Reflecting on his recent biography of Woody Allen, David Evanier describes conversations and correspondence with the filmmaker, discusses his cinematic oeuvre, and investigates his attitudes toward Jews, Israel, and the Holocaust. Calling Allen “the most identifiable, brazen, and forthright Jewish artist in the world,” Evanier claims that he could also still be afraid of being marked as “too Jewish”:

Allen told [the Israeli newspaper] Yediot Aḥaronot in 2012: “I support Israel and I’ve supported it since the day it was founded. Israel’s neighbors have treated it badly, cruelly, instead of embracing it and making it part of the Middle East family of nations. . . . I don’t expect Israel to react perfectly every time, and that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a wonderful, marvelous country.”. . .

However, he also told Marlow Stern of the Daily Beast in July 2014 of his feelings about the situation in Gaza, that it was “More terribleness. . . . It’s a terrible, tragic thing. . . . But I feel that the Arabs were not very nice in the beginning, and that was a big problem. . . . They were not nice about it, and it led to problems, and over the years, both sides have made mistakes. There have been public-relations mistakes, actual mistakes, and it’s been a terrible, terrible cycle of mismanagement and bad faith.”

Not very nice? Actually I think I left this quote out of my book because I found it distasteful, especially that childlike reversion to words like “not very nice.” Suddenly we are back in nursery school with little Woody at his wooden desk, an innocent except that he wants to shtup all the girls. Here he blathers on, keeping his head in the sand about all the rockets shot at Israel, wringing his hands and blaming both sides. The language, the evasion, the absurdity of this is undeniable. This is pragmatism and it is cowardice. He saw dead children and he didn’t want to be involved defending Israel.

And more than that, it is that full-fledged ambivalence that is an essential part of Allen’s personality. It is cowardice behind the courage about Jewishness and the Holocaust; in effect, he is still hiding from the goyim. He is not alone, and I do not condemn him for it. How often did Sidney Lumet, Paul Mazursky, Mel Brooks, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Arthur Penn, Clifford Odets, and countless other directors, playwrights, actors, and screenwriters speak out for Israel? In the history of Hollywood, Ben Hecht was one odd and brave exception, obsessed as he was with the Holocaust. When have we heard from Judd Apatow?

Allen has the perspective of many entertainers who, as assertively Jewish as they are, still do not want to be pigeonholed as “too Jewish”—too narrowly focused on Jewish issues and Israel at a time when Israel is a very unstylish subject for an important, fashionable segment of the public, including the media. It will hurt the box office.

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.