While taking a solitary hike a few days ago, Eve Barlow espied a former friend, someone who had turned to her many times for advice and encouragement, but had for over a year given her the cold shoulder. Their falling-out occurred because Barlow was anathematized by the liberal journalistic circles in which both women traveled. Her sin? Criticizing the anti-Semitism within the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2020, and some of the other excesses of that moment. She reflects on the experience of being cancelled just when her star as a writer was on the rise:

The weekend of the initial BLM protests in Los Angeles, synagogues were vandalized, . . . and I put my foot in it. I tweeted “How dare you,” and all hell broke loose.

It was decreed that I was a racist by my entire industry. And I remember talking to this [same friend], and talking to my former editor at [the men’s magazine] GQ, who elicited empathy towards me but said that I’d had a “mini yikes” moment. Meanwhile everyone else was having a major yikes moment, in my opinion, becoming indoctrinated en masse.

Slowly but surely, the Internet began celebrating its hatred of me. People I’d known for years, who [had long curried my favor], turned on a knife’s edge against me—and with glee. The editor of [the influential music company] Bandcamp wrote some heinous bile about me being a hysterical mad woman; ironic given her affinity for feminism. A few months went by and I realized that I was no longer receiving the round-robin record-review emails from the editors at [the music-criticism website] Pitchfork, and . . . I noticed that all the staff writers, and my editor, had stopped following me [on social media].

The entire staff at Vulture unfollowed me if not on the same day, definitely within days of each other. I wish I knew if it was the same day, and I wouldn’t doubt there wasn’t some directive about it.

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.