Examining the lives of some lesser-known but highly colorful American Jewish figures from the republic’s first decades, Jonathan Sarna notes a number who found different ways of criticizing the existing social, religious, and political order. Among them was Isaac Gomez, Jr., of a prominent New York Jewish family, who prudently kept his true views private:

[Gomez’s] Selections of a Father for the Use of His Children: In Prose and Verse (1820), an anthology “calculated to promote a taste for reading and to improve the mind in useful learning,” was the very model of propriety and . . . was highly praised by John Adams. . . .

In private, however, Gomez was much more critical—at least of the religious world that surrounded him. His unpublished manuscript, God is One and His Name One: Quotations from Scripture etc. to Prove God to be One And the Truth of the Jewish Faith, lovingly handwritten for the benefit of his only son, Moses Emanuel (1804-1878), was explicitly designed to buttress the views of a small Jewish minority seeking to maintain its distinctive religious identity amid a sea of Protestants eager to convert them. Inwardly and within the protective bosom of his own family, Gomez revealed his true feelings about the merits of his neighbors’ beliefs.

His purpose, he disclosed in his preface, was nothing less than “to shew, and to know, that we are the chosen people of God . . . as well as that God is one without addition or subtraction . . . that there never was nor never will be but One God.” This was, of course, an utterly subversive idea in the face of overwhelming Christian trinitarianism, and Gomez, whose ancestors had been crypto-Jews in Portugal, explicitly warned his son to keep the critique to himself: not “to be a religious disputant” and not to share the volume with anyone else, “never part with it, either by lending or otherwise.”

On Tuesday, a Hizballah drone attack injured three people in northern Israel. The next day, another attack, targeting an IDF base, injured eighteen people, six of them seriously, in Arab al-Amshe, also in the north. This second attack involved the simultaneous use of drones carrying explosives and guided antitank missiles. In both cases, the defensive systems that performed so successfully last weekend failed to stop the drones and missiles. Ron Ben-Yishai has a straightforward explanation as to why: the Lebanon-backed terrorist group is getting better at evading Israel defenses. He explains the three basis systems used to pilot these unmanned aircraft, and their practical effects:

These systems allow drones to act similarly to fighter jets, using “dead zones”—areas not visible to radar or other optical detection—to approach targets. They fly low initially, then ascend just before crashing and detonating on the target. The terrain of southern Lebanon is particularly conducive to such attacks.

But this requires skills that the terror group has honed over months of fighting against Israel. The latest attacks involved a large drone capable of carrying over 50 kg (110 lbs.) of explosives. The terrorists have likely analyzed Israel’s alert and interception systems, recognizing that shooting down their drones requires early detection to allow sufficient time for launching interceptors.

The IDF tries to detect any incoming drones on its radar, as it had done prior to the war. Despite Hizballah’s learning curve, the IDF’s technological edge offers an advantage. However, the military must recognize that any measure it takes is quickly observed and analyzed, and even the most effective defenses can be incomplete. The terrain near the Lebanon-Israel border continues to pose a challenge, necessitating technological solutions and significant financial investment.