdema for testing,
especially the kind of testing
Iron Dome required,
where you have to fire a target
as well as an interceptor,
is an operation
that takes hundreds of people.
Bringing this whole gang
down to Shdema
costs a fortune.
We're in tremendous suspense,
which increases as the time to fire
the rocket and the interceptor approaches,
and we're praying the thing will work.
I had great faith in the system.
There was something compelling
about the team that developed it,
as well as their abilities.
It felt like it was going to work.
At the first test, in the South,
we launched a target, a rocket.
we waited for the radar to detect it,
then started the countdown
to fire the interceptor missile,
the Iron Dome.
We start the countdown,
five, four, three, two, one...
Nothing happens.
No missile.
I turned pale,
my blood pressure rose and I was
about to have a heart attack.
We try to fire the missile
and it doesn't work,
and naturally we were worried.
Maybe it's you,
maybe you did something wrong,
maybe you made a mistake.
It was decided
to do a second test.
The target took off,
the computer indicated that we could
launch our missile,
countdown, five, four, three,
two, one...
Same thing. Nothing happens.
Everyone looks at: each other,
anotlaier countdown,
same thing. Nothing happens.
At this point, if I was Japanese
and I had a sword,
i'd commit hara-kiri.
we were; very concerned
that we'd missed something,
done something wrong,
maybe our models didn't match
the actual physics.
we considered
sending everyone home.
we go home feeling awful.
We're lucky we didn't crash our cars.
Take the failed test,
add a recent scathing report
by the State Comptroller
and media that spares no criticism,
and you get one worried Hanoch Levin.
Very worried.
The home front is exposed. The State
Comptroller's report points ®u,t serious flaws
in the development process
of the anti-rocket system.
we could've had a solution in 2006
and certainly in 2009.
At the end of 2007,
after the trauma of Lebanon,
the IDF decided to arm itself
with Iron Dome,
but, so writes the Comptroller,
the system may not meet
the country's needs.
Everything was done late
and not thoroughly.
The operational solution
will be expensive
and may not be completed.
Was the whole effort a mistake?
Hanoch and his team ignored the report
that addressed the past.
They had to deal with the present
and figure out why the test
was unsuccessful, and fast.
Rafael's management said:
we want a few months
to look into the system and see.;.
what happened, check it in-depth,
let's form 15 different committees
and see if we can figure out what went wrong.
Three days later, I had a visit
from an engineer from the electronic
system, at 9:00 at night,
and he says: I have a feeling
I know what went wrong.
Israel, are you sure?
We're working here 24/7
trying to figure out
what went wrong.
He says: I think I know.
He explained the problem.
A cable near the launcher
was attached the wrong way,
with the plus to the minus
and the minus to the plus.
That was the problem, apparently.
I had a feeling that was the answer.
I was even called in to the CEO.
The CEO asked me: Are you sure?
I said yes.
If this doesn't work, I'll have to
drop out of this project.
That Sunday morning,
we were going to conduct a test
and I start speaking in short sentences,
at high volume,
very focused on my goal.
There was a different kind of
excitement in the air,
we knew we had to
get this baby out.
First we launch the target,
the target's in the air,
we start the countdown,
the announcer, a guy named Dori,
starts counting,
five, four, three...
One, zero.
It's a launch.
-The last interceptor is launched.
Smoke comes out of the launcher,
a missile blasts into the air.
People are already applauding.
I say: Folks, there hasn't even
been an interception yet.
There are a few seconds of panic.
Everyone's sitting there,
glued to the computer.
We want to see if we can
see t>he missile,
if we can see the rocket, if this thing
works as we expected.
The tension is unbearable.
You keep looking to see if the interceptor
is on the course you planned for it,
and as long as it's there
you hope they collide.
t's on track.
At a certain point we see
lots of fragments in the air,
one collided with the other
and blew it up.
The people in the room are ecstatic,
they're jumping and hugging each other.
We realize that almost two years' work
was a success.
When it struck,
it was really...
We all sprang from our seats
and hugged
it was...
an extraordinary feeling.
The Defense Minister watched the test today
and thanked the developers from Rafael
and, unusually, his predecessor
who made the decision, Amir Peretz.
Iron Dome will undoubtedly
become, in coming years,
part of the IDF's system for protecting
citizens of the homeland,
as well as military targets.
They achieved their goal.
Right on schedule
they conducted the test
that proved its viability,
the viability of something amazing.
I mean,
from a technological perspective,
two objects fly through the air
in a three-dimensional space
at speeds...
Anyway, it's a complex problem
and they solved it.
And that's an extraordinary achievement,
and I drank a toast and celebrated.
And while the military brass
clinked glasses,
Moti Shefer, from the outside,
claimed it was all a hoax
and that there wasn't even
a backwards cable.
Rafael made a missile
that can intercept missiles.
Barak came along at the end of 2010
and told the people at Rafael:
Let's go, folks, you said 2010,
it's 2010.
Come on,
give us Iron Dome.
We want to deploy it.
But it didn't work.
it didn't work.
They worked and worked
and it didn't work
because it can't work
and they didn't know why.
Those clowns went to
Ehud Baraik and said:
Listen, Ehud, it won't work.
it won't work.
Don't deploy it, it doesn't work.
So he said: Relax, folks.
What doesn't work?
Did the missile launch?
Did it make a pretty white trail?
it already works.
Did it go "boom?"
it works fine.
Gould Shefer have been right?
Depends who you ask.
Fabricating test results
doesn't sound so outlandish.
But did Barak and Rafael
really do that?
I find it hard to believe.
In any case, Barak barreled ahead.
He pressured Gantz
to contact the Americans again,
and to reach out for the bucks
this time.
Once the first missile intercepts a rocket,
it's no longer a dream, it's a capability,
and you realize that now,
not without setbacks, it's going to work,
no doubt about it.
General Gantz came back
for another meeting at the Pentagon
and said: Now that we know
that this is very effective,
we would like US support
for the Iron Dome system,
and that gave us the ammunition,
no pun intended,
to go further up to the leadership and take it
to the White House, to President Obama himself.
Once the American officials
were convinced,
all that was missing
was one person's signature,
that of President Barack Obama,
who was, not by chance, the only president
who knew Sderot's woes personally,
since back in 2008,
before he was elected president,
he visited us, that's right,
right here in Sderot.
There he is.
After Senator Obama
won the nomination,
he decided to do something very bold
and a bit risky, as a presidential candidate,
and that was to take
an international trip.
He decided to visit Sderot,
the main target of the rockets
that Hamas was firing from Gaza.
First we visited a family in their home
that had been destroyed by a rocket.
They were in the home at the time
it fell, some of them were wounded,
the home was completely gutted.
There he had a chance to speak with
a boy, Osher Tuito,
who had been wounded in a rocket attack
and had lost part of his leg.
The impact on Senator Obama
was very intense, very emotional.
At that moment he understood,
as a parent,
how terrifying it was to know that your
children were not even safe iq your own home.
This afternoon in Sderot,
the candidate's main press conference
is broadcast live in the US and Europe.
I said to him: Tell me, Mr. Obama,
what would happen if you were at home
at 11 p.m., your daughters are asleep,
you're watching TV, and suddenly,
in the middle of nowhere,
a shell lands on your daughters' room?
What would you do?
You krnow who fired the shell,
you know how far away he is,
you knew it all.
What would you do?
He told me in English:
I will kill them all.
I bring to Sderot an unshakeable
commitment to Israel's security.
The State of Israel faces determined
enemies who seek its destruction,
but it also has a friend and ally, the US, that
will always stand by the people of Israel.
I assume that that visit
influenced Obama's view
of Iron Dome.
There was a profound willingness to help, which
manifested as hundreds of millions of dollars.
The House of Representatives
in Washington
approved $205 million in aid tonight
for equipping Israel with four
Iron Dome batteries.
Once the Americans
gave their okay for aid,
the two first Iron Dome batteries
could be delivered to IDF soldiers,
so they could learn
to operate them.
This usually takes a long time,
but in Israel there's always a non-stop,
high-speed chain of defense-related events.
We may now report that Israel
is holding Hamas activist
Dirar Abu Sisi, who was abducted
from Ukraine last month.
According to the charges pressed
against Dirar Abu Sisi today,
this man isn't just another innocent
manager of the power station in Gaza,
but a high-ranking engineer
in Hamas' arms industry.
He was wanted for questioning in Israel.
Israel wanted him.
It was very hard to go into Gaza
and get him out alive.
You can kill him in Gaza,
but getting him out of Gaza alive
is very hard.
Then he made his big mistake.
Under pressure from his wife,
who said:
"Let's go to Ukraine,"
her native country,
they went there and he was
much more accessible there.
They got to him there,
and to this day he's being held
in Israel.
What does Palestinian engineer Dirar Abu Sisi
really know and what is he hiding?
According to the Mossad,
a whole lot.
According to Abu Sisi, who's talking today
for the first time, nothing.
What's wrong with me? I'm just
an engineer for the electric company.
In court, Abu Sisi claimed he only
ran the Gazan power station
and didn't develop any rockets
for Hamas.
Israel wants to hang all its helplessness
against bombings from Gaza
on this man.
Under interrogation, Abu Sisi
confessed to the charges.
His attorneys claim that he was
coerced to confess.
Was he tricked?
In my terms he was tricked.
Abu Sisi's abduction
was a heavy blow
to Jabari's greatest
strategic asset,
the Hamas rocket industry.
Jabari obviously couldn't just
let it slide
and a serious reprisal
was inevitable.
It was only a question
of when and how.
Just then the new Chief of Staff
took office
and right away
he had to make a decision:
How to deal with
the tension in the South.
When I was appointed
Chief of Staff,
Iron Dome was ready
to be deployed
and put into action.
It wasn't completely operational
and the development process
was curtailed,
but we did it.
I was called in for discussion
along with the Air Force Commander,
Benny Gantz, who was Chief of Staff
for a short while,
and we knew the subject was
when to deploy Iron Dome.
The proper process for
deploying a system
requires testing it mechanically
and technically,
making sure the system can do
everything it's expected to do,
it's a fairly long process,
and only then can you say
the system is operational.
I remember Benny's expression,
he expected an honest answer.
You realize that the preparation phase
is over
and there's no more time for talk.
It's money time.
And here it comes,
after a year and three months
of training and briefings
and preparations,
the moment finally comes
and we split up, we take
half the battery down south.
Our mission is to deploy
in Be'er Sheva,
but at the same time, Maor's battery
is deployed in Ashkelon.
we were ready, we'd trained,
we were in the field and we knew the system.
we felt a need to implement
everything we'd trained to do.
You have two batteries deployed
in Be'er Sheva and in Ashkelon,
protecting those regions.
We're all on edge and nobody got
more than a minute's sleep
because you can't sleep
before a night like this.
But we feel good and ready.
And we wait. And I, as a young,
motivated battery commander,
hope I have the first interception.
Naturally, it was important to me
to be in charge of the first interception
and take this thing
from concept to reality.
There was a healthy competition
within the battalion.
e were the second battery,
we were the second to deploy,
and we wanted to be
the first to intercept.
It was a few weeks
before my wedding
and I decided to take advantage of
those weeks to take leave without pay
because I hadn't really prepared.
We to marry in springtime,
so we chose April 7th.
We wanted to marry in springtime,
so we chose April 7th.
April 7th, 2011 was a historic day,
not only for Hila.
After Abu Sisi's abduction,
the IDF realized that Jabari's response
wouldn't be long in coming,
but they chose not to frighten
us civilians just before Passover.
Go
It was the Passover holidays
and we thought:
What would Daniel do?
He had free vacation time
so I thought to myself, I thought,
why doesn't he go and visit Grandma?
Grandma was a widow
and she was by herself in the kibbutz
and he was very attached to grandma
and we thought, he's gonna make her happy.
It was a safe time,
there was no risks or anything,
so Grandma agreed,
and I took him by car,
drove him to Kibbutz Ruchama.
It's the first time Daniel actually
ever went anywhere by himself
to stay over.
So I remember just leaving,
and I said goodbye to Daniel,
and he came running to me
just before I got in the car
and I said to him:
Daniel, I'll see you in a few days.
Why are you so...? You know...
He gave me a hug,
gave me a kiss,
he said: I just want to say goodbye.
That morning a very close family friend,
the driver for Sha'ar HaNegev,
the school bus driver,
said to him: Listen, I'm doing
my route later,
come join me.
Just after 3:00, near Oz River,
this school bus is struck directly
by an anti-tank missile
in its rear section.
There's a mortar attack
on the region.
Just a few minutes earlier,
the bus let off
dozens of local students,
thus saving their lives.
But the driver, who was mildly wounded,
along with a 16-year-old boy,
remained on the bus.
The boy was rushed by helicopter
to Soroka Hospital.
4 o'clock in the afternoon
we got a call from my mother-in-law.
Something happened to Daniel,
to his bus.
we tried to call
Daniel's cellphone.
He didn't answer.
So I said to her: Let's go,
I think we should go see
what's going on.
So we started driving
and after 10 or 15
minutes on the road,
the hospital called to say
that the situation wasn't good.
A doctor who saw him said he came in
in very serious condition.
They'd managed to stabilize his condition
and he was now undergoing head surgery.
The IDF's response to
the strike on a civilian school bus
was speedy and deadly.
Gantz ordered the IDF to bomb Gaza.
On my wedding day, April 7th,
an incident is brewing.
Then my phone starts ringing,
including the guys from my unit
who really wanted to be with me,
but they were preparing
and probably wouldn't make it.
In the bombings in Gaza, three Palestinians
were killed and 14 wounded,
including children.
Jabari didn't wait,
and that very night he retaliated
by firing rockets at Ashkelon.
Red alert! Red alert!
Red alert! Red alert!
Targets appear on the screen
for the first time.
For the first time
I see an actual target,
a radar spotting,
not just a simulation.
I order the crew to fire at the target,
on the screen we see it head out,
and the first thing I do is call
the launch site commander
to make sure the missile fired,
and the launch site commander
shouts that the missile fired.
Everyone cheers,
it's a successful interception
and it's an amazing feeling,
we made history.
On the other hand, you realize
that the next target is soon to come
and you have to be ready for it.
go to the battery
where I meet Maor, who's coming
toward me with a big smile.
we both realize this is
a slice of history.
Because an actual interception of a missile
fired from outside of the country
had never actually happened,
only in books and tests,
but not in reality.
And that's dramatic.
It's an event.
It's like when Armstrong
set foot on the moon and said:
"One small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind."
It was only the interception
of a Qassam or Grad missile,
but it was a giant leap
for Israeli security.
During the wedding, a friend
ran to me excitedly
to tell me Iron Dome
scored its first interception.
we looked for a TV where we could see
if the interception was filmed.
The guests couldn't quite understand
why the bride was dropping everything
to watch the news.
Everyone there congratulated me,
for both the wedding
and the interception.
Iron Dome ulfflderwent its first
and successful baptism of fire today.
We're proud to be the first
to carry out this important mission
and we feel prepared for it.
I have full trust in our soldiers
and what we went through this week
was gratifying,
but we realize it's just the beginning
and we have a lot of work ahead.
For four days Tamar and Yitzhak,
16-year-old Daniel's parents,
have been hoping for a miracle.
May all Jews pray for my son,
Rafael Daniel Ariel, son of Tamar.
Anyone who can pray for him,
pray strong,
and with faith.
Faith. Please.
When I used to go out of the room,
his signals would go down on the monitor.
I didn't know, my husband told me this.
When I'd come back, he'd go up,
his signals would go up.
So we knew, you know? He was there
with us, but he wasn't totally...
His...
He could feel us there.
Then he gradually
grew weaker and weaker.
And we were both there when..
e saw it when...
his soul left him. Just like that.
I saw it.
He was 16.
He'll always stay 16.
And you see people
and everyone's happy,
and...
we have a hole.
And among the rounds of battle of 2011,
a ray of light suddenly shines out.
A deal is made.
I'm Gilad, son of Noam and Aviva Shalit,
brother of Hadas and Yoel,
I live in Mitzpe Hila..
After five years in captivity,
abducted soldier Gilad Shalit
finally comes home.
We're landing in seven minutes,
bringing Gilad home.
Welcome.
Gilad, well done. Be strong.
Come to Mama.
Cheers were heard in Gaza, too.
We released over 1,000
Palestinian prisoners
including Yahya Sinwar,
future Hamas leader
and major threat to Israel.
Jabari was responsible
for Gilad Shalit
and he was responsible for
negotiations with Israel.
Everyone saw Jabari as a hero
because he got Israel
to release 20 "big fish."
The release of prisoners
is more important than anything else
among Palestinians.
We're talking about
over 800,000 instances
of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
It touches every Palestinian family.
Although it was proven that we could
do business with Jabari,
once Gilad Shalit was released,
he had no bargaining chips left.
Jabari was no longer safe.
He was living on borrowed time.
Last night's disruption in the south
marks another escalation.
Two Grad missiles were fired
at Ashkelon and Kiryat Gat.
Parents are concerned about
another summer of war in the region.
Everyone hoped that after
such a deal we could move on
toward a ceasefire,
but the opposite happened.
The IDF attacked and killed terrorists,
some of whom were released
in the Shalit deal and returned to Hamas ranks.
The lockdown remained in place
and fear returned to the lives
of the citizens of the South
with just one small difference: Iron Dome.
In Ashdod, two people were mildly wounded
as they ran for shelter
but all in all, in the big cities,
the Iron Dome has provided
perfect defense, intercepting
about 30 Grad missiles.
However, many residents of
the western Negev remain in danger.
At that point I was pregnant
and I found myself
right in the midst
of producing as many batteries
as fast as possible.
There was a round
about every two months
and our goal was to have
one more battery each time.
e started with three,
the third came soon after,
and the target date was ASAP,
before the school year began.
The fourth was ASAP,
before Passover.
Rockets were also fired at settlements
that weren't usually fired at before
and Iron Dome batteries,
which could only defend a small area,
were moved from place to place.
A small country
with not enough domes.
e joked that the Dome
had a new feature,
it was deployed wherever
the mayor shouted loudest.
Everyone wanted the Dome,
Ashkelon wanted the Dome,
Rehovot wanted the Dome
and Be'er Sheva wanted the Dome.
Nobody knows how well tour batteries
can protect us
from a bombardment of rockets,
but Iron Dome's real test
was fast approaching.
We know the next round is coming
but we don't know when,
so our strategy is to
achieve longer intervals
between the bigger
confrontations in Gaza
and if a confrontation is inevitable,
we want to make the opening move,
which we can cut as short as we want.
Then came November 2012.
Hamas fired rockets at Israel again.
But despite the rocket fire
on the South,
Barak and Netanyahu found time
for a well-covered jaunt
to the other end of the country,
the Syrian border in the Golan Heights.
They didn't seem to care about
all the missile fire in the South.
Was it because we could
rely on Iron Dome?
We've seen a sharp increase
in both the range and number
of rocket attacks on Israel.
As you can see here,
Iron Dome batteries
are deployed in Ashkelon,
Ashdod and Beersheva.
The Northern Command
is doing a fine job here.
We must be as alert and prepared here
as in other regions.
The Voice of Israel from Jerusalem,
and this is Zvi Sarton with the news.
Minister Benny Begin estimates that the latest
exchange of fire in the South is behind us.
As he left the Forum of Nine discussion,
Begin told the Voice of Israel
that the government must act
with restraint and discretion.
At 3:45 in the afternoon,
Hamas Chief of Staff Ahmed Jabari
was killed in central Gaza
when a missile struck
his car directly.
Operation Pillar of Defense
is off and running.
Ahmed al-Jabari had foreseen this day
for a long time and prepared for it.
The Zionist foe will pay, with God's help,
for this cowardly murder.
The Palestinians: Israel has declared war.
We will respond full-force.
It came as a surprise.
Israel misled Hamas,
they didn't think Israel
would go to war.
We pulled a few devious tricks
to create a situation
where we could take him
by surprise.
We struck only one man,
the Chief of Staff of Hamas.
Netanyahu and Barak's trick
may have worked.
Jabari felt safe driving his car
that day,
exposed to Israeli aircraft.
Our determined foe was buried
and his new successors' response
came immediately.
There it is! Yikes!
When they killed
the high-ranking Hamas agent,
the war began that very night.
I was worried.
You don't know
where it'll come from.
My brother always said:
"It won't happen, not here
in Kiryat Malachi,
"what are the chances?
They've never even come close."
Itzik was a father figure to me.
Like a father. My dad was at work
most of the time.
He came to parent-teacher meetings,
annual field trips,
he gave me money when it needed it
to go out and take the burden
off my parents.
Sirens sounded all day,
but in Kiryat Malachi there are
no shelters and nowhere to hide.
In the attack on Kiryat Malachi,
we see
that one of the batteries
is faulty.
Missiles aren't intercepted
and we realize something's wrong.
The first siren sounded
at about 8 a.m.
We heard the rocket fall,
we even saw it outside our house.
We saw the little dome of fire.
minutes later, another siren.
My mom didn't want to go out.
She said: Do I have to keep
going in and out?
I just grabbed her
and dragged her outside.
The "boom" came two seconds later.
Blood, a lot of blood.
I see a neighbor leave his house
with his arm nearly blown off,
blood spurting, a 13-year-old boy
I didn't know how my brother was.
He stayed home.
He hadn't really woken up,
he didn't realize what was happening.
it was a matter of seconds.
A Grad missile struck the living room
on the fourth floor
of a four-story building
at the edge of town.
The damage was tremendous.
No one in the apartment
stood a chance of surviving.
They saw it as a technical mishap
that caused Iron Dome
not to spot the missile
and nobody told us
what the problem was.
What could I do?
It's destiny.
Itzik Amsalem, 27,
Aaron Smadga, 50,
and Mira Scharf,
a Chabad emissary to India,
are the first casualties
of Operation Pillar of Defense.
It's a very upsetting feeling.
And the events are so intense
that you soon move on
to the next one.
You don't have time
to think about it.
School has been cancelled
throughout the South.
Citizens are required to
stay near shelters
as Hamas threatens to strike
the Israeli hinterland,
Tel Aviv and further north.
After three people were killed in Kiryat
Malachi without Iron Dome's protection,
one big question remained.
What will happen if Hamas' rockets
actually reach Tel Aviv?
What will we do if they put a stop
to the city that never stops?
When missiles actually land
in populated areas,
in Tel Aviv and other major cities,
in centers of population
and important locations,
such as the airport,
it could cause great upheaval.
It was a tough decision.
Whose blood is redder?
Should one of the four batteries
be moved to central Israel,
abandoning the residents of the South
for the sake of Tel Aviv,
or is there another,
out-of-the-box option?
A meeting was scheduled
for a Thursday night,
with the Air. Force bureau chief
to decide
whether to go for
a fifth battery.
We attended that meeting.
The first red alert in Tel Aviv
took place during the meeting.
It seems to be a barrage
of two missiles.
Neither of them landed
in the Tel Aviv area.
Sirens were sounded
throughout the Tel Aviv area.
t's 5:00
and I remember going to
the war room
as the first rocket
struck Rishon LeTsiyon.
There was no discussion.
It was clear that a fifth battery was needed
to protect Tel Aviv.
we were instructed to be prepared,
on Sunday morning, as I recall.
Okay, it's a new situation,
we need a new battery
for the Tel Aviv area
with ammunition and operators,
so I tour the area,
each site, on foot,
the first launcher will be here,
the second will be here,
an exposed site will be here,
and as I went I realized
how much work had to be done.
The integration of a battery
should take a few weeks
because things must be done
in order,
first Rafael comes
and installs the carriage,
then Alta comes and installs
the radar,
then the Air Force and so on.
At the same time, we recruit manpower.
There is no battery.
Then at 6 p.m. on Thursday,
we start to call around the battalion
for soldiers, technicians, administrators.
In order to expedite things,
all the entities were together at the battery,
each worked on its own component,
Alta, Rafael, the Air Force,
Air Force communications,
they were all on site,
enabling us to get the battery
up and running
in almost zero time.
Toward 9 a.m. soldiers start
to arrive in their own cars,
and reserves soldiers,
and toward 11 a.m. you realize, wow,
there may be even more people
than we wanted.
I remember arriving at the hill
in the Tel Aviv area.
There's an operation battery
prepared to defend the Tel Aviv area.
24 hours earlier there was nothing.
That's Israel and its ability
to improvise,
while at war, the Air Force,
the defense industries,
the Ministry of Defense.
Search, find and install components
and build batteries on the fly.
The battery was up and running,
the Air Force Commander came to
the site, looked at me,
saw my belly and said:
What are you doing here?
I said: I don't know,
I hear if you give birth on site
you get one free.
Eventually I had to
go home and rest.
After about 20 minutes
sitting on th’e .couch, watching TV,
20 or 30 minutes,
I see on the screen:
Red alert in Tel Aviv.
We're hearing about red alerts
in Tel Aviv,
in Holon, in Ashdod,
in three different locations.
Here you see the Ayalon Freeway,
deserted,
the cars stopped at the roadside.
We're prepared to fire.
We're at the screens and two rockets
are fired at the Tel Aviv area
and it's an event that we..
it's happening
Rockets are approaching,
the interceptors are fired and
start to fly toward the targets.
Two interceptors for each rocket.
It's the first time,
no option for mistakes.
And the whole crew is silent.
On our screens, we see the rocket
and the interceptor approaching.
Then they collide.
It was like landing on the moon.
Both targets were destroyed
in the air.
The fifth Iron Dome battery,
which was deployed only today
in the Tel Aviv area
and became operational
less than an hour ago,
scored its first successful
interception.
This interception is now taking place
above the Tel Aviv area.
The first interception,
I phone everyone
and start yelling like a madwoman.
My husband came downstairs...
"What's going on?
"I was sure you were giving birth.
"What are you shouting about?"
We were thrilled.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
not er one.
At the end of the fifth day
of the operation,
it can be declared that Iron Dome
is probably the hero of the war.
Over 300 successful interceptions
of some 900 rockets
fired into Israeli territory
have been chalked up by
the aerial defense system.
Beautiful!
here they come.
Partush!
So many
here they come.
See how many!
Whoa, whoa...!
Check this out!
Partush, check this out!
In the middle of the operation,
I go to the IDF headquarters,
I get a call from Gadi Eizenkot,
then Deputy Chief of Staff, and he says:
Didi, I need more missiles.
I said: You didn't pay for them.
How do you expect me
to make you more missiles?
Come up with some money.
Do a crash program,
as we say in the army.
We did our best,
the operation was over before
we used up our inventory,
but it was immediately clear
that there was no more room for play.
Besides a few rockets
that weren't intercepted
and caused great damage
and dozens of casualties,
again today we see the capabilities
of the Iron Dome batteries.
What can I tell you?
Iron Dome was a huge success.
The IDF Spokesman reported
90-percent success
in interceptions in
Operation Pillar of Defense
and the heroes who developed
the system earned national recognition.
One day I get a call
from the Rafael management:
"You've been awarded
the Israel Defense Prize.
I worked my whole life
for that prize.
The State of Israel thanks the Iron Dome
development team.
This evening the President awarded them
the Israel Defense Prize.
You have this dramatic,
impressive capability,
and with all the pain
of the civilian fatalities,
and the soldiers who were
wounded by steep-trajectory fire,
it's so different than
it could've been
without the system
that you can't say anything
that would detract from the power
it's given Israel.
Iron Dome is a unique creation.
It was clear to everyone involved
that if it was a success, its creators
would win the Israel Defense Prize.
The prize is actually awarded
to just a few chosen people,
but the thing itself is the work
of thousands of people
without whom it wouldn't work.
I wasn't the only winner.
There were all the industries
and the Air Force
and the Defense Ministry.
We didn't do it for the prize,
we did it for Israel's security.
It raised the people's morale.
On the streets you see
proud, happy, smiling people.
Once I received the Israel Defense Prize
at the President's Residence,
I felt I'd fully realized
my engineering abilities
and I had no more challeng
I can retire now.
I'll probably never have
another challenge
like Iron Dome.
But Moti Shefer, the missile scientist,
refused to be convinced.
He continued to claim
that it was a hoax
and that Iron Dome
is one big piece of fake news.
People see the missiles
and you say it's all a big hoax?
Yes.
What happens is,
because of the conceptual flaws
in the design,
Iron Dome can't
collide with its targets,
so it doesn't intercept
a single target.
Iron Dome goes up,
then comes down, down, down,
does something at low speed,
then explodes.
It doesn't strike any target.
The Israelis were led to believe that every
aerial explosion is a successful interception.
You're watching a live launch
of Iron Dome
at one of the rockets.
The Tamir missile is now heading for
the rocket and we'll soon see if it's a hit.
Yes, you're seeing the interception
live on TV,
it destroyed the rocket.
They tell you it was
a successful interception
when what happened was,
the Dome destroyed itself.
The emperor is naked?
-Listen...
And you're the only one who sees it?
-That's right, sad to say.
Iron Dome made lovely
puffs of smoke in the sky,
they fell onto houses and cars
and trees, you name it,
and...
all 70 million shekels paid in damages
after Operation Pillar of Defense,
were for damage made by
Iron Dome.
One fact is known,
when the rockets land they aren't whole,
they're in pieces,
so something does happen in the air.
It intercepts. It collides and blows up
the rocket in the air.
Iron Dome works
100 percent of the time,
don't listen to what people say.
It's electronics, not some
moody person.
It works perfectly.
Since Iron Dome
came into our lives,
it's intercepted thousands of rockets,
saved many, many lives
and become Israel's
most successful brand name.
We finally have our own superhero,
one you can photograph
as it flies,
post on the social media
and get "likes."
we all fell in love with Iron Dome,
bless its soul.
Even the kids.
Hello, kids. I'm Missile Man.
That's right, from Iron Dome.
I protect everyone in Israel
when someone from Gaza
tries to send missiles to hurt us.
Look,
i'm flying toward an enemy missile
and I'm going to collide with it
so it doesn't hurt you.
Stay down.
In a single day,
the red alert was sounded
twice in Sderot
and the Gaza periphery,
sending the citizens back
to this impossible situation.
Even now in 2020
rockets are still flying toward Sderot
and people- are still flying
to the bomb shelters
so how has life changed since we got
the defense system we all love so much?
We aren't happy with Iron Dome.
We want a different solution,
one that will allow us to live
in peace, without red alerts,
because when a Sderot resident
hears even a false alarm
it makes him...
panic.
That's all, that's the last one!
One of this town's
biggest problems,
besides the casualties
and fatalities,
are the trauma victims.
i'm a trauma victim.
And when I say "trauma victims"
I mean a whole generation
of children
who were three or four in 2001
and are now 18.
Their childhood was stolen from them.
Look at that.
Whoa... Are you filming
Sure.
Beautiful.
That's Iron Dome kicking butt.
It's like Independence Day.
Iron Dome is a device,
not a policy.
Iron Dome addressed a need,
but it isn't a policy.
Make no mistake.
In order to solve the problem
with Gaza, we need a policy.
Either use all our might
in a military operation
and uproot the problem, or strive
for peace with all our might.
But not in-between.
And in Gaza?
What's happening in Gaza?
Hamas is still in power,
trying out new war weapons,
the IDF still attacks and the lockdown
is still a lockdown.
The situation in Gaza is bad,
inhumane,
it can only blow up,
and it affects me especially
as a man from the Gaza Strip.
Much of my family is there
and I worry about them.
Whenever Hamas feels
public pressure,
it chooses to fight Israel
rather than confront the people.
It's the people who lose out.
The Palestinian people loses out.
The story of Iron Dome
is a patchwork blanket, patch upon patch,
one person and another,
woven together,
many people who have all
impacted our security.
Maybe one day the great respite
will come, rockets will cease to fly,
and Iron Dome will grow old, like a page
of history where a moral may be hiding.
Or maybe it's the opposite,
what began in Sderot
and reached all of Israel
is only the promo, the "coming soon,"
of what will happen the world over.
Until then, the power of life is stronger
than anything and we must carry on.
Even Ruthie Zehavi,
who lost her son Afik
to the first deadly rocket.
About three years after Afik
was killed, I met Ofer,
now my dear husband.
we have four children,
our wonderful Shai-Li, Nevo,
Tamir and Dor.
They know they have a brother
named Afik.
The little ones, less,
but the older ones know.
It's selfish to have children
after a tragedy.
It's selfish to bring them
into a life like this, but...
without them, what are we?
What am I?
They are my life.
May the heavens bless you