In his testimony last week before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Michael Weiss outlined the history of Islamic State (IS) from its previous incarnation as al-Qaeda in Iraq to the present, and explained the reasons for its success. Along the way, he noted that for some time IS has been connected to attacks on European Jews:

In the mid-2000s, Germany’s foreign-intelligence service . . . reportedly uncovered a cell [taking orders from IS’s founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi], operating in the Ruhr region of Germany, responsible for the manufacture of fake passports for use in Afghanistan. Agents of that cell were plotting grenade attacks against the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

As it happens, a decade later, a different Jewish Museum—this one in Brussels—was assaulted by one of Zarqawi’s heirs, the twenty-nine-year-old French-Algerian Mehdi Nemmouche, who shot and killed three people following his return from Syria, where he’d not only trained with IS but also acted as a prison guard and particularly zealous torturer of Western hostages.

As for the current American strategy to defeat Islamic State, Weiss contends that it is doomed to fail as long as the U.S. and its allies are seen as demonstrating callousness, or worse, toward Sunni Muslims:

IS presents itself as the sole custodian and defender of Sunni Islam, practitioners of which, it argues, have been systematically targeted for murder, dispossession, and disinheritance [with the approval or support of the United States] since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when a Sunni-minority regime led by Saddam Hussein was toppled and a Shiite-majority government came to power through democratic vote. . . .

Why else, [if not because of anti-Sunni animus, say IS propagandists], do American warplanes and drones bomb only Sunni extremists but not those extremists loyal to Bashar al-Assad, who have burned people alive, and ethnically cleansed villages, and disappeared tens of thousands in dungeons, and displaced millions either internally or externally, and killed hundreds of thousands using every weapon in his arsenal, including sarin gas and the specially devised “barrel bomb”?

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.