More complaints about F-16I

http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=3922

Expensive – and unneeded: the new F-16’s
Israel’s non-leadership loath to admit: We don’t really need 100 new fighter planes, even opposite Iranian threat

Gad Shomron

Proud Israeli citizens were recently subjected to an event of a kind which they hadn’t seen since the early days of the State. The IDF reveals a new weapon. This time an F-16I ‘Sufa’ (storm) landed in an undisclosed location and the press was inundated with reports and photographs recording the happy occasion. According to these reports, 102 planes have been purchased at a “bargain” price of around $4 billion, excluding maintenance, of course. “The F-16I will provide Israel with strategic capabilities and allow it to counter long-term threats”, said the official announcement. In the year 2004, the term “long-term threats” is a clear reference to Iran which over the past few years has turned into Israel’s No.1 enemy. But does Iran truly pose such a threat? This is questionable.
Dr. Ephraim Kam, Deputy Head of the Jaffe Institute at Tel Aviv University, examined this issue in his recently published book entitled “From Terror to the Atom –The Iranian Threat”. Kam, a former Colonel in the Research Division of Military Intelligence, presents facts and figures rather than clichés, starting with the fact that Iran is a thousand kilometers away from Israel. He surveys the attempts of the Ayatollah regime to develop long-range missiles and nuclear capabilities which could upset the balance of power in the Middle East. But he also mentions several facts that Israeli citizens would have difficulty finding in the local press. For example, Israel is not Iran’s main priority as far as its defense policies are concerned. Iran’s military build-up is an international problem rather than one that concerns Israel only, and is being dealt with by the USA. Kam also mentions that the Iranians have avoided direct conflict with Israel in the past: in the Lebanon war, Ayatollah Khomeini himself refused to involve Iranian soldiers or revolutionary guards in the fighting.
Moreover, numerous experts including IDF officers believe that it is in fact the emotionally-charged declarations emanating from Jerusalem about the long-range capabilities of the F-16 that are exerting pressure on Iran.
It seems however that someone at Israel’s top echelon needs the Iranian threat to justify this unnecessary and even dangerous shopping spree. It is unnecessary as, since 1948, Israel has never been in such a strategically favorable position as it is today. There are peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Saddam Hussein is ensconced in a US prison cell. Bashar Assad is barely managing to rule Syria and is trying to figure out how to handle the reality of the new Middle East. Yasir Arafat and the Palestinians are crushed and are crying out for international aid. And the USA is continuing to show steadfast and loyal support for Israel.
The danger lies in the very nature of a system which may be tempted to use the means at its disposal simply because they are there. If the IDF had owned 102 F-16I’s a year ago, someone in power might have been tempted to send them to Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction which were then thought to pose such a threat that our national security chiefs gave the order to open our gas masks.
It is very difficult not to wonder about the fact that in a country in which so many citizens cannot support their families, where the educational system is floundering and senior citizens are at the mercy of a collapsing health system, nobody in government or in the public sector questioned the necessity of these expensive purchases. A leader is expected to lead, and for example, to rise from his comfortable Knesset seat and declare, “I have decided to cut the F-16I acquisition deal by half. Such a step would indicate to our neighbors that Israel is truly interested in a lasting peace and prefers to invest these billions in developing its society and educating its children rather than in more instruments of destruction”.
Such a speech has yet to be written, but the fact that Israel of 2004 is suffering from a leadership crisis has already been written about extensively.