A few days ago, I got a WhatsApp message from a good friend who is a senior executive at Microsoft and who wasn’t exactly a G-d-fearing Jew. Until the night of the missile attack.
Here is what he wrote me:
“If you’re looking for miracles man - last night I started believing. Missiles hit all around me but none of them hit my house or any house, for that matter.”
He elaborated some more and shared info about the missiles that he watched land just meters away from very strategic places in Israel, to say the least.
Each one of those defense systems is, in and of itself, pretty miraculous, but what is even more insane is the low casualty numbers from the rockets and missiles that were NOT intercepted.
Where did those missiles go? I’ll tell you where. They landed in sand, in water, and in “empty spaces”.
Have you been to Israel? It’s a microscopic country. What empty spaces? Where are these empty spaces?
How have hundreds of Iranian ballistic missiles all either get detonated by miraculous systems or totally miss their mark and land in empty spaces causing zero casualties and minimal damage?
How?
Listen, I get it. This thought process begs the question, where was G-d during the horrible terrorist attack in Jaffa? Where was He on October 7th? Where was He during the Holocaust?
All valid questions that require a serious nuanced conversation.
But if you know anything about what had to happen the night Iran attacked Israel and throughout this war in general, for such a low number of casualties, you’ll know that what we witnessed last night was the equivalent of G-d splitting the sea.
Guess what, when G-d split the sea, there were those who didn’t believe it was a miracle and didn’t jump in. And there are also those who feel the need to explain it naturally. Ok, that’s fine.
You don’t want to call yesterday an act of G-d? That’s your choice, but like my Microsoft friend, if you look at these events objectively, you’d have a really hard time seeing those hundreds of deadly missiles land in empty spaces and not see the hand of G-d.
That missile attack was an incredible display of the collaboration between two of the powers that protect the Jewish people: The IDF and G-d.
That night will go down in history right alongside many of Israel’s accomplishments in this war including the beepers and the unprecedented low ratio between combatant and civilian, as a military operation the likes of which the world has never seen. Ever!
That night will be analyzed by military strategists and experts for generations.
That night, we witnessed history.
That night we witnessed open miracles.
That night, we witnessed G-d watching over His children.
