Some 30 years after purchasing a used copy of The Redemption of the Unwanted: From the Liberation of the Death Camps to the Founding of Israel, by Abram Sachar—first published in 1983—Allan Arkush finally sat down to read it. He writes:

I have to say that it doesn’t contain much that I didn’t already know. Its chief merit is that it does an exceptionally good job of teaching what I consider to be a very important lesson.

Most people in the United States, I’m afraid, if they know anything at all about how the state of Israel came into being, believe that after World War II the nations of the world awarded it to the Jewish people as a compensation for what Jews had suffered at the hands of the Nazis. There’s a grain of truth in this, but only a grain. Between 1945 and 1949, the Zionists had to do a tremendous number of things on their own in order to obtain a state. They engaged in a vast amount of worldwide politicking, organized illegal immigration to Palestine, combatted the British administration in Palestine in order both to earn the world’s sympathy and to force the British government’s hand. Had the Zionists not done all of this, there would have been no decision at the United Nations to partition Palestine and create a Jewish state.

And had the Jews of Palestine then sat on their hands and waited for the UN to implement its decision, that state would never have come into being. They had to fight, on their own, a war of independence against the Arabs of Palestine as well as all of the surrounding nations. Abram Sachar was by no means the first or the last to explain all of this, but he did a singularly good job of it.

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.