A favorite and seemingly perennial talking point of American Israel-haters is the disproportionate military aid Washington supposedly lavishes on the Jewish state. To support their contention, they cite the numbers, which suggest a larger package from Washington than what goes to any other state. But, writes James Kirchick, this figure obscures the truth:

At the height of the cold war, some 400,000 American soldiers were deployed in Europe, ready to risk their lives in case of a Soviet invasion, and American soldiers remain stationed (albeit in far fewer numbers) across the continent [today]. In Asia, the United States has some 30,000 troops based in South Korea, where they lie in easy range of a bellicose, nuclear-armed dictatorship to the north. Roughly 50,000 U.S. soldiers are positioned in Japan. Across the entire Pacific theater, the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force have about 400,000 Americans deployed to contain a rising China, respond to natural disasters, and deter a nuclear-armed Pyongyang.

America’s military commitment to its Asian allies, like its commitment to its European allies, requires more risk and sacrifice than its arrangement with Israel. . . . And these allies lie under our nuclear umbrella, meaning that conflicts on either continent could theoretically ensnare the United States in nuclear war. . . .

By contrast, no American soldiers are stationed in Israel. The U.S. instead expects the Jewish state to use military aid to defend itself. Kirchick continues:

Viewed in this light, U.S. military aid to Israel looks less like the special dispensation of a powerful ethnic lobby and more like the logical extension of America’s postwar power projection. It is not all that spectacular compared with U.S. defense arrangements with the dozens of countries it is obliged to defend, up to and including with weapons of mass destruction. Of course, U.S. support for Israel has an emotional dimension, as the passionate [recent] speeches at AIPAC invoking the Holocaust attest. But much the same can be said for the United States’ military arrangements with Estonia, South Korea, and Taiwan: all are small, vulnerable democracies facing authoritarian, rapacious adversaries, and this underdog quality animates American public support. Yet for some reason, none of these alliances engenders anywhere near the same sort of antipathy as does the one between the United States and the world’s only Jewish state.

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.