At a public elementary school in California, the Parent-Teacher Association organized a Christmas-tree lighting; a Jewish parent then asked if she could bring a six-foot inflatable menorah to be positioned alongside the tree. The principal demurred and the issue soon wound up in a federal court, which ruled—based on a 1989 Supreme Court decision—that the school could display the tree, which is a secular symbol, but may not display the menorah, a specifically religious symbol, lest it violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Michael A. Helfand examines this counterintuitive finding:

Establishment-clause cases often function as a Rorschach test. But, at a minimum, there are good reasons to question the district court’s importation of a line from the Supreme Court’s 1989 opinion. In that case, County of Allegheny v. ACLU, the Supreme Court addressed multiple religious displays erected in Pittsburgh. One of the displays, set in front of a local government building, included a 45-foot Christmas tree, an 18-foot menorah, and a “salute to liberty sign” with the mayor’s name on it.

In the contemporary case, the Carmel River School sought to exclude, as opposed to include, the menorah in its display. So while some might not normally think of a Christmas tree as a religious symbol, that view might change when government officials prohibit the inclusion of a menorah by its side.

Under those circumstances, you might start to wonder whether the display has started to take on a narrower religious meaning. . . . In this way, the district court’s attempt to pluck a sentence from a 1989 Supreme Court opinion, drop it into a present-day dispute, and then call it a day may not be the most thorough and thoughtful way to deal with the case before it.

And yet, it’s hard not to end with the following relatively straightforward point. Notwithstanding all these contextual niceties and jurisprudential trends, it would be nice to think that—as we desperately seek ways to join together after so long apart—schools could find ways to make sure their students and their families all feel included in communal gatherings. After all we’ve been through, is it really so hard to make space for a 6-foot inflatable menorah?

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.