With his latest book, Inside Story, the English novelist Martin Amis has attempted a hybrid of fiction and autobiography, using the book to discuss his relationships with various literary friends and, of course, with his father—the novelist Kingsley Amis. While most critics have not been kind to the book, David Herman finds that it has its merits, especially when it addresses the themes of “literary fathers, Englishness, Jews, [and] envy.” Herman finds of special interest the portions of the book devoted to the novelist Saul Bellow, whom Martin appears to regard as a sort of substitute father:

If Kingsley was insular and middlebrow, what kind of literary father was Bellow? American, cosmopolitan, he had found his voice in Augie March, he took on “the deeps”: big issues and big ideas. Bellow was the sort of writer who named one of his most famous characters after a minor character in Joyce’s Ulysses and wrote two novels about friends who had died, Delmore Schwartz (Humboldt in Humboldt’s Gift) and Allan Bloom (the title character in Ravelstein).

Above all, Bellow was Jewish. One of the first conversations Martin Amis describes having with Bellow was about Jews. “Why don’t Jews drink?” Martin wants to know. They soon get onto “anti-Semitic culture,” what Bellow calls “the traditional culture of [Ezra] Pound and Wyndham Lewis and T.S. Eliot.” “Well, two nutters and a monarchist,” says Amis.

Herman contrasts this to Inside Story’s occasional references to the elder Amis’s casual anti-Semitism—or, at least hints of it.

Martin writes in Inside Story about a conversation with his wife. “‘Did you ring the Jews?’” he asks her. “‘Yes,’ said Elena [his wife]. ‘And they’re alright?’ ‘They’re fine.’ The Jews were their daughters (and they were full Jews too, by the way, by the ancient law of matrilinearity, and could simply walk into Israel as full citizens).” If Kingsley was the sort of writer who would write, “Yid” in a game of Scrabble, Martin was the sort who would proudly flaunt his children’s Jewishness. [Yet] Amis never explains why Jewishness was so important to him.

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.