The end of the past year saw the conclusion of four legal proceedings that placed anti-Semitic murderers on the dock. On December 16, a French court convicted fourteen people for their involvement in the 2015 killing spree that targeted the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and thereafter a kosher supermarket. In Germany last October, a court sentenced the neo-Nazi Stephan Balliet to life in prison for attempting a massacre at a synagogue on Yom Kippur of 2019, and for two murders he committed after the attempt failed. Ben Cohen notes that, although both courts delivered guilty sentences, there were important difference is their handling of the respective crimes:

One . . . has to factor in the reluctance—not to say distaste—within the French judiciary for acknowledging any anti-Semitic motives among defendants in crimes that involve Jewish victims, even when these are staring them in the face, as lawyers for the victims’ families pointed out several times during the harrowing six-month trial. This was certainly not the issue with Balliet’s trial in Germany, where the searing hatred of Jews that drove his assault was front and center in the courtroom proceedings.

Neither of the two individuals murdered by Balliet was Jewish. . . . Nonetheless, both of these people were victims of anti-Semitic violence, irrespective of whether they happened to be Jewish. To say otherwise is to separate Jews out from the rest of society.

I would argue that much the same judgment can be made concerning the Paris attacks, where Jewish and general institutions were targeted. . . . In accordance with their extreme Islamist ideology—for [French killers] “the Jews” were at the root of the evil that enabled Charlie Hebdo to print cartoons that lampooned the prophet Mohammad. Just as for Balliet, “the Jews” were the reason why Germany had permitted the entry of hundreds of thousands of Syrian war refugees during 2015. That is why, when asked to explain his preference for shooting up a synagogue over a mosque, Balliet answered that he wanted to “fight the cause, not the symptoms.”

But while both trials resulted some measure of justice, this was not the case elsewhere:

Last week, a court in Buenos Aires acquitted Carlos Telleldin, a car-dealer charged with having supplied the truck that was used in the devastating July 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in the Argentine capital. The day after that decision, which roiled Argentina’s Jewish community, a court on the other side of the globe in Sindh, Pakistan, released the four men accused of orchestrating the 2002 abduction and beheading of the American Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl.

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.