In the country’s most recent presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left “France Rising” party, won about 20 percent of the votes, placing him just behind the two leading contenders. Unlike his British or American counterparts, he rarely takes pains to disguise his anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism. Last week, in the manner typical of conspiracy-mongers, he insinuated that both a 1980 synagogue bombing and the brutal murder of a Jewish family in 2012 were somehow cooked up by the “deep state” to manipulate public opinion. Ben Cohen writes:

Asked how French police officers should react to violent protesters, Mélenchon suggested that the cops should adopt the poise of Jesus during his crucifixion by the Romans. “They should stay put like Jesus without reacting,” he opined. Then he added, “I don’t know if Jesus was on a cross, but he was apparently put there by his own people.”

Those bizarre sentences were never going to persuade the French police to lay down their beloved tear-gas canisters, batons, and water cannons. But anyone who was listening was conveniently reminded of the ultimate Jewish crime—the original sin, no less, from which all of the subsequent “misdeeds” of the Jewish people are descended.

Indeed, it’s striking that so many of Mélenchon’s barbs against Jews, which are often expressed in the rhetoric of anti-capitalism, rely on the basest tropes. In 2013, he charged that the then-finance minister Pierre Moscovici, who is not Jewish but has a Jewish-sounding name, was a member of the “Eurogroup bastards” (otherwise known as the finance ministers of the European Union) who “behaves like someone who has stopped thinking in French, like someone who thinks only in the language of international finance.”

[I]n Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the anti-Semitisms of left and right intermingle, with support for the Palestinians and the boycott, divest, and sanction campaign against Israel sitting comfortably alongside xenophobic jibes about uppity Jews forgetting their place. It is the worst of both worlds.

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.