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Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

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Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#581

Post by xg15 »

judah wrote: post #542
ignoramous wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> violent religious fundamentalists firing ... cities because of religious hatred Some tend to be more introspective: Shahak's Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel picked up on the theme in explaining its pervasive, destructive influence in Israeli politics, the military and society. He noted that substituting German or Aryan for Jewish and non-Jews for Jews makes it easy to see how a superiority doctrine made an earlier…

What a remarkably misleading copypasta you have there. Rav Kook was not Israel's first rabbi. He died in 1935 - a full 18 years before Israel's rebirth. Nor was Kook the founder of Zionism. The belief that Jews should be able to return to our historic homeland has been a belief and conviction for religious and secular Jews for at least two millenia. That you can find individuals, such as a R. Friedman (not even an Is…

"A few wild weeds"

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-01-02/ty-article/.premi...

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#582

Post by LorenPechtel »

FrinkleFrankle wrote: post #485
LorenPechtel wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You know, both sides can be bad. They're both led by bad people who do bad things and some good things. I've watched the Oct 10th attack videos. They're horrific. I've also watched the videos of civilian buildings in Palestine being have their roofs "knocked on" by a missile, followed shortly after by demolition by additional missiles.. And the Israeli solders dropping grenades on tents.. And the firsthand accounts o…

And how do you know the building is actually civilian?

If Israel used a roof-knocker it's because they believed there was Hamas infrastructure or supplies in the building.

And there's something inherently wrong about a grenade on a tent? Do soldiers not use tents??

As for the firsthand accounts--all reporting from the ground in Gaza is highly suspect. But it doesn't matter anyway--yes, we have clear evidence of civilians killed by long range fire. We have *zero* evidence of the identity of the shooters.

Hits caught on conveniently rolling cameras. Not hidden cameras, anyone picking targets would have known they were there. What possible reason does Israel have for doing that? Absolutely none. What possible reason does Hamas have for doing that? Framing Israel. Those cases make far more sense as Hamas rather than as Israel.

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#583

Post by LorenPechtel »

recroad wrote: post #567
hersko wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's insane to compare Hamas and how they treat their citizens with Israel. Can you name a single thing Hamas has done to mitigate its civilian casualties?

Sorry, what? Mitigate it's civilian casualties? Are you spewing the garbage "human shield" argument here? The propagandization is complete with you. - B'tselem is a an Israeli org - https://www.btselem.org/topic/human_shields - Former Israeli soldiers - https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-arm... - Even NY Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/world/middleeast/israel-g...

Misdirection. He asked about what Hamas has done. Your response is to try to discredit the notion of human shields.

As for the "former Israeli soldiers"--how, exactly, are we supposed to know they really are?

NY Times? *ALL* the major news sources do not want to jeopardize access to reporting from Gaza. They'll say what Hamas wants them to say.

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#584

Post by LorenPechtel »

phs318u wrote: post #512
LorenPechtel wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The defenses they need are against Hamas. Nobody else comes close to Israel in protecting civilians in combat zones. And let's take a critical eye to that data you linked. I'm having a hard time with the filters but we can see enough without: The fatalities are nearly 90% male. That implies that probably 80% are in some fashion combatants or combatant-adjacent. And note that the death toll for the recent war includes…

“Combatant adjacent” That’s some newspeak right there. Tell me, given all adult, non-ultra-orthodox, Jewish Israelis, regardless of gender, must mandatorily serve in the military and remain reservists for decades, does this mean most Jewish adults are “combatant adjacent”?

It's not newspeak.

War has a huge logistics tail. That logistics tail is a completely valid target, often considered the primary target in western tactics. (Look at the original Russian attempt to seize Kyiv--Ukraine didn't attack the tanks, it cut them off. The guy driving the fuel truck for those tanks is combatant adjacent.)

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#585

Post by LorenPechtel »

jameshilliard wrote: post #523
belter wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Nobody else comes close to Israel in protecting civilians in combat zones. "Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war" - https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21...

> "Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war" The way they came up with this 83% figure is insane, they are essentially claiming everyone killed that hasn't been identified as a named fighter in one specific Israeli military intelligence database is assumed to be a civilian, this logic is of course blatantly misleading as one would not expect Israel to have the capability to identif…

You only are identifying half the problem.

That list was of those both identified to be terrorist and identified to be dead. Thus, not only does it not count the unidentified dead but it also does not count the identified but not established to be terrorist.

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#586

Post by LorenPechtel »

belter wrote: post #490
LorenPechtel wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The defenses they need are against Hamas. Nobody else comes close to Israel in protecting civilians in combat zones. And let's take a critical eye to that data you linked. I'm having a hard time with the filters but we can see enough without: The fatalities are nearly 90% male. That implies that probably 80% are in some fashion combatants or combatant-adjacent. And note that the death toll for the recent war includes…

>> Nobody else comes close to Israel in protecting civilians in combat zones. "Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war" - https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21...

Not only is this a tremendously inaccurate measure of what happened but even if true it would still be better than typical. Reality is 90%+ civilian.

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#587

Post by jameshilliard »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #571
jameshilliard wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also include Norm Finklestein Why would he be one of the New Historians? Norman Finkelstein isn't really even a historian, he's more of a activist/political scientist if anything AFAIU. > watch their debate hosted by Lex Fridman. I've seen it, it's pretty clear if you dig into the facts that the accusations of genocide against Israel are not supported by the evidence. It's also quite clear that people like Norman F…

The guy actually said "Israeli historians", not "New Historians", which means he's probably not reading the people the New Historians were responding to. He's just looking for legitimation propaganda for antizionist politics.

> The guy actually said "Israeli historians", not "New Historians"

The 3 historians he listed were 3 out of the 4 most well known "New Historians", but him leaving out Benny Morris(arguably the most well known of the New Historians and the one who coined the term itself) was a bit of a red flag to me that he's cherry-picking sources to support a particular narrative. Technically the "New Historians" are a subset of "Israeli historians".

> he's probably not reading the people the New Historians were responding to.

Yeah, I'm sure he isn't, although I'm probably also less familiar with those original historians myself as well since I was born after the point in which the "New Historians" had access to the declassified archives.

Even amongst the New Historians there's a lot of disagreements on things like which side has been more of an impediment to peace and a number of other key issues, with Benny Morris often being highly critical of say Ilan Pappé.

My own views of the history of the conflict and Zionism in general are probably broadly in line with those of Benny Morris. It's important to at least try and understand the history/perspectives of both sides of these conflict. At the same time it's worrying that even a lot of otherwise intelligent individuals would fall for rather overt antisemitic propaganda.

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#588

Post by kennywinker »

throw10920 wrote: post #563
kennywinker wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can i rephrase to help you understand my point? The defensive and offensive capabilities of Israel is about 1/4 larger because of american tax dollars not their own spending.

That's not what you said originally. You said: > To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year. That statement is completely false, and is very different than what you said just now. If you're going to walk back your words because you were proven wrong, that's fine, but don't claim you're "rephrasing" when you're actually changing your claim.

I’m not walking back anything. I said something, you misunderstood, i clarified. I stand by the original wording, as i believe most people are be able to understand my meaning. At some point I have to assume willful misunderstanding on your part

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#589

Post by kennywinker »

tguvot wrote: post #504
kennywinker wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can i rephrase to help you understand my point? The defensive and offensive capabilities of Israel is about 1/4 larger because of american tax dollars not their own spending.

us aid is around 6% of defense budget

1/4 by my reckoning. See links to my sources in the grandparent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452680

Re: Iron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system

#590

Post by tguvot »

kennywinker wrote: post #589
tguvot wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

us aid is around 6% of defense budget

1/4 by my reckoning. See links to my sources in the grandparent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452680

israeli defense budget is around $35b-$45b

usa aid is typically around $3b-$3.5b . 2024 higher aid is one off due to the war. also (unless i am wrong), good chunk of aid that Israel got from usa during war was in form of loans/guarantees for loans and such

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