Written in 1920 in the wake of the massacres of tens of thousands of Jews by Ukrainian militias during the Russian Civil War, “The Wolf,” a verse epic by the American Yiddish poet H. Leivick, has as its protagonist a rabbi who awakes to find himself the sole survivor in his destroyed shtetl. He retreats to the forest, where he is magically transformed into a werewolf, and then returns to his hometown, now being rebuilt by returning refugees. There he resumes his clerical post while in human form. Dara Horn explores the poem’s symbolism, and its enduring relevance:

When I first encountered this poem years ago, I was riveted by the rabbi, whom I understood as a person disfigured by trauma. The poem, I thought, was a call for empathy for survivors. . . . [But] the poem, as I now understand it, isn’t really about the rabbi, whose point of view hardly figures in the work. It’s about the other Jews, whose shared emotions are intimately described—and all too familiar. These Jews rejoice in their survival, but they are also haunted by the horrific fact that other Jews have been murdered while they have randomly been spared—the defining fact of post-Holocaust American Jewish identity. The wolf’s presence in their midst is an embodiment of that haunting, the deep awareness of total vulnerability that lurks just beneath the surface of their daily lives.

Leivick tells us as much. As the poem’s Jews listen to the wolf’s midnight howling [coming from the forests outside of town], “they could not hear a thing anymore/ Except the beating of their own hearts.” Later, as the howling grows louder and closer, “in each turn of the voice was heard/ A hidden challenge, an appeal, and above all, a pleading;/ Which chilled their hearts more than anything,/ For it reminded them of the cry of a human being.” This disfigured beast crying for mercy is inseparable from who they are. It is part of them, one of them, the buried part of thousands of years of pain. They want that wolf to go away, but they cannot kill it without killing themselves.

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.