At a recent concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden, the musician Billy Joel appeared on stage wearing a six-pointed yellow star—apparently in response to the anti-Semitic demonstrations that had taken place in Charlottesville. Thereafter, the actor and producer Nev Schulman appeared at a Los Angeles awards ceremony wearing a similar star. Stephen Pollard finds this new trend among Jewish celebrities “crass, infantile, ignorant, stupid, [and] offensive”:

Presumably Joel was thinking that he was “reclaiming” [the star] in some way. . . But it’s not his to reclaim. It’s not mine. It’s not anyone’s, however much they might want the world to know they’re Jewish, or that they love Jews just so much. The only people [whose it is] to “reclaim” are Holocaust survivors. And I seem to have missed the pictures of survivors donning their yellow stars again as a fashion accessory.

[M]ake no mistake, . . . this is virtue signaling in the worst possible taste. . . .

[Y]ou do not express your pride in being Jewish, or your revulsion against hate, by donning the Nazi yellow star as a fashion statement of that supposed pride. All you do is insult those survivors who lived through the Shoah, and who did not wear their yellow stars to draw media attention to themselves but because they were forced to do by the Third Reich.

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.