In addition to the recent stabbing and shooting murders of Israeli Jews by Palestinian terrorists, there has been a marked increase in rock-throwing, some of it fatal. Its perpetrators tend to be teenagers or children—and this, writes Ruthie Blum, is part of the strategy:

It is precisely due to the young age of these budding terrorists that Israeli security services are in as much of a bind as they are under scrutiny. It is one thing for a soldier to open fire on an adult wielding a weapon defined as such; it is quite another to shoot kids throwing “stones.”

This is . . . why Abbas has not condemned the most recent murders. He is behind them in word and deed. Such violence also gives the Palestinian Authority president a “twofer”: dead Jews on the one hand, and potential Palestinian casualties—that can and will be attributed to IDF brutality—on the other. It is a win-win situation for the otherwise weak and unpopular leader.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.