Israel’s Chief Rabbi Rav Kalman Meir Ber revealed powerful exchanges with senior security officials, including the head of the Shin Bet and Israeli Air Force personnel, describing what he framed as extraordinary nissim surrounding recent military operations.

Speaking during an opening address for Yom Ha’atzmaut at the Great Synagogue in Netanya, Rav Ber shared details of conversations that left a deep impression on him regarding both the scale of the threats and the outcomes that followed.

“Today, at Har Herzl, the head of the Shin Bet, Dovid Zini, approached me and asked: why doesn’t the Chief Rabbinate hold a day of thanksgiving for what happened in Operation ‘Shaagas HaAri’?”

“I answered him: ‘But the story isn’t over yet.’

“He said to me: True, but if you had seen, if you had known what is happening here and in Nisan — he even pointed out the Hebrew date — do you know how many thousands of missiles were launched? The public has no idea, and also doesn’t know where they landed.”

Rav Ber went on to recount a visit to the IDF’s Kirya headquarters shortly before Pesach, where he met with a senior base commander.

“On Erev Pesach I was at the General Staff base. The base commander, a colonel, a secular individual, sat with me for a long time in his office and even invited me to speak to the soldiers.

“He told me about approximately 4,500 soldiers sitting in the ‘bor,’ alongside additional personnel working with them.

“He said to me: We were sitting at minus four, but if we had gone down a few more levels and you had seen the screens — I tell you, as a person without a kippah, it’s simply miracles what is happening here.”

He added that similar sentiments were expressed by pilots during a visit to an air force base.

“Also at the air force base, the pilots told me: In the current operation, according to our statistics, at least every seventh plane should not return, at most the eighth. And yet look at the miracle — all of them returned safely. And among the Americans, seven planes fell.

“Are these not open miracles, what we are seeing and what we have seen? Are we not meant to be among those who ‘see the chasdei Hashem and reflect upon them’? Should we not understand that everything taking place here, in Eretz Yisroel, moves between open miracles and hidden miracles?”

Rav Ber also pointed to Israel’s broader advancements, noting that even those directly involved in developing them express amazement.

“After all, you see what kind of advanced country we are — in medicine, that the entire world relies on; in our military technology. One of the individuals who is considered almost the primary developer of the ‘Arrow’ system sat with me — and he too speaks about it with wonder,” he said.

{Matzav.com}