The numbers attending the weekly demonstrations at the fence separating Gaza from Israel have declined from one Friday to the next, although over this past weekend the protests turned increasingly violent. Despite the likelihood that Israel will be able to restore order, writes Ben-Dror Yemini, Hamas has nevertheless managed to score a propaganda victory with the aid of the world’s media, which blithely continue to distort what is happening:

No one has placed cameras on the U.S.-Mexico border, although 412 infiltrators or migrants were killed there in 2017, and 498 in 2016, including children. But the border between Israel and Gaza, as well as the points of friction in Hebron, seem to have the highest number of cameras in the world.

Something [besides wounded Palestinians, however,] was caught on camera: many of the kites flown toward Israel were marked with a swastika, in addition to carrying explosives. . . . It’s not just the Hamas Covenant or the calls for Israel’s destruction, chanted by some of the protestors [that should be troubling to neutral parties]. It’s also the kites carrying the Nazi symbol. . . .

We shouldn’t make generalizations. It’s not that all of the Strip’s residents identify with the Nazi ideology. But Hamas and its supporters, and likely many of the protestors as well, carry a message of annihilation and anti-Semitism. The moderate ones settle for [merely] spreading the message of Israel’s destruction. . . .

[But] the global media, almost without exception, have ignored the protestors’ message. The swastikas didn’t appear in the New York Times or in Le Monde. [For its part,] the Guardian published a letter by three members of the [Israeli] Breaking the Silence organization, accusing the IDF of instructing snipers to shoot to kill unarmed demonstrators. They’re lying; there are no such orders. They didn’t bother, of course, to write a single word about the responsibility of Hamas and its supporters. On the contrary, they wrote that “harming innocent people in Gaza is part of what is needed to maintain the regime of occupation.” If former soldiers publish a letter which leads to the conclusion that IDF soldiers are murderers, how can we complain about those newspapers’ editorials?

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.