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Current War Exposes a Shocking Reality: Israel Does Not Have True Air Superiority
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, as seen from Sderot, Israel May 13, 2023 Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, experienced the London Blitz in World War II. Though he was not a military man, he well understood the significance of air superiority — and, in its absence, the weight of an air threat to the Israeli home front. When, as Israel’s first prime minister, he was about to make his historic decision on the Sinai war (1956), he set a condition for the French allies: that they place two fighter squadrons to defend Israel’s skies during the war.
Since then, air superiority has been a fundamental pillar of the Israeli security concept. Absolute control of the skies was intended to prevent the Arab air forces from hitting the Israeli home front and to ensure that in an emergency, reserve forces could be mobilized and reach the front without interruption while the limited regular forces holding the lines were being supported. The regular forces would defend, air superiority would enable, and the reserves would regain the initiative.
Over the years, the Israeli Air Force has become one of the most advanced in the world. Israel’s confidence in its air power, an offensive force at its core, left limited room for a defensive approach. In the 1960s, advanced Hawk missile batteries were purchased from the United States, despite opposition from the Air Force. Considerations of air coordination and flight safety led to the transfer of the anti-aircraft units from the Artillery Corps to the Air Force under the central control method used in it.
In June 1982, the Air Force stunned the world with a brilliant strike operation on Syrian surface-to-air missile batteries (SAMs) in Lebanon. In addition to destroying the SAM formations, the strike shot down dozens of enemy planes. Since then, no Arab air force has challenged the skies of Israel. Absolute air supremacy was achieved.
Gradually, over the following decades, two processes took place. The first was the reduction of tactical anti-aircraft formations, the main purpose of which was to provide mobile protection at the front for ground forces against enemy aircraft. Mobile formations protected the ground maneuver and shot down enemy planes and helicopters in the Yom Kippur War, and also fought in the First Lebanon War. Despite its long-lasting deployment and use against some terrorist airborne attacks from the Lebanese border in the 1980s, the formation was a low priority for the Air Force. After the Second Lebanon War, the last of these units were shut down and the anti-aircraft formation moved in full force to its new mission, which had been evolving since the 1990s: defense of the home front against missiles and rockets.
The second significant process to occur over recent decades was the development and purchase of Arrow interceptors, Iron Dome, and David’s Sling, to protect the home front from the missiles and rockets that were accumulating on the other side. This threat intensified over the years, and the air defense corps, which, in 2011, officially changed its name from Anti-Aircraft to Air and Missile Defense, adapted itself, shifting its focus to the emerging threat that had replaced the anti-aircraft mission. The working assumption was, and remains to this day, that Israel’s Air Force rules the skies. The job of air defense, therefore, is to focus on missiles and rockets.
This assumption is no longer valid.
The “Low Sky” layer
The current war illustrates what military professionals and observers already knew. After all, this development has been observed in all recent wars in the world, particularly in Ukraine.
At the beginning of this decade, a new-old threat layer gradually developed: numerous cheap, small, unmanned aircraft with a low radar signature. The world of drones and unmanned aircraft completely changed the premise of absolute air superiority. The Israeli Air Force does continue to rule the skies — but “under the noses” of the advanced fighter jets, a new air layer has been created. This is the “low sky” layer.
The enemy has found a loophole here. The Air Force (and, within it, the air defense corps) is required to defend against the combined and coordinated threats of missiles, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), and rockets (MUR).
The older precision missile threat was already a challenge. The risk of precision strikes applies not only to military and civilian infrastructure but also to the air defense system itself. This array was built over the years under the premise of Israeli air superiority. The air defense itself was not supposed to be hunted. Today, the enemy is able not only to accurately target our air defense elements but to maintain a real presence in our skies. Using UAVs, and even drones in shorter ranges, it can search for targets and strike them in real time. The enemy is able to penetrate deep into Israel and engage the air defense system in one lane while other aircraft take advantage of the diversion and penetrate in another, more covert lane. It can identify targets and strike immediately using armed or suicide UAS. Above all, it strives to locate, endanger, and destroy key elements of the air defense system itself. It is capable of all this and more. We have to defend our Air Defense.
The transition from dealing with piloted aircraft to aircraft with pre-programmed, changing routes that can perform a variety of tricks turns the aerial clash between defender and attacker into a complex professional battle. Such a battle requires additional measures. These consist mainly of finding means of detection, localization, tracking, accurate identification, and above all, faster decision-making that is based on more information in real time. As the challenge of managing the air battle increases, the air defense system, even one that is capable of successfully intercepting thousands of missiles and rockets, can engage fewer air targets at once. The array thus becomes more vulnerable and exposed.
The current war greatly accelerated the development of this threat. The enemy has spotted the breach and is daily improving the means and operational techniques at his disposal. The UAS threat can no longer be seen as separate from the ballistic, missile and rocket threats. The enemy is perfecting techniques by which to use these tools in a coordinated manner to overcome our air defense arrays, destroy them, and continue to hit targets on our front and home front.
This dangerous process, which is accelerating fast, requires quick learning, effective organization and practical preparation on Israel’s part. Here are three practical issues to be addressed, from light to heavy:
Central control
Central control is meant to enable effective, optimal and efficient decision-making. Processing information from all sensors makes it possible to launch the best interceptor from the best location at the best moment.
This approach is designed to deal mainly with quantity, on the assumption that it will be possible to see in real time where the enemy’s missiles are aimed. In a reality in which UAS appear and disappear from radar screens quickly, decentralized processes might also be required, under a central policy. This complexity will affect the scope of the threats the defense system can deal with simultaneously and also the extent of the possible savings in interceptors and management of interceptor stockpiles.
Absolute central control could also prove to be a single point of failure. The air defense control model must adapt and integrate decentralized decisions with a central policy and allow the integration of air assets like attack helicopters and fighter jets, as is the case these days.
The defense of air defense
Anyone who deals with air defense knows what “multi-layered” means. Multi-layered defense is the aerial version of the principle of operational depth in land defense. An attacking aircraft will relatively easily overcome a single SAM battery. But if, while attacking one battery, it is exposed to another one, or to a different type of radar or missile, or possibly even to a third battery, it will have much more difficulty. The principle of layered protection allows different batteries and types of detection and interception systems to back up and protect each other.
If some of the detection and interception means also change location from time to time, defend, and camouflage and scatter dummy targets, the challenge to the attacker is enhanced.
The Israeli air defense system is multi-layered, but the degree of mutual assistance and protection between the layers is relatively limited. The premise, as mentioned, was that of complete air superiority. The main challenge was to optimize the use of interceptors against a tremendous load of missiles and rockets. The result was that each tier was designed to deal with a specific type of missile or rocket. Iron Dome can’t really assist Arrow batteries or support their missions. This limitation is equally true among the other layers.
As noted, the degree of mobility, protection and hiding ability of the Israeli air defense system is inadequate. Unlike similar systems in the world, our air defense system was not built with synchronization as a critical goal. If we expect our air defense system to continue to provide the level of protection we have enjoyed so far or even close to it, it will have to go through a significant series of adjustments, and fast.
The first and most important will be the addition of another interception layer — point protection — which will enable a relatively high level of security for essential sites and assets. This layer would only be launched when it is clear that the other layers have failed and only to protect a critical asset for the country, such as an important power plant or vital component of the air defense system.
Another adjustment would be the shielding, camouflage and mobility of some of the elements of the array to make it difficult for the enemy to acquire these targets in real time. The hiding of air defense components and deception by dispersal of fake systems are common and essential methods of operation around the world.
Tactical air defense system
The air defense system must also adapt to the more demanding combat conditions at the front. This area, where ground troops from both sides are engaged in battle, will face thousands of missiles and rockets and hundreds of UAS and cruise missiles. The front is a smaller and denser area where civilian communities as well as concentrations of forces need to be defended from tens of thousands of short-range rockets, advanced anti-tank missiles, and aircraft and drones in abundance, and all in a very short time frame.
On both the home front and the battle front, our defense will depend on a prior decision on the identification of essential assets and a prioritizing of defense. The complexity will be twofold: the battle picture will be intricate and dynamic, and it will demand real-time prioritizing. Because of this, the air defense batteries will have to change position frequently for protection. The shorter ranges of the threat and defense elements will require closer coordination between the movement of air defense batteries that protect each other. Each location will have to be chosen in view of the risk from enemy ground forces and the need to protect our forces.
At the front, it will be necessary to (re)establish an organization that uses short-term, more mobile tactical measures. This flexible organization will have to be much more coordinated with the picture seen by the ground combat commanders. A tactical air defense system will be required – one not much different from the northern anti-aircraft units that were closed down almost 15 years ago.
The tactical air defense array that operates at the front will have to wear two hats. In one hat, it will protect the forces fighting on land and the vital assets in the sector. It is possible that, thanks to its radars, the array will also be an important partner in locating sources of enemy fire, producing targets for ground forces fire support. In the other hat, the array will serve as the “front layer” of the home-front air defense array. The aerial battle picture – the coordination of air operations for safety and the identification of friends and foes – will have to be managed by the centralized control of the air force.
More importantly, the relative density of the tactical air defense system at the front will make it possible to detect and stop some threats designed to penetrate deep into our territory while they are still in their early stages of flight, above the front. The array will serve as a kind of “front wall” for the defense of the home front. It will reduce the number of missiles and aircraft the home front defense will have to deal with and channel some of them to flight paths that are easier to detect and defend against within the Israeli topography.
Arrange the sky
On the eve of the Battle of France in May 1940, the Anglo-French alliance possessed more tanks and aircraft than were available to the invading force of the German Wehrmacht, and their models were superior and more modern. They were nevertheless defeated. Their defeat was not due to lack of means but to an inferior understanding of mechanized warfare. The Wehrmacht was better organized for the battle and made better use of the tanks and planes it had at its disposal.
The rapid procurement of means is not a sufficient answer to the challenge we now face. If we do not reorganize the battle for the sky, especially at the front, we can’t hope for a real improvement in the results. If we just add more measures without managing the layered defense with the required dynamism, we will experience not only waste but failure. A multi-layered and advanced air defense would not be complete without tactical capabilities for the defense of the front. Such air defense requires significant conceptual, operational and organizational adjustments to the existing structure.
Defending the country’s air space is the first mission of the Israeli Air Force. The recognition that our air superiority is not absolute is dramatic, but it must be acknowledged. Despite our control of fighter jets and traditional air superiority, our forces at the front suffer from a dangerous level of inferiority and lack of protection. The “low sky” has become a real threat.
It is vital for Israel to reestablish a tactical air defense system at the front. Israeli air superiority is incomplete without it. The sky needs to be rearranged.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal recently retired from military service as commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking. His book, The Battle Before the War (MOD 2022, in Hebrew), dealt with the IDF’s need to change, innovate, and renew a decisive war approach.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Ran Kochav (RanKo) recently retired from the IDF. Among his duties he served as commander of the Air and Missile Defense Corps and IDF Spokesperson, and was a member of the General Staff forum. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote
Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’
Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
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