In the first step of a never-realized plan to invade Britain, the Nazis occupied several of the islands in the English Channel, among them Alderney—on which they then built four forced-labor camps. Archaeologists are now investigating the largest of these, known as Sylt. Robert Philpot writes:

[Sylt’s] inmates were mostly Eastern Europeans, although there was also a large contingent of French Jews. The French prisoners dubbed Alderney “le rocher maudit”—the accursed rock—underlining the brutality of the wind-swept, sea-beaten, and remote island. Its prewar civilian population of 1,400 people had been evacuated by the UK when, deeming them too difficult to defend, it pulled out of the Channel Islands after the fall of France in June 1940.

In a bid to disguise its crimes, the SS demolished much of the camp in 1944. That effort, combined with the fact that, for many years, the presence of concentration camps on British soil was something of a taboo subject, meant that Sylt was often dismissed as having been “destroyed” or “dismantled.”

There is, according to the archaeologist [leading the study, Caroline Sturdy Colls], “a long legacy” which goes back to immediately after the war when the British government was “not necessarily keen even to acknowledge that these camps existed on British soil.” That legacy also meant that a lot of archive material remained classified for many years.

The scale of the horror perpetrated on Alderney is hotly debated. Official accounts after the war figured that less than 400 of the slave laborers died on the island. Seventy years on, though, some historians and military experts suggest the workforce and the death toll have been grossly underestimated. . . . . Sturdy Colls . . . believes at least 700 slave laborers died, while labeling the figure a “very conservative estimate.”

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.