The shooting at a kosher grocery store in New Jersey, in which four people were murdered, and the stabbing last weekend at a Hanukkah party in New York’s Rockland County—one victim is thought unlikely to recover—come on the heels of a longstanding trend of assaults on visibly Orthodox Jews. Eli Steinberg, himself a member of an Orthodox community in New Jersey, argues that such assaults have turned deadly because for so long they were ignored by the authorities and by society more broadly:

The animus against Orthodox Jews has been here for some time now, but in a more underhanded way, which made it easier to excuse and ignore. It has been here as towns and municipalities [such as] Chester in upstate New York [and] Jackson in central New Jersey used municipal planning and zoning laws to keep Orthodox Jews out.

It has been here in the way the media cover us, from highlighting negative stories involving Orthodox Jews inordinately and framing them in a way that reflects poorly on us all, to allowing people with an ax to grind against us to make whatever accusations they want about us with little to no substantiation.

And it has been here in the way some politicians talk about us, and how they get away with it. Few of us have forgotten the way Michael Bloomberg, in his closing days as mayor of New York, boasted to the Atlantic that he “took on” the Orthodox on a circumcision practice. “Who wants to have 10,000 guys in black hats,” he said, “outside your office, screaming?” Few of us have forgotten, but who else even noticed it at the time?

Acts of solidarity, such as marches and public statements, are an excellent start, but they are only a start. What is needed is a real change in how people relate to Orthodox Jews. . . . Sure, we look and dress differently, and our value system is much more traditional, putting us at odds with much of modern society. But we are, after all, still human beings.

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.