Arab rock-throwers are getting more creative -- in a deadly way.

In the Middle East, rocks are plentiful, free, and sometimes lethal. Since ancient times, they have been a method of execution. So it is no wonder they have been a weapon of choice for Palestinian attackers.

On the evening of June 5, 2001, American citizens Benny and Batsheva Shoham were driving home after paying a condolence call in Ra'anana. Their five month-old son, Yehuda, was asleep in the back, strapped in his car seat. As they passed near an Arab village, Luban a-Sharkiya, rock-throwers attacked. One heavy rock crashed through the front windshield and struck the baby in his head, killing him.

The siren started to blare while we were still inside Ben Gurion airport, as if to remind us that we were arriving in the middle of the Gaza war. I was amazed at the calm of everyone in our large group as we retired to a safe area to be cleared. This was my fourth trip to Israel with the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project, and in retrospect, other than the siren and an empty Kotel plaza, you would hardly have known that a battle was raging a few miles away.

Although most people have heard of Birthright, the program that brings young Jews to Israel to awaken and strengthen their Jewish identity, few have heard of JWRP. It, too, leverages the magic of Eretz Yisrael to empower women to reach their potential as Jewish wives and mothers and thus transform their families and communities.

Source: The Yeshiva World    Squeezed into tighter and tighter spaces, airline passengers appear to be rebelling, taking their frustrations out on other fliers.

Three U.S. flights made unscheduled landings in the past eight days after passengers got into fights over the ability to recline their seats. Disputes over a tiny bit of personal space might seem petty, but for passengers whose knees are already banging into tray tables, every inch counts.

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In my last article, from early July, “Giving the Arabs Something to Lose,” I made an attempt to predict what was going to happen if a war began with Hamas. Afterwards, I received compliments that I had done a decent job with my predictions.

Frankly, I don’t know how good a job I did. There were a lot of surprises. Everything in real life proved to be more exaggerated than I had foreseen.

First of all, I could not have predicted the passions this war would raise in me. As a card-carrying fifth-generation American Litvak (all of whose ancestors came from Kovne), I am a fairly calm, passionless person. Yet in this war we discovered a ghoulish enemy that builds terror tunnels with which to engage in mass attacks on Israel, an enemy that revels in the death of its own citizenry. That enemy combines the more horrifying aspects of H.G. Well’s science fiction work The Time Machine with the first frightening movie I ever saw, a 1950’s B-movie called “Invasions from Mars,” and makes them look, by comparison, like “Bambi’s Greatest Adventure.”

When baby number two was born, and Yedidya was just 21 months old, I suddenly had to learn to play a whole new game. The game was called Who Needs Me More Right Now.

Infant Tzion is fussing in his chair, while Yedidya is trying to pour milk into a glass cup he somehow managed to get off the counter. Who wins?

Ding Ding. Yedidya wins. I walk over and gently hold the glass so he can learn independence – something I’m big on – without my having to deal with shattered glass all over the floor.

I love a lot of people who live in the U.S. Deep down, I don’t believe any of them will leave until it becomes truly untenable to be a Jew in America – and maybe not even then.

In chapter two of Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai sends his students out to discover which human quality is the very best one to acquire. Rabbi Shimon says, “haro’eh et hanolad,” meaning “seeing ahead,” or the ability to predict that which has not yet occurred.

Living in Israel, I feel blessed by many things. One of them is what I believe to be a certain clarity of vision about where the world is headed. This clarity doesn’t come from my imagination and is not simply my personal opinion. It comes from the teachings of my rabbis here in Israel, who base their teachings on Chazal.