In 1984, a U.S. court, having concluded that John (né Ivan) Demjanjuk had served as a guard at the Sobibor and Treblinka death camps, stripped him of his citizenship and extradited him to Israel. There he was tried and convicted of being the notoriously sadistic guard known to Treblinka’s prisoners as “Ivan the Terrible.” But when new evidence came to light that Ivan the Terrible was someone else, Demjanjuk was returned to the U.S. and given back his citizenship—until a new case was built against him and he was sent to stand trial in Germany. Reviewing Lawrence Douglas’s book about Demjanjuk, titled The Right Wrong Man, Kevin P. Spicer explains what made the second trial different:

[The German prosecutors] centered their case on Demjanjuk’s time in Sobibor, a death camp that existed solely to exterminate Jews. Here the work of professional historians proved crucial, showing that as a [guard] stationed in Sobibor, Demjanjuk would have inevitably participated in the killing process. . . . Nor were [ex-Soviet POWs like Demjanjuk] punished for refusing to take part in the murder of Jewish prisoners—another important and damning point established by historians’ testimony.

Though a few of the remaining survivors of Sobibor did testify, Douglas believes that the crucial evidence rested upon the testimony of historians—and when that evidence was weighed by the panel of judges, Demjanjuk was convicted. Before his appeal could be heard, Demjanjuk—the only person in U.S. history to lose his citizenship twice—died in a Bavarian nursing home. To the bitter end he stoutly refused to express remorse.

Though Douglas is troubled by Demjanjuk’s refusal to face his murderous past, he portrays the conviction as a crucial paradigm shift in German law, one that enabled prosecutors to charge collaborators with murder for simply having worked in death camps. The verdict means that the remaining “faceless facilitator[s] of genocide”—at this point, it must be said, a handful of nonagenarians—may have to stand in court to face their complicity in one of history’s worst narratives of horror.

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.