Although it is the extremes of campus anti-Israel activism that most often make headlines, Hussein Aboubakr observes that belief that the Jewish state is demonic is an unquestioned axiom in many academic departments:

[T]he anti-Zionist stance . . . has become a supposition of most social-science scholarship treating the modern Middle East or modern Muslim societies. This, in significant part, is an uncritical acceptance of the Palestinian and Arab nationalist narrative as the historical account of the beginning of Middle Eastern political modernity, which is often annexed into a post-colonial anti-Western ideological perspective—resting on a historical condemnation of capitalism as the ideological source of all evils of Western imperialism—that is so deeply entrenched in the social sciences today.

[T]he hostility towards Israel is not an outcome of an analytical process but a presupposition of a scholarly construct with coercive contents that delegitimatize alternative views. It is impossible to understand such hostility without understanding the ideological worldview of which it is a part and is the default position of mainstream Middle East scholarship. This has led to a situation where the assumption that Israel is a colonialist oppressive power is often used as a starting point to construct further analytical structures unrelated to Israel or the Middle East. Israel has become merely a point of reference used for comparative purposes that indirectly passes the condemnatory judgment on Israel to the students.

An example of this would be how in a theoretical scholarly discussion about state coercive power and democracy in The Dark Side of Democracy, a book by the UCLA professor Michael Mann, Israel is casually and indirectly accused of murder and compared unfavorably to the Soviet Union and socialist Yugoslavia. . . . Suffice it to say, for Mann’s arguments to proceed, the student has to accept his presuppositions and his examples uncritically.

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.