The World Health Assembly—the annual meeting of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO)—will conclude in Geneva tomorrow. As it has every year since 1968, it dedicated part of its time to discussing “health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.” The fact that this is a permanent yearly agenda item for the assembly has nothing to do with any special medical circumstances in these areas, nor with any particular ability the WHO has to provide healthcare to their inhabitants. Rather, it is another example of the capture of the United Nations by the anti-Israel movement. David May explains:

The WHO’s 2021 report on Israel, like ones before it, made no mention of Hamas’s deleterious effects on Palestinian healthcare. During the 2014 war, Hamas operated out of Gaza’s Shifa hospital, turning its doctors into human shields. While Gaza was in a COVID-19 lockdown in August 2020, Hamas launched numerous incendiary devices at Israel, thereby increasing Israel’s restrictive measures on the coastal enclave. Hamas has a long history of abusing medical travel permits to Israel to conduct terrorist attacks. And Hamas diverts Palestinian funds that could have provided for healthcare to instead provide for deadly weapons. None of this made the cut.

The WHO report clarified that the Palestinian Authority (PA) severed ties with Israel in May 2020 “in the context of the further annexation of large parts of the West Bank announced by Israel,” but failed to mention that the annexation never occurred. The termination of ties undoubtedly hindered the collaborative healthcare efforts necessary to fight a pandemic.

[But] the report’s main flaw is that it [makes] Israel . . . the only country subject to an annual resolution and report. . . . When the Biden administration announced it would resume funding for the WHO last year, it promised to pursue reforms of the agency. But the administration’s engagement-only strategy hasn’t curtailed the WHO’s anti-Semitism.

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.