A few years ago, an art historian came upon an ornate Tanakh—with drawings by the famed 19th-century illustrator Gustave Doré—for sale on eBay. He purchased it, and then donated it to a local synagogue. Four years later, its origins were pieced together. Nicole Asbury tells the story:

A father and son in Oberdorf, Germany in 1990 were renovating the home they’d just bought when they came across something unusual: a chest hidden behind a double wall in the attic. Tucked inside the chest was a large, gilded Jewish Bible that looked like it had been carefully placed there. It was heavy, about 22 pounds, and almost 30 inches long and three inches high. . . [T]he son held onto it for nearly 30 years. But in April 2017, he decided to sell it on eBay. . . .

The Bible, it turned out, was part of the legacy of Eduard and Ernestine Leiter, a Jewish couple from Stuttgart killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. . . . The Nazis forced them to move to Oberdorf . . . to live with seven other Jewish families. In August 1942, the Germans sent the couple to Theresienstadt, a ghetto and concentration camp outside Prague. Before the Leiters left the home in Oberdorf, they hid all their valuables and personal items—including their jewelry, some letters, and an 1874 edition of the Jewish Bible—in hopes of returning and retrieving their keepsakes. They never returned.

The Leiters’s son, Sali, was the lone survivor in the family. That’s when the family story becomes remarkable: Sali’s descendants—who did not know much about him—came to possess his parents’ Bible. It landed this summer on their doorstep in New York.

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.