Weather It Is (Big Storm Coming)

Good Evening:

On Monday, temperatures in the Jerusalem area were quite chilly for this time of year.  At my home, in fact, it never rose about 6 degrees Celsius. Even more, for those pining for Spring, there's a big storm coming.

This storm will probably bring greater than 50 mm of rain to many locations, with localized heavier amounts.  There will also be strong winds and plenty of thunderstorms with hail.

The storm should be dropping in from the northwest late Friday/Shabbat Evening.  Ahead of the storm, it should feel more like spring as temperatures rise on southerly breezes.  However, the winds should bring plenty of dust, and then they will bring plenty of moisture with again unusually seasonably cold temperatures.

Because the storm should be arriving from the northwest, temperatures in the lower atmosphere should moderate ahead of it enough to bring only rain to the central mountains, with snow again above about 1100 m on the Golan.   The storm should be long lasting, with thunderstorms arriving Friday night, showers on Shabbat, and very heavy rain expected late Sunday, with rain lasting into late Monday or even Tuesday of next week.

It's a storm to reckon with.

The other day, there was a very unusual weather event in central Israel.  A tornado leveled a house, and if not for the quick action of the family to seek shelter, a terrible tragedy would have occurred (https://www.timesofisrael.com/father-says-its-a-miracle-family-survived-gaza-rocket-that-leveled-their-home/).  Actually, the event wasn't weather related, unless you believe that missile attacks from Gaza is something -- like the weather -- that we can't do anything about.

I have a suggestion, I must first digress and mention that to receive a driving license in Israel, the new driver to be is required to take 28 lessons.  Yet, to get married and have children no lessons are required at all!  Moreover, for the religious who take a few lesson on "family purity" they leave out the most important information for brides that their husbands will be far too often "Maetzben;" for the grooms they neglect to tell them that their wives -- for the most part -- will not mean what they say.  For new parents -- family tradition or not -- they forget to tell you that spanking your child doesn't lead to better behavior except in rare instances (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201802/the-spanking-debate-is-over).

Another solution is required for parents! In fact, the best book I ever read on how to raise well-behaved children is the book "SOS For Parents" (https://www.amazon.com/SOS-Practical-Handling-Everyday-Behavior-ebook/dp/B00O4HSN18).  Instead of a spank, the child is placed in "time-out;" a simple wind up kitchen time clock tracks one minute for every year of age.  I can tell that it works because I seen the results.

As I just pointed out, spanking doesn't work, and the big "spanking" the Israeli air-force gave to the HAMAS et al. will never stop the missile attacks, etc.  It was, in fact, just one of many spankings given over the last few years  (by the way, one should note that not a single Gazan was killed in more than hundred pin-point attacks).  The reason it doesn't work -- outside of HAMAS et al's obsession with killing every living Jew in the world -- is that we're dealing with children (or children masquerading as adults). Just listen to them speak: “We will not give up our duty to the blood of the martyrs shed by the occupation, and we know how to respond to this dangerous escalation."  This should be translated as: you hit me! (https://www.timesofisrael.com/islamic-jihad-vows-revenge-after-two-terror-group-members-killed-by-idf/).

So, I'd like to suggest a possible response that might work.  Every time a missile or mortar or infiltration occurs we should send Gaza (in it entirety) into time-out.  By this, we should simply stop the supply of electricity for a day (this is not "collective" punishment: we're under no obligation to provide electricity to another "country" and a people that wish our demise).  We should announce that we are calling a "time-out" from the insanity of providing electricity that HAMAS uses build the missiles that fly -- like clouds over the border -- to destroy our homes. Perhaps such outages will trigger enough protests (https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-self-immolates-on-3rd-day-of-gaza-protests-against-hamas/) to either force the leadership to grow up or find some real adults who are willing to accept true responsibility for governing the two million people who live in their playhouse.

Barry Lynn