Another win for Israel

For someone who’s been virtually beating the drums on an upcoming Israeli-Iranian war for well over a decade, it may seem odd that I haven’t weighed in much with that very war now having turned to a hot one. I guess the main reason is that there is so much available elsewhere, that I’d mostly be regurgitating what my readers could already find out on their own. But there’s a reason why I decided to finally weigh in, and that is that Israel’s latest move this past Shabbat was so brilliantly planned an executed on every level, it will not only go down in the annals of military exploits, but in and of itself basically elevates Israel to the level of regional superpower. Let’s briefly go over the ways in which this attack set precedents.

First of all—according to the New York Times—this is the first time in their decades-long struggle against Iranian aggression that Israel has openly admitted to attacking Iran. This signals a new boldness along with an outright stated intent to retaliate in kind if Iran decides to follow up this attack with one of their own. Iran is on notice: Look what we were able to do to you. We’re done for now; whether or not we come back to finish the job is totally dependent on your response.

Secondly, this attack came when Israel is already engaged in an existential struggle on three fronts: Gaza, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territory. And they did it alone: no other country was openly involved either in the planning or the execution of this attack. In fact, well-known journalist Amit Segal, in commenting on this operation, specifically highlighted how it was carried out against the express wishes of the Harris-Biden administration (yeah, that’s order in which he gave the names), and that a Trump win in the upcoming election would make for an even bolder Israel in the face of Iranian aggression.

Thirdly, the level of precision at which Israel has conducted its war with Iran is also unprecedented. They had to fly over not just one, but two hostile countries to get at their target, greatly damaging those countries’ air defenses along the way to ensure safe passage back home, and while over Iran, they were able to limit their attacks to ONLY those Iranian targets that were directly involved in targeting Israel. No other attack in history has been able to to evade the “fog of war” as this one apparently has. Remember, Iran shot down one of its own airliners on takeoff during their surprise missile attack on an American base in Iraq, irrationally fearing that it was an enemy plane coming in to retaliate.

Fourthly, the success with which Israel carried out this operation has to strike terror in the hearts of any national leader contemplating a military move against that nation. Yes, Iran was able to shoot down a few missiles and drones, but were unable to touch a single manned aircraft. Their vaunted air defense system, recently purchased at great expense from Russia, was basically disabled in a single strike, without being able to inflict any damage in kind. Iran realizes that if they do anything to retaliate, their skies are open to Israeli bombs and missiles coming back to finish the job at the same level of precision they just demonstrated.

This attack was a game-changer in the Israeli-Iranian war. Will it serve to end that war? One key component to answering that question is something you probably aren’t getting from the news, and that is the massive turning to Christ that is going on right now in Iran. An estimated million Iranians have left Islam to follow the Jewish Messiah, and thousands of mosques now sit vacant for lack of attendees. Of course these new believers want nothing of a war with Israel, and increasingly the Muslim majority is losing interest in it as well. For the first time the Iranian leadership faces heavy opposition from within their borders against retaliating for this major loss of face, and who is to say what may emerge from the major shakeup that is no doubt now underway.

As someone committed to praying for the peace of Jerusalem, I am greatly encouraged by what Israel was able to pull off, and thank God that it went so well, especially with such minimal loss of life on the Iranian side. I pray they will not have to go back, but if they do, they will eliminate the nuclear threat the Iran poses to the entire region. I have no doubt now that they are capable of it: I understand that the latest generation of bunker-buster bombs is capable of penetrating through 200 feet of solid rock, and I’m sure the Iranians never ensured that level of protection when they buried their nuclear sites in the sides of their mountains.

Miller Trial Update

I'd like to give an update on Jenkins v. Miller et al, but, not having a reporter in the courtroom this time, the information I have to share is limited and maybe even a little speculative. However, from what little I have heard directly, the trial is just about through all the motions and ready to proceed, probably in Vermont despite the defendent's insistence that since all the tortious deeds took place in Virginia, that district should be the proper venue.
I do know that Christian Aid Ministry managed to get removed from the case very early on, apparently because they had no organziational knowedge of, or involvement in, the tortious action. Lisa Miller is even off the list, apparently because her daughter testified that she doesn't consider being raised by her own mother to be kidnaping. It's still "v. Miller et al" because two of the remaining defendents, Ken and Timo, are Millers. The most recent court document I could find on the case is this one, from June, in which the plaintiff requests summary judgement (it was denied). Interesting, isn't it, that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was founded to defend civil rights advocates against persecution in the American South, is now the primary law firm for the plantiff's attempt to persecute Christians in Virgina.

One more blow against the death penalty

It has come to my attention that another chronological record had been broken--Iwao Hakamada was sentenced to death on September 11, 1968, which makes his time spent living under a death penalty the longest in recorded history--almost 58 years now. Due to the great likelihood that he was framed, no Japanese Minister of Justice has ever been willing to approve his execution, and he was actually released in 2014 pending a retrial, making his probably also the first-ever case of death row by home detention.

Israeli-Iranian War update

My longtime readers may find this title amusing: I first began predicting an Israeli attack on Iran over a dozen years ago, and finally gave it up when it never seemed to materialize. Well, it finally has, so I may as well weight in. What Israel used to attack Iran's nuclear stronghold was a stand-off missile, also known as an ALBM. Its range was just under the crucial distance to Isfahan, so what Israel did to surmount that was remarkable: They took over Syrian airspace long enough to send in a fighter armed with an ALBM, possibly along with tankers to get it back home. From there, the fighter launched the ALMB, which was able to reach Isfahan unmolested. This is significant in a number of areas.
First, it shows the ability of Israel to hit targets anywhere in Iran without having to risk having any of its planes shot down. This is huge, as the chances of being able to pull of a manned airstrike were always low enough to provide a major incentive against it. Israel now has shown that it has the means to take on Iran on its own turf. This sortie probably served more as a test platform than a real attack, and the missile used seems to have passed that test. It is almost certain that Iran was not able to intercept the missile--they would have said so if they had done so. Now they are probably frantically working to develop that ability, but Israel has also probably learned enough from this test to do an even better job next time.
Secondly--and this is also very significant--they got away with it. Iran decided that the best face-saving move was to claim that the missile didn't do any damage. No harm, no foul, no need to follow through on their promised massive retaliation. Any Iranian soldiers who witnessed the damage done are surely sworn to secrecty, and since the damage was behind the walls of the most secure site in the country, that secret won't be very hard to keep.
So for now, the tit-for-tat has probably reached equilibrium. Israel knows it can do serious damage to Iran, and Iran knows it too--this could go a long way toward keeping any further violence to a minimum. Which is exacly what Israel hoped for in this limited response to Iran's massive--but failed--attack on their citizenry, so it appears to have been a success.

A new twist in the Linda Stoltzfoos Kidnapping/Murder Saga

I wrote earlier about Linda Stotzfoos, who was kidnapped and murdered by a fellow member of the Mennonite community where she lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. There's a new chapter to the story: her murderer, Justo Smoker (a Costa Rican who had been adopted by a family in the Mennonite community), confessed to the murder, and as a condition of his plea arrangement he promised to show the authorities where he buried her body. This link probably won't be valid forever, but for now you can watch the authors of a new book on the story--Justo's relatives by adoption and marriage--tell how the event impacted them, and how it ties into the Nickel Mines hostage-murder.

Ice, a major killer in the air

The title is a little deceptive, as it's always on the ground that people die, as a result of a plane being unable to keep flying due to ice. But in my recent research on airline accidents, I've run across ice as a serious cause of airplane accidents. It turns out that there are at least three ways that ice can cause a plane to crash, all of them preventable, and mostly through designing--and correctly applying (that's the hardest part)--a mechanical solution to the problem.
1. Carb Ice: This is ice that builds up in the carburetor of a piston-powered small plane due to the cooling that air experiences as it passes through it. Just as water drips off the cooling coils of an air conditioner or freezer--becoming ice if things aren't working right--the wrong combination of humidity and altitude can easily cause a carburetor to ice up, starving the engine of air and causing it to lose power. Although this problem is easily prevented by applying heat to the air going into the carburetor, and all student pilots are rigourously drilled on the process, new pilots can become inattentive enough that carb ice continues to cause dozens of engineless landings a year, at least one or two of which, on average, are fatal.
This is not to be confused with the serious problem of water in the fuel entering and choking off a piston-driven engine, which also happened in the early days of aviation, resulting now in the highly pollutive regimen of drawing a sample of dyed aviation fuel from the low points of the fuel system and throwing it out on the tarmac after acertaining that it doesn't contain any water.
2. Rime Ice: This is ice that builds up on the leading edge of the wing, either from a plane sitting too long on the runway during an ice storm, or from flying through icing conditions in the air. Airline pilots are just as susceptible to rime ice as students pilots are--if not more so, as student pilots are warned to stay away from icing conditions, while airline pilots frequently fly through them anyway. But when they do, the results can be extremely deadly, resulting in a loss of lift that usually kills everyone on board--unless it happens on takeoff, especially if the plane comes down in a river, as did USAir Flight 405. Two methods have been developed to combat the buildup of rime ice: De-icer that is sprayed on the wings of planes awaiting takeoff in an ice storm, and either heaters or expanding rubber boots in the the wing that keep ice from being able to build up. In one case, that of American Eagle Flight 4184 (which was twice ordered to fly a holding pattern in icy conditions), the entire wing of that type had to be redesigned to avoid rime ice from coming loose and damaging the control surfaces on the tail.
3. Engine ice: This is the most insidious way that ice kills, and almost exclusively happens with airliners, because in order to get ice in the engine one either has to be flying a plane whose wings tend to shed huge slabs of rime ice into the rear-mounted engines, or flying a plane through a hailstorm, where the hail going into the engines is so heavy that they flame out, or even suffer catastrophic turbine failure. This can only happen, in the case of hail, when a pilot takes his plane into the heart of a thunderstorm, as did the pilot of Garuda Flight GA421.
Why, you wonder, would a pilot do this? Well, hopefully this will never happen again, given the dozens who have died so far, but in the early days of weather radar in airliners there was an unfortunate phenomenon in which the weather radar could only pick up rain--not hail--so on the radar what appeared to be a clear path through the thuderhead was in fact its most dangerous part, as any pilot who ever tried taking that "path through the storm" soon found out, when all his engines failed and his plane fell out of the sky. The most tragic example of this would be Southern Airways Flight 242, in which the powerless plane, minutes before crashing into a petrol station in a small town, glided right over an airport without realizing it (because neither pilot ever bothered to check their flight charts, and the passenger on board who knew about the airport didn't realize that the pilot was trying to make a much more distant air base that he was familiar with).
This is not to be confused with a jet engine running rough due to flying through high-altitude ice crystals, which so far has't caused any crashes or fatalities, as there is plenty of time for the engines to recover as the plane falls below the ice layer.
One adage of aircraft accident investigations is that every crash makes flying safer. After the earliest pilots started getting killed by carb ice, carb heat was invented to prevent it from building up. After airliners started going down with rime ice, de-icing processes and procedures were invented to prevent it from building up--and redesigned after it did so anyway. And after the extensive investigations that were required to reconstruct the accidents in which engine ice killed (as it always did), weather radars were reprogrammed, and pilots trained, to keep planes from flying into the heart of a thunderstorm.
But there is one more way that ice can kill, although it's possible that it never will, because it's only caused a crash one time--and as a result of the extensive investigation into how it was able to happen, the system that allowed it to happen was redesigned. Here's how it went down: A Boeing 747 (British Airways Flight 38) crossing Siberia after departing Beijing developed frozen water vapor in its fuel tanks, which as long as the throttles were held steady was able to build up without being dislodged. As it came in to land in London, there was turbulence, so the pilot decided to allow the plane's computer to make the approach, as it was able to adust the power level more precisely than the pilot could. As a result, the autopilot demanded a surge of power which dislodged the ice and sent it crashing against the fuel heater at the end of the fuel line, clogging it and starving all four engines simutaneously, causing the plane to crash-land short of the runway--but, due to the extreme skill of the aircrew in making a landing that they had never trained for, without any fatalities.
What the investigators finally realized (and only after it happened again, but in a 747 that was still at altitude, so there was time to allow the ice to dissapate as it descended) was that tiny projections on the fuel line heater held the ice just short of where it could be melted; all that was required was redesigning the fuel line heater, which of course should have been made that way in the first place. And, since this has only ever happened in 747's--thus it was only their fuel systems that were redesigned--it's possible that any plane flying through extremely frigid and humid air may be the first of its type to experience it.