In Impossible Takes Longer: 75 Years after Its Creation, Has Israel Fulfilled Its Founders’ Dreams?, Daniel Gordis seeks to answer the question posed in the subtitle; he is sanguine, although reservedly so, in his conclusions. Among the sweeping array of evidence Gordis musters of the Jewish state’s success is its consistently high rankings in the annual World Happiness Report. “But,” observes Elliott Abrams in his review, “the goal of Zionism wasn’t happiness; it was survival.” It has achieved this goal as well:

Israel’s Declaration of Independence states that it is “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign state.” As Gordis writes, “we begin with an extraordinary fact—extraordinary in part because it now seems entirely natural—that the Jewish people can defend itself.” This is a complete inversion of the historic reality Jews had faced for 2,000 years. As Gordis says, “Power has done what it was meant to do: Jews are no longer victims on call.”

Gordis . . . argues that “Israel’s founders took upon themselves an impossible task” and “to a great degree, they succeeded.” They changed the existential condition of the Jewish people, after 2,000 years of statelessness and vulnerability. They did not create a state that is, in the words of their Declaration of Independence, “like all other nations,” but that is due to the enduring hostility that led to the denunciation of Zionism as racism in the United Nations, to wars in 1948, 1956, 1973, and to endless terrorist attacks that continue to this day.

Yet even without the vicious hostility, could Israel ever have been a “normal” state? Given the unique history of the Jewish people and of the new state of Israel, and given the waves of immigration that have formed the new society, Israel was never plausibly going to be “like all other nations.”

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.