The Best Present

When my brother turned 8-1/2 years old, he was given the best present of his life. Now, 25-1/2 years later, I get the pleasure of noting that he is more than two-thirds of the way to 50 years old, turning a grand old 34 years of age today. Happy birthday, OD! :)

A bunch of interesting pieces that aren't worth whole posts but are worth noting...

• A good friend of ours served in a new unit of the IDF during the war, sending off drones that look like model planes (but weigh a ton) and then live monitoring from the front-line command centers in Gaza, embedded with Golani brigades, what was just ahead of advancing troops. Street by street, they'd help the troops they were with move forward safely. The article about the unit is here in English and Hebrew; the Hebrew version has a video of a drone launch.
• Merkaz HaRav - A moving interview with the man who stopped the terrorists, David Shapira, at Jameel's; and Robert Avrech publicizes a wide unity event scheduled for the upcoming yahrtzeit of those who were killed.
  
• Last stuff on Gaza for now: Note how little the newscaster for Al-Arabiya cares that rockets were launched from right under her; lyrics to the song by R' Aviner; amazing to see people claim that the smuggling tunnels are mostly gone, while FOX can watch them smuggle things live and even talk to the smugglers about it; two commentaries on the post-mortem of the war, with different stances - yet both quite well written and interesting; and finally, a map of part of Gaza City noting schools, other buildings, and of course, rocket launchers and the like.