During his 1961 trial, the Israeli court ruled that the prosecution could not use the extensive audio recordings of Adolf Eichmann’s conversations before his capture by the Mossad. Since then, the tapes have been kept away from the public; it was only in 2011 that a German researcher used them along with other evidence to demonstrate conclusively what had been apparent to many: that Eichmann was not the thoughtless cog in the machine that Hannah Arendt had made him out to be in her famous book, but a fanatical anti-Semite. Recently a group of Israeli filmmakers gained access to the tapes, and used them in producing a new documentary about the man who played a major role in coordinating the Holocaust. Isabel Kershner writes:

The tapes were made by Willem Sassen, a Dutch journalist and a Nazi SS officer and propagandist during World War II. Part of a group of Nazi fugitives in Buenos Aires, he and Eichmann embarked on the recording project with an eye to publishing a book after Eichmann’s death. Members of the group met for hours each week at Sassen’s house, where they drank and smoked together.

Exposing Eichmann’s visceral, ideological anti-Semitism, his zeal for hunting down Jews and his role in the mechanics of mass murder, the [documentary] brings the missing evidence from the trial to a mass audience for the first time. Eichmann can be heard swatting a fly that was buzzing around the room and describing it as having “a Jewish nature.”

He told his interlocutors that he “did not care” whether the Jews he sent to Auschwitz lived or died. Having denied knowledge of their fate in his trial, he said on tape that the order was that “Jews who are fit to work should be sent to work. Jews who are not fit to work must be sent to the Final Solution, period,” meaning their physical destruction.

“If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, I would say with satisfaction, ‘Good, we destroyed an enemy.’ Then we would have fulfilled our mission,” he said, referring to all the Jews of Europe.

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.