CHANUKAH 5785, SECTION A, PAGE 4
I sat down to write about the eight miracles the Jewish people have witnessed since last Chanukah. Nice parallel to Chanukah. Was I wrong! As I mentally reviewed the current miracles, I saw: Eight is not enough. And I am not even counting the primary miracle of Israel’s daily self-defense against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. The following 14 miracles only highlight Israel’s success against those committed to its destruction.
Needless to say, alongside the miracles since last Chanukah, we have borne tragic losses: the brave IDF soldiers killed in battle, the bereaved families, the widowed and orphaned, the wounded, the displaced, the hostages brutally kept or murdered.
No doubt, the Maccabees, in their victory over the Syrian Greeks, suffered similar losses.
Yet, once a year, we remember the Maccabees’ victory. We celebrate it. We remember the spirit of the victors and their commitment to the Divine Service in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. In their spirit, I remember the many miracles since Chanukah one year ago. I likely omitted some — there have been so many.
We, too, have witnessed the deliverance of the “many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the righteous.”
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1. April 1, Embassy:Israel’s pinpoint bombing of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, killing a critical Iranian figure in the Iran-Hezbollah relationship, as well as other members of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“Pinpoint” is precise, as precise as can be. Iran’s ambassador to Syria, housed right next door to Iran’s embassy, was unharmed. Likewise, right next door on the other side of Iran’s embassy stood Canada’s embassy, empty since 2012. It was slightly damaged — a few broken windows.
Background: On Oct. 8, 2023 — the day after Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel — Hezbollah opened a second front by launching missile strikes on civilian locales in Israel. Hezbollah distracted Israeli troops from their primary military purpose of destroying the Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Hezbollah’s steady rocket attacks on Israel intensified Israel’s efforts to halt the delivery of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah. Hence, Israel’s pinpoint targeting of the Iran-Hezbollah liaison.
2. April 13, Missiles: Israel’s destruction of virtually every missile that Iran fired on Israel.
Like the miracle of our daily existence — the billions of cellular processes in our bodies that work right — we have come to take for granted Israel’s air defenses. In Ronald Reagan’s time, it was mocked as “Star Wars.” Today, it’s Israel’s reality, which makes it no less of a miracle.
Background: Iran’s missile attack, in collaboration with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, was in response to Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, April 1.
At the time of the bombing, Israel’s move was seen as bold and unprecedented. President Biden was angry at Israel. No one could have imagined last April how tame Israel’s attack on Iran’s embassy would seem five months later, when Israel destroyed some 80% of Hezbollah’s military assets, and eight months later, when Israel destroyed some 80% of Syria’s military assets (see Miracles #10 and #14).
3. May 19, Plane crash: The death in a plane crash of the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, along with his foreign minister.
Background: President Raisi, though billed as a moderate, never veered from Iran’s aim of destroying Israel, an aim it broadcasts proudly.
In Raisi’s death, we introduce the common denominator between the miracle of his demise and most of the following miracles: the unexpected demise of pivotal anti-Semites with blood on their hands, who thirsted for more.
4. June 8, Rescue: Israel’s rescue of four hostages held in a home in the heart of Gaza, in a daring, unusual daylight raid.
Context: Tragically, many Gazans died during the rescue, since the hostages were human shields, kept in a home next to a crowded market.
Related miracle: Israel’s rescue of an Israeli Bedouin on Aug. 27, once again giving lie to the inaccurate charge that Israel is a racist society (picture below).
Update: One of the rescued hostages, Almog Jan Meir, spoke in Aspen this week.
5. July 13, Lethal strike: Israel’s strike against Mohammad Deif, the commander of Hamas’ military, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
Background: Deif was one of the main executioners of the Oct. 7 massacre and of the subsequent war against Israel.
Context: The assassination of Deif is an indication of the sophistication of Israel’s intelligence.
Update:Hamas denied that Deif was killed until Nov. 2.
Further update: Despite Deif’s death, the International Criminal Court, in a farcical attempt at “balance, issued an arrest warrant for the dead Deif together with its arrest warrant against Prime Minister Netanyahu.
6. July 30, Lethal strike:Israel’s lethal strike in a Beirut suburb against Fuad Shukr, listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US for helping kill 241 Marines in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983, but more particularly targeted by Israel for his key role in killing 12 Druze children on a soccer field in Majdal Shams, a town on the Golan Heights, on July 27.
Background: The killing of the Druze children was Hezbollah’s deadliest attack on Israel after Oct. 8, 2023.
Israel’s attack on Shukr stunned Hezbollah; again, not only for the loss of this major military leader but also for Israel’s intelligence capabilities — and Israel’s willingness to act on them in the heart of Beirut.
7. July 31, Lethal strike: The death of the political head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, at the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran.
Context: Apparently assassinated by Israel via a covertly planted bomb in a guesthouse, or via a missile, Haniyeh’s death shook both Iran and Hamas, not only for the Hamas leader’s death, but for Israel’s penetration of Iranian security in the heart of Iran’s capital. Presumably, security was tightest at the celebratory inauguration — but not tight enough.
8. Sept. 17-18, Pagers: Israel’s explosion of the pagers and walkie talkies of hundreds of Hezbollah fighters.
Context: This unprecedented, near magical action accomplished five goals:
1. The death or severe disabling of Hezbollah terrorists.
2. The breakdown in communication among the terrorists. (One mocking cartoon a day later showed a carrier pigeon with the name Hezbollah emblazoned on it, captioned, “Reporting for duty.”)
3. The exposure of hundreds of Lebanese whom neighbors and sometimes even family did not know were aligned with Hezbollah’s genocidal aim of destroying Israel.
4. The precision of the attacks: directly on the evildoers themselves, with relatively little collateral damage.
5. The crippling blow to the morale of the rest of Hezbollah. It was never the same after this attack.
9. Sept. 27, Lethal strike: Israel’s strike against Hassan Nasrallah, the insufferably evil and arrogant leader of Hezbollah.
A Dry Bones cartoon in the Intermountain Jewish News (Oct. 4) after his death pictured Nasrallah laid out flat and captioned: “No walkie No talkie.”
Background: Nasrallah’s death was enabled by Israel’s use of 2,000 pound bombs that triggered sequentially, first taking out the top level of the multi-level underground bunker in which he hid; then taking out the next level down; and finally the level with Nasrallah. Again, military expertise. Again, superb intelligence. Perhaps taken for granted, unwisely.
Related miracle: Nasrallah was meeting with many top Hezbollah commanders. All were killed. Hezbollah’s leadership was decapitated.
10. Sept. 27, 2024 and weeks following, Hezbollah’s weapons: Israel’s destruction, in a very short span, of some 80% of Hezbollah’s precision missiles, other weaponry, and bunkers and tunnels in southern Lebanon, with no significant opposition.
Background: After countless heads of state and commentators noted with absolute certainty that Hezbollah, as the heaviest armed non-state actor in the Middle East, imperiled the safety of millions of Israelis all over the country, Israel put an end to Hezbollah as a heavy fighting force in short order.
Related miracle: the relative small loss of life in Lebanon, given the dimensions of Hezbollah’s strength, numbers and dispersion throughout the country.
11. Oct. 1, Missiles: Israel’s interception of a much heavier Iranian missile attack than the one on April 13, the second attack not telegraphed in advance.
Background: The attack was launched in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of Iran’s key ally, Nasrallah.
12. Oct. 16, Lethal strike: Israel’s strike against Yahya Sinwar, the military leader of Hamas, the conceptual and tactical mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel.
Background: Sinwar was called “the Butcher of Khan Younis.” It was the Gazans who called him this for his butchering of Gazan Arabs.
Related miracle: the way Israeli soldier Lt. Col. Itamar Eitam stumbled upon Sinwar, not underground in one of his famous terror tunnels. Eitam spotted “a small ugly, broken figure on a cut-up couch. So much pain this man caused. I felt insult — insult to the name of G-d. He, too, was once a baby and a child, and he also had a choice. And he chose evil.”
13. Oct. 25-26, Iran’s weapons: Israel’s destruction of much of Iran’s air defenses and other military assets.
Background: This was in response to Iran’s massive but unsuccessful attack on Oct. 1. President Biden successfully pressured Israel not to respond to Iran’s missile attack of April 1. Not this time. Not only was this Iranian attack much more formidable, but Israel could not allow Iran to get in the habit of firing its missiles at Israel with impunity. Biden did, however, pressure Israel not to hit Iran’s oil facilities or its nuclear facilities.
14. Dec. 8 and days following: Syria’s weapons: After the rapid, stunning fall of Bashar Assad’s Syria on Dec. 8, Israel’s previously undreamt of destruction of roughly 80% of Syrian missiles, planes, ships and weapons, including chemical weapons, all without internal Syrian resistance, without Iranian resistance, without Russian resistance; and with no Israeli lives lost.
I am now awaiting the next miracle: the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Now is the time. Israel has eviscerated Iran’s air defenses. Syria is no longer a player. Hezbollah is radically diminished. Russia is distracted. Biden’s opposition to Israel’s attack on Hezbollah, which succeeded spectacularly without triggering a wider war, as Biden had feared, lacks credibility; all the more so given Israel’s post-Dec. 8 decimation of Syria’s military assets with impunity.
The world is immeasurably safer due to the way Israel weakened Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. Next: Iran’s nuclear facilities.
True enough, there is always a risk in attacking a state like Iran that is governed by irrational hatred. But as over against allowing Iran to go nuclear, there really is no choice.
And so, we wrap up one year of miracles, looking toward the next miracle — ever mindful of the heavy human price, of the admixture of miracle and mourning.
© IJN 2024
