Battle Stations!

When we moved to our new location, around Pesach time, we knew that it was near a busy Air Force base. We also knew that it was just about in rocket range from Gaza, although thank G-d, no rockets actually landed in the neighborhood during Operation Cast Lead – just in a lot of fields very close by.
 
It’s absolutely amazing how many of those rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists happen to ‘just land in fields’, and not hurt anyone. When you live here, and you get told that a few more rockets just happened to land ‘in a field’ or ‘in an empty parking lot’ or in a ‘deserted’ bit of wasteland, you really start to believe that the Palestinians are almost playing at being at war.
 
Which would be a massive mistake.
 
Recently, I started reading The Garden of Gratitude by Rav Arush. In it, he mentions some of the amazing open miracles that happened during Operation Cast Lead; not least, the fact that so many of the terrorist rockets landed in ‘unoccupied’ areas, with no one around.
 
I thought this was happening so much because the Palestinians were sawing off bits of pipe, sticking some sort of basic rocket thing in it and sending it off with no idea where it was going to land.
 
But again, this is a massive mistake. In the book, Rav Arush quotes an interview with a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, where someone basically asked him why they were failing to score very many direct hits on Israeli population centers, most of which are very close to Gaza, as the rocket flies.
 
His answer was astounding. He basically said that the Palestinians are using pretty much the most up-to-date, technologically-superior rockets on the market. The rockets are computer guided, and it should be that you put the co-ordinates into the rocket, and a few minutes later, it explodes exactly where you sent it.
 
Let’s be clear: the Palestinians are not programming their rockets to fall in unpopulated areas of the Negev; neither are they programming their rockets to fall in random ‘empty fields’. There are two very big cities very close to Gaza – Ashdod and Ashkelon. Both are easily in rocket range. What’s more, there are a bunch more big cities just a few short minutes’ drive up the road from Ashdod – also, presumably, in rocket range.
 
It’s not that no rockets fell in both these places, and the areas around. They did. Lots of them. Some of them even fell directly on Ashdod and Ashkelon; but in nearly every single case, there were no fatalities. One fell on a petrol station on Shabbat, when the petrol station happened to be closed – and failed to explode.
 
One fell next to a very busy kindergarten – when there were no kids there. One fell on a mall, on Shabbat, that was open on Shabbat, and exploded – with hardly any serious injuries.
 
Perhaps the most ‘notable’ of all, the last rocket to fall on Ashdod, was after a cease-fire had already been announced. Every other time during Operation Cast Lead, Ashdod’s early-warning siren system went off, and the residents rushed off to their bomb shelters.
 
That last time, no siren went off, so no-one went anywhere in Ashdod: that last rocket scored a direct-hit on an empty bomb shelter, exploding it to pieces. If people had been in it, there would have been a lot of serious casualties, G-d forbid. As it was, no one was hurt.
 
Miracle after miracle. And even the Hamas terrorists are amazed by it all, and attribute it 100% to ‘The G-d of the Jews’, who thank G-d, continues to watch over and protect us in a way that most of us can’t even fathom.
 
The Gaza War was nearly two years ago, so why am I writing about it now? Because for the last two weeks, there is a palpable sense where I live of preparing for battle stations. Every few days, sirens are going off – test sirens, that just maintain one long note, instead of real ones that oscillate up and down.
 
Every hour or so, a few more jet fighters go roaring overhead, even though we were told when we moved here that a) they aren’t allowed to fly low over the yishuv (Hebrew for settlement) unless there’s a very good reason and b) they never fly low over the yishuv during the night, unless there is a genuine mission.
 
In the last week, I’ve been woken up twice by jets and helicopter gunships, flying low, over the yishuv, in the small hours of the morning. I don’t read the news, but the people who do don’t seem to have noticed that Israel is currently (or should I say, ‘actively’) at war; but clearly, something is going on.
 
It can be quite nerve-wracking to live in a place where sirens are constantly being tested, and F16s are constantly flying overhead – even in ‘peace time’. I’ve been in Israel for over five years now, and experienced two wars already – but not ‘first hand’.
 
During Lebanon II, no rockets made it further south than Hadera. During Operation Cast Lead, nothing really went further than Ashdod, to the North, or route three, towards Jerusalem.
 
If something kicks off this time, G-d forbid, we are bang in the middle of the rocket zone – but really, so is all of Israel. It’s a potentially terrifying situation. Until we remember about all those rockets that landed in ‘empty fields’, ‘empty buildings’ and ‘deserted areas’.
 
All those hi-tech, computer-programmed rockets that knew exactly where they were trying to go, but kept getting diverted to ‘nowhere’ by the One Above.
 
Lots of people get very antsy when you talk about miracles. They go on and on about ‘not relying on miracles’. Nearly all of them don’t live in Israel. Living here is one big miracle. Every day free of hostilities is one big miracle. Every rocket that lands in an empty field is one big miracle.
 
We Jews simply couldn’t continue to live here any other way. And the biggest miracle of all is that Hashem is doing it all practically for free. OK, there are a lot of great Jews here, but by no means is the whole country populated by tzadikim.
 
Hashem is continuing to protect us, even though so many of us don’t keep His mitzvot very well; He’s continuing to protect us even though we still waste so much precious time and spiritual energy bickering and fighting with each other; He’s continuing to protect us, even though there is very little ‘payback’, or even recognition and basic thanks for all the things He’s doing for us.
 
Why? It can only be, because He loves us. He loves us, and He wants Am Yisrael to be back in the land of Israel, back together as a single people with a single ‘soul’, and back doing our job of serving Hashem in His holy Beit Hamikdash.
 
What it comes down to is that we aren’t ‘relying on miracles’ to be in Israel; we’re relying on Hashem’s love. And as far as I know, no-one ever said that you couldn’t or shouldn’t rely on that.