Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate, is incensed by what he has read in Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land about a 1948 massacre, allegedly committed by the Palmah, in the Palestinian town of Lydda. As Martin Kramer has demonstrated, there is no evidence that such a massacre occurred—and yet Kinsley not only repeats Shavit’s claim but goes beyond it, accusing Jews of rewriting Israel’s past and adding ludicrous comparisons to the Rwandan genocide. Kramer writes:

[T]ake this point of supposed similarity between Lydda and Rwanda: “Crowding ‎people into a church (or, in this case, a mosque) and then blowing it up or setting it on fire.” ‎This originates in Shavit’s claim that Israeli troops detained Palestinian Arabs in a small ‎mosque, and then fired an anti-armor rocket into it as an act of revenge, killing 70 ‎persons.

Trouble is, to borrow Kinsley’s phrase, “all this is not even close to being true.” ‎Kinsley, far from showing himself a careful sifter of history, clearly has been seduced by ‎Shavit’s dramatic opera, mistaking it for history. And Kinsley then amplifies Shavit’s biases ‎still further, for reasons known only to him, producing a grotesque defamation of Israel that ‎goes even beyond Shavit’s account.‎ . . . To insinuate a parallel between the battle in Lydda and the most ‎heinous crimes against humanity, committed as part of a genocide, is simply obscene.‎

And it suggests that Kinsley didn’t even read Shavit carefully, for Shavit concludes his ‎account with this admission: “The small-mosque massacre could have been a ‎misunderstanding brought about by a tragic chain of accidental events.” But for Kinsley, ‎there are no accidents. He attributes a murderous intent to Israeli troops not because he can ‎be sure of it, but because it suits his forced narrative of Israeli sin.‎

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.