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God’s Divine Protection in Operation Protective Edge

August 15, 2014

IDF Paratroopers Disable Terrorist Tunnel Networks in Gaza

An Israeli soldier enters a Hamas tunnel to disable its capacity to be used in acts of terrorism against Israel.

“How priceless is your unfailing love, O God!  People take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.”  (Psalm 36:7)

Despite more than 3,359 rockets and mortar shells shot at Israel this summer, only four were killed by the projectiles, with some Israeli civilians and soldiers were thanking God for His presence and His protective covering over Israel.

“We hold daily to the promises of God’s protection as we confront the face of terror by day and night,” writes a Jewish reservist in Yahalom, the Israeli Defense Forces’ Combat Engineering Unit for Special Operations in a July 22 Facebook post

The Yahalom unit was involved this July with destroying the tunnels Hamas built for kidnapping and the murder of families.  The soldier added on August 7 that he had “knocked on Heaven’s door, not seeing my home, for a month, in Operation Protective Edge, and survived, with all my limbs intact!  PRAISE GOD.”

Christian IDF soldier Hananya Naftali posted a YouTube video on August 4 to share his experiences in Gaza, as well, adding his gratitude to the supporters of Israel.

“I want to thank you guys so much for praying for me and for Israel.  God saved me a lot of times from being killed, and that’s because your prayers were like a shield for me,” Naftali says in the video.  “Don’t be surprised when God’s blessings will fall upon you.  You’re asking why?  Because Israel is very, very dear to God, and He said He’ll bless those who bless us and curse those who curse us.  So know that you are blessed by a promise.”

“Remember the wonders He has done, His miracles, and the judgments He pronounced, you His servants, the descendants of Abraham, His chosen ones, the children of Jacob.”  (1 Chronicles 16:12–13)

An Iron Dome operator reported to friends and then to the media that Israel’s anti-missile defense system failed three times to take down a missile headed to Tel Aviv that would have hit either the Azrieli Towers, the Kirya (Israel’s “Pentagon”) or a Tel Aviv railway station.  (Matzav)

“We fired the first [interceptor].  It missed.  Second [interceptor].  It missed.  This is very rare.  I was in shock.  At this point we had just four seconds until the missile lands.  We had already notified emergency services to converge on the target location and had warned of a mass-casualty incident,” the Iron Dome Battery Commander recalled.

“Suddenly, Iron Dome (which calculates wind speeds, among other things) shows a major wind coming from the east, a strong wind that … sends the missile into the sea.  We were all stunned.  I stood up and shouted, ‘There is a God!’” he said.  “I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes.  It was not told or reported to me.  I saw the hand of God send that missile into the sea.”

Iron Dome Israel IDF

The Israeli-engineered Iron Dome, which was first deployed in March 2011, is a purely defensive system.  It was built to intercept and destroy rockets and artillery shells midair that are fired at Israel’s civilian areas. Each missile the Iron Dome fires is reported to cost Israel $50,000.

Reports of other miracles have surfaced in the past month, such as in a July 31 Jews News post showing a Hamas rocket unexploded next to a fuel tank in Israel.

Givati Brigade commander Col. Ofer Winter, who had rallied his troops with a Scriptural reference to God fighting Israel’s battles, reported on July 31 that the delay of a predawn raid would have endangered Winter’s soldiers until “suddenly a cloud protected us,” he said.

An early-morning mist shrouded the Givati soldiers until they reached a secure position.  (Times of Israel)

“It really was a fulfillment of the verse: ‘For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to give you victory,'” Winter told Times of Israel, quoting Deuteronomy 20:4.

Another “nature-based” miracle occurred in Kibbutz Sufa, on the Gaza border.

“This year we are before the sabbatical year, and we need to harvest wheat for two years,” said the Orthodox community’s harvest supervisor, Aharon Samet.

Hand-harvesting wheat for Passover in Israel

An Orthodox Jewish man in Israel hand-harvests wheat for Passover.

Samet is referring to the Biblical law of Shemitta that requires the land of Israel to rest every seventh year.  That seventh year begins September 13, 2014 on Rosh Hashanah.  Therefore, this sixth year that we are currently in must produce enough harvest to last two years.

Samet looked up and down Israel looking for wheat that could be harvested to store for Passover next year.  He and his team uncovered 2,000 acres of green wheat at Kibbutz Sufa that, unusually, had been sown in mid-January.  So they harvested the wheat, clearing the land.  (TheBlaze)

On July 17, thirteen Hamas terrorists exited a tunnel that emptied into this field.  They expected to be camouflaged by hundreds of acres of wheat; instead, the Israeli Air Force immediately spotted them and started firing.

“Many lives were saved by the grace of Heaven,” the Israeli radio station Kol Hai said in Hebrew.

“Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. I cling to you; your right hand upholds me.”   (Psalm 63:7-8)

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