Yesterday, early voting began in the runoff election for Georgia’s Senate seats, which will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the legislature’s upper house. One contest pits the Republican Kelly Loeffler against the Democrat Raphael Warnock, a pastor with a history of using his pulpit to rail against the Jewish state. Jonathan Tobin remarks:

When Warnock compared Israel to apartheid-era South Africa in a sermon, he probably wasn’t looking ahead to a run for the U.S. Senate. Nor was he thinking about how best to mobilize the support of leftist Jewish groups when he compared the Palestinian war on Israel’s existence to the Black Lives Matter movement, or denounced moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Likewise, defending Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor before he became president, came naturally to Warnock since he shares the radical Chicago clergyman’s [hostility toward] America and Israel, as well his belief that Jesus was a “Palestinian” rather than a Jew. Like Wright, Warnock has also defended himself by preemptively declaring himself innocent of anti-Semitism.

Warnock’s 2018 sermon in which he defended Hamas rioters who sought to breach Israel’s border with Gaza in the name of the “right of return”—which is indistinguishable from the terrorist group’s ongoing campaign to wipe the one Jewish state on the planet off the map—was not a question of a few off-hand remarks. He went into detail, claiming the violent attack on the border was comparable to U.S. civil-rights demonstrations, and falsely asserted that Israeli soldiers defending their country were committing indiscriminate murder.

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.