A lawyer, political scientist, newspaper columnist, and former adviser to New York City mayor John Lindsay, Marvin Schick—who died last week at the age of eighty-five—was best known for his lifelong devotion to the establishment and maintenance of Jewish educational institutions in both the U.S. and Israel. Menachem Butler reflects on Schick’s legacy:

Marvin became a lifelong believer of the importance of a strong Jewish educational system across every denomination—he was particularly pained when non-Orthodox schools shuttered—and served as an early and lone voice [encouraging] philanthropists to place Jewish education high on the communal agenda. As senior adviser to the Avi Chai Foundation, he conducted many pathbreaking studies on Jewish education, and his innovative “Census of Jewish Day Schools in the United States” remains the best source of information about Jewish education over the past generation,

[Schick’s] philosophy of Jewish education [was] that children and their education must never be discarded and that everything must be done to create a more lasting and sustained Jewish community. In Marvin’s earlier years of Jewish communal service, he was active in nearly every major and minor Orthodox Jewish organization—proudly being the only activist in both the (ḥaredi) Agudath Israel and the (Modern Orthodox) Orthodox Union organizations during the 1960s and 1970s. Others saw [his participation in both] as a conflict; he saw it as a fusion. [Likewise], he established organizations that worked across communal boundaries and would fight for the individual Jew however he needed to be helped.

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.