On Friday, Hershel Shanks, the founder and long-time editor of the Biblical Archaeological Review, died at the age of ninety. A lawyer by training, Shanks since 1974 devoted himself to promoting the study of ancient Israel and making the latest scholarship accessible to the general public, earning the respect of many leading academics. His persistent efforts are largely responsible for freeing the Dead Sea Scrolls from the jealous guardianship of a small group of scholars, and their eventual publication. A moving tribute to Shanks by Christopher Rollston, an expert on ancient Hebrew inscriptions, can be found here.

While Shanks provided a forum for a variety of opinions in the pages of his journal, he also fought passionately against postmodernism as well as efforts to undermine, without scholarly basis, the Jewish and biblical connection to the Land of Israel. In a 1986 article in Commentary, he took to task Glen Bowersock, the former chairman of Harvard’s classics department, for accusing Israeli archaeologists of “tampering with history in the interest of the present,” of “tendentious falsification,” and of efforts to “suppress” inconvenient discoveries. Shanks, after methodically dismantling the specific charges, observed:

[A]lthough it is certainly true that Israelis are especially concerned with their own history, just as Arabs are especially concerned with theirs, the implications to be drawn from this are not those drawn by Bowersock—who in any case finds nothing but words of praise for such a “bias” when it appears in Arab scholarship. Jordan, he observes, has “provided enlightened support for research and excavation in pre-Islamic fields, with particular attention to the culture of the Nabateans who were the Arabs who preceded the Romans in the region.” Bowersock even lauds the Syrians and the Saudis.

[Yet as Bowersock is unwilling to acknowledge], Israeli scholars have made an enormous contribution to the study of early Arab cultures. Benjamin Mazar and Meir Ben-Dov have uncovered, and restored, previously unknown Arab palaces at the foot of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Abraham Negev, [a victim of Bowersock’s slanders], has excavated, and restored, several Nabatean sites in Israel’s Negev desert. Israeli scholars have made singular contributions to Islamic studies.

By contrast, the way in which Arab scholars deal with issues touching on Jewish history may be gleaned from an account in the Syria Times of a symposium in Damascus on Syrian archeology. According to this account, “All participants in the symposium emphasized that Hebrew, regardless of the suspect political purposes of Zionist allegations, is no more than a Canaanite dialect.” The symposium concluded that “The Canaanite heritage was the real source of Jewish legends. The Jewish rabbis plagiarized that precious treasure.”

It is, indeed, as Glen Bowersock writes, disturbing to see scholarship at the highest and most respected level made the dirty handmaiden of politics. It is especially chilling when, as in his own case, the accuser turns out to be the guilty party.

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.