Looking at an Extraordinary Night with Multiple Dimensional Lens

With so much noise and distractions, it’s easy not to reflect or even quickly forget the extraordinary event of the major Iranian attack on Israel. The attack involved more than 120 ballistic missiles, 170 drones, and more than 30 cruise missiles, with the launches also coming from Iraq and Yemen. I am not sure most of us, including myself, can comprehend the potential damage to lives this attack could have incurred. I saw the photo of the missile that Israel received from the Dead Sea, and it was nothing short of astounding. According to the IDF, the Emad missile had an estimated 1,100-lb warhead. Only the missile’s fuel tank was recovered, as the warhead and engine were destroyed during its interception by the long-range Arrow air defense system. 

The missile’s fuel tank remains — 36 feet long and is just 70 percent of the entire projectile. The massive missile, one of 120 ballistic missiles fired at Israel, was found on Sunday morning floating in the Dead Sea. It had flown more than 1,500 kilometers from Iran to Israel in around 12 minutes. Just trying to imagine this missile slamming into a major population center is too horrific to contemplate. The missile defense system that Israel deployed with some help from others far exceeded expectations with over a 99% success rate. My understanding is that there should be a 90% rate of interception. That would mean one could have anticipated about 30 missiles to penetrate Israeli territory and cause catastrophic damages. 

The stated reason that did not occur is the superiority of the Israel missile defense program. That is, of course, true, and as a community of faith, we understand that this situation is not simply to be understood with a one-dimensional lens. It must be viewed with a multiple-dimensional lens that includes a spiritual lens and understands the hand of God in the background. 

King David states in Tehilim/Psalms 127, “unless God watches over the city, the watchman keeps vigil in vain.” According to Google Trends, the fifth most searched for term among Israelis on the night of the attack was Tehilim. There may have been millions of Jews reaching out to our Father in Heaven at the time of the attack. Anyone who is skeptical of the hand of God might dismiss this as a coincidence. As Pesach approaches and we retell our story again, we can’t escape the conclusion in the long game of history: the Guardian of Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers.