During World War II, some 20,000 Jews, 6 percent of the country’s overall Jewish population, served in Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF), of whom 900 gave their lives. The proportion of Jews among those who fought in the Battle of Britain—the epic aerial confrontation in which the RAF successfully repelled Germany’s efforts to bomb the United Kingdom into submission—was twice Jews’ proportion in the total population. But, notes Robert Philpot, the story of Anglo-Jewry’s contribution to the war efforts is little known:

When the British novelist Alan Fenton told a business acquaintance that his two much older brothers had died in World War II, he encountered a surprised response. After what Fenton recalled as an “embarrassed pause,” his lunchtime companion said: “I didn’t think Jews fought in the war.”

In addition to the story of Fenton’s twin brothers, both of whom were pilots, Philpot—drawing on testimonies collected by the Royal Air Force Museum—recounts the experiences of some other Jewish airmen:

Michael Oser Weizmann—the son of Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president, [and a] scientist like his father—was also an RAF pilot and worked for the Coastal Command Development Unit. Its job was to develop new technologies and tactics for coastal command aircraft in the Battle of the Atlantic. Weizmann, who flew Whitley bombers, was killed at the age of twenty-five in February 1942, when a plane he was traveling in developed engine failure and ditched in the Bay of Biscay.

Some of these pilots were quite frank about their motivations:

“Sir, I am a Jew, and my war with the enemy began long before September 1939,” Bernard Kregor told an officer who asked him why he was volunteering for the especially perilous task of navigating bombers.

The risk taken by Jews who joined the RAF was particularly high. If they were shot down over enemy territory and survived, an uncertain fate awaited them if it was discovered they were Jewish. Some Jewish airmen chose to remove their identity disc, which displayed their religion, before they took off from the UK. Others, however, refused to. Alfred Huberman, who took part in 38 operations, is still alive at the age ninety-seven. “I was born a Jew and I’ll die a Jew,” he said of his decision not to remove his disc.

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.