On June 15, the U.S.-based far-left New Israel Fund (NIF) distributed a press release decrying a proposal before Israel’s legislature to outlaw the filming of Israeli soldiers. Left-wing activists and journalists quickly joined in denouncing an authoritarian assault on freedom of speech by preventing news coverage of allegedly misbehaving troops; a major television channel aired a heated debate over the bill between an activist and a right-wing politician. Two days later NIF claimed that the bill had made it through the committee—the first of four votes required for such a bill to become law—and was on its way to making it through the Knesset. But, writes Haviv Rettig Gur, the entire episode was a sham:

[The parliamentarian] Robert Ilatov did, in fact, pen [such] a bill. . . . But he didn’t do so because he thought it might pass, or even because he wanted it to pass. As anyone with more than a [little] familiarity with Israeli politics . . . can attest, right-wing lawmakers use such bills to get their names in the newspaper in a nation where news events come at a fevered pace and no mere press release from a junior politician has much hope of getting noticed. The most effective way to get noticed, right-wing lawmakers have discovered, is to trigger the left into a public-relations campaign against them. . . .

The fact that his bill forbidding all filming of IDF soldiers had no hope of becoming the law of the land was the only reason Ilatov allowed himself to propose it in the first place. . . .

As for the bill that made it through the June 17 committee meeting, it no longer forbids filming IDF soldiers. Any filming, for it to become illegal under the stipulations of the new bill, would have to be part of an activist’s already-illegal efforts to obstruct the soldiers’ work. . . . Even now, with the bill so thoroughly gutted as to be unrecognizable, it is not at all clear it can pass in the Knesset. Even the Jewish Home party, the farthest right one gets in the current Knesset, isn’t eager to support it. . . .

[Yet] just about everyone got what they wanted [from the exercise]: the bill’s supporters got to pretend they were defending Israel’s soldiers, and in the bargain that they’re just illiberal enough to satisfy a right-wing base that dislikes liberal pearl-clutching. The NIF and [the Israeli human-rights group] B’Tselem dutifully supplied the pearl-clutching about “tyrants” and got to pretend in their turn that they alone stood athwart history, holding aloft the torch of transparency and liberty in a slowly darkening world. For organizations that fundraise among low-information foreign donors, it’s hard to imagine a better narrative. . . .

But there were losers, too, in this exercise. Israel as a whole, of course, was depicted by its own lawmakers as a nation that could seek to prevent citizens from filming misbehaving troops. [And] IDF soldiers [were] besmirched by the claim that their “morale” is so fragile and their behavior so troubling that photographing them should carry a ten-year prison term.

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.