And behind the barricade, two huge vehicles the size of flatbed trucks with what looks like great, big spotlights pointed at the sky. And in the middle of this field, at the end of dirt road, there's a military barricade. We can see the city buildings on the horizon. We're now on the outskirts of the city of Ashkelon, not far from Gaza. SHAPIRO: We've driven through fields of watermelon and potatoes. And now virtually every Israeli newscast includes a tally of the number of rockets fired from Gaza and the number intercepted by Iron Dome. SHAPIRO: But eventually the budgets came, helped along by the U.S., which gives Israel hundreds of millions of dollars a year for rocket defense. Actually, it was against the wind really.
RUBIN: And it wasn't easy to get the budgets and the support at that time. Now retired, he says the old bulls used to tell him the only defense Israel needed was a good offense. Back then, he ran Israel's missile defense program. SHAPIRO: Uzi Rubin remembers that time well. UZI RUBIN: I'd say that the traditional military analyst didn't see the reason why deal with defense at all. NPR's Ari Shapiro reports.ĪRI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Two or three decades ago, lots of people in Israel's military thought missile defense was a bad idea. Israel's military credits a rocket defense system known as the Iron Dome. That's the number of Israelis known to have been killed by Hamas rockets so far. MONTAGNE: We begin with a striking number - zero.
And in this part of the program, we'll hear what it is like to be underneath them. Israel and Hamas are exchanging airstrikes and rockets. I'm Renee Montagne.Īnd I'm Steve Inskeep.
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