Mining her recent experience at the highly prestigious International Workshop for Writers in Iowa, the Israeli novelist Galit Dahan Carlibach has written Zot ani, Iowa (“It’s Me, Iowa”), about a similar writer’s time at the same program. Michael Weingrad, describing the book as “a very dark comedy” filled with “politically incorrect humor,” states in his review:

From the beginning, Dahan Carlibach’s alter ego has irreverent fun with the political pecking order at the program, referring throughout to herself and the other participants by the names of their countries. . . .

There is an encounter described in a . . . wry and deadpan fashion between Israel and Palestine in an organic grocery store, where Palestine has forgotten his passport and so can’t use his credit card. Israel offers to pay, but Palestine storms off, insulted. “The other countries looked at Israel as if I had personally invaded the territories in ’67 and callously conquered each house and village myself.”

Israel’s literary agent encourages her to have affairs with enemy countries: a memoir about a tryst with Palestine or Iran would surely sell like hotcakes. . . . Book sales notwithstanding, [however], Israel has her eye on a local American musician named Dustin, on whom she projects all of her Middle Eastern fantasies about a wholesome life among the cornfields. Poor guy. In a reversal of Philip Roth’s Alexander Portnoy, the neurotic Jew in this book is an Israeli who has found her golden sheygets. Dustin expects their relationship to be over after a one-night stand, but Israel is not put off so easily.

The protagonist eventually undergoes “a complete mental breakdown, . . . murdering [Dustin] and dumping his body in the Mississippi.” By coincidence, Zot ani, Iowa, appeared within a few weeks of Ha-morah l’ivrit (“The Hebrew Teacher”) by the novelist Maya Arad—herself a resident of Palo Alto, California—a work similar in subject matter if very different in tone.

The three novellas that make up [Arad’s] new book all concern Israelis who live in the United States and make their living in connection with academia or high tech. If this sounds like a narrow sociological vein to mine, all the more credit to Arad, who is one of the most talented Hebrew novelists of her generation and who here offers profoundly moving and universal vistas of experience, sorrow, and humor. . . .

[T]here is nothing tendentious about Arad’s stories. She touches, gently, on a range of sociological patterns—the shaky status of Hebrew among the American children of her Israeli characters, for instance, and the looser, sometimes nonexistent family ties in America as compared with Israel—but her purpose is not to offer critique but to observe her characters in their all-too-human complexity.

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.