A vote in the House of Representatives to appropriate $1 billion to Israel for its Iron Dome missile defense system made headlines last week, after the funding was initially removed from a continuing resolution bill due to pressure from a small group of progressive legislators. It ultimately passed as a standalone bill later in the week.


What You Need To Know

  • The Iron Dome missile defense system has been heavily financially sponsored by the U.S.

  • The program had been rejected by the George W. Bush administration, but was revived under the Obama administration, and Eric Lynn was involved with that process

  • Lynn is a Democrat running for congress in Florida's 13th District in Pinellas County next year

Watching that discussion with particular interest from St. Petersburg was Democratic congressional District 13 candidate Eric Lynn, labeled by The Forward as “one of the Americans most instrumental in making the Iron Dome possible.”

“I would say that it’s deeply disturbing and concerning that there were members of Congress who would not want to support a lifesaving system.” Lynn told Spectrum Bay News 9 this week. “This is not an offensive weapon that has killed anyone. This is a system that protects civilians.”

Lynn was working as the lead Pentagon staffer on Israeli defense issues to Defense Secretary Bob Gates in Barack Obama’s administration in 2009 when he came across a file on his desk about the Iron Dome rocket system that was being worked on by the Israelis, but had previously been rejected by members of the Bush administration as not being effective. Lynn says that it was while meeting with Benny Gantz – then an Israeli defense attaché officer and now the Israeli Defense Minister - who told him that the technology for Iron Dome had significantly improved and felt that it could save civilian lives if implemented that motivated him to push for the program.

But he was then met with a wall of resistance. “Many doors were slammed in my face,” he said.

“Unfortunately, in the Pentagon, when a system is rejected a first time, the culture is such that it’s very difficult to ever bring a system back from having been rejected the first time,” he adds. “There are a number of technologies brought forward, they are tested, and then if they fail, then usually you move on from them.”

But Lynn did find allies in the Pentagon who agreed with him, such as Michele Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and Colin Kahl, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. Ultimately, they presented their recommendation to Defense Secretary Bob Gates.

Gates approved testing the Iron Dome system, which was performed at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. The results were positive, and then it was presented to President Obama at the White House, who approved of the proposal.

Lynn says that the initial investment by the U.S. was $205 million, with the U.S. committing more funding as the system was built and used by the Israeli Defense Forces. The first time Israel used it was in 2012, and then in 2014 where there was fighting between Hamas forces in Gaza and Israel.

“Iron Dome is considered to be tremendously successful in saving Israel lives and saving Israeli property,” says Mike Wagenheim, a senior U.S. correspondent at i24NEWS, an Israeli based international 24-hour news channel. While some officials have touted a success rate of 90%, he says it’s hard to get an exact number of how many rockets have been intercepted by the system.

And Wagenheim says that the Iron Dome system also saves Palestinian lives “because if Iron Dome didn’t exist and those rockets did in fact cause casualties and fatalities in Israel, well then Israel would respond in a much more forceful and devastating manner than it does right now, and there would be a much higher, catastrophic loss of lives on the Palestinian, on the Lebanese and on the Syrian side, compared to the unfortunately still mild casualty toll that is inflicted now.”

White House officials say that the recent request for funding is consistent with a 2016 Memorandum of Understanding that was signed by the Obama White House with Israel in September of 2016, which commits the U.S. to provide additional assistance to replenish the Iron Dome after periods of fighting to continue to defend itself from attack.

There were a few members of Congress who objected to approving funding for the Iron Dome last week. Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Talib tweeted that she was voting no. “We must  stop enabling Israel’s human rights abuses and apartheid government,” she wrote.

Muhammad Shehada, a writer and civil society activist from the Gaza Strip, wrote in Newsweek that the progressive push by Talib and others to defund the Iron Dome “was a recognition of our pain.”

“It was a symbolic display of solidarity from the progressive wing that is deeply cherished, regardless of the result,” Shehada wrote.

Lynn is of the opinion that the Iron Dome can actually be a catalyst in moving the parties in the Middle East to ultimately come together to ultimately agree on a two-state solution that allows both the Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace.

“There’s going to continue to be rocket fire coming from terrorist groups out of Gaza, and the Israelis are defending their people as any country would. But if the Iron Dome is able to protect civilians from being killed, protect citizens from all sides, then the response by Israel’s military would be far different than if the system were not there,” he says.

Lynn is one of three major Democratic candidates who have filed to run in the open Congressional District 13 race seat next year, along with state representatives Michele Rayner and Ben Diamond. The top Republicans who have entered so far include Anna Paulina Luna, Amanda Makki and Audrey Henson.