Israel's Castle Win Backfires - Drones Turn It Into Disaster

Israel's ongoing problems with Hezbollah's FPV drones have peaked again, as his conquest of a castle blows up in their faces. Right, so Saturday night into Sunday, Israeli troops climbed a hill in southern Lebanon, walked into a 900-year-old Crusader fortress called Beaufort, and ran two flags up over it, the flag of the state and the flag of the Golani Brigade. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, stood in front of a great big photograph of the place and called it a dramatic turning point in the policy he is pursuing. He said they had broken the barrier of fear. He said Israel was seizing the initiative on all fronts, in Syria, in Gaza, in Lebanon. Chest out, flag up, the lot. A fortress on a ridge and a prime minister doing his strongman face for the cameras, as if medieval stone, a camera crew, and a bit of blue and white cloth could somehow add up to security. And then, the very same night, on the very same front, within a few hours of that flag going up, a 21-year-old Israeli soldier called Michael Tyukin was killed where he stood by a drone that costs less than the camera Netanyahu filmed his little speech on. Four more soldiers wounded in the same strike. Tyukin was the twenty-fifth Israeli soldier killed on this front since the start of March, and the weapon that killed him is one the Israeli military has openly admitted it cannot reliably stop. So that is the turning point. That is the broken barrier of fear. A castle taken at the top of the hill and a coffin filled at the bottom of it, by something you could order the parts for off your phone.