Quiet Waves II

I closed my pre-Shabbat posting expressing my hopes for a quiet Shabbat. Thankfully, no additional missiles were fired at major coastal cities, but that does not take away from the trauma experienced by the many families who braved the warnings and stayed in the north over Shabbat. There were countless stories on the news of families, wishing to escape the heavier salvos closer to the Lebanese border, traveling to cities which they thought would offer more protection. In the case of one family, while sitting at the Shabbat table, a missile struck the apartment which they had fled to for Shabbat, killing their baby son and his grandmother, the owner of the apartment. In a second, more miraculous case, a religious woman living in Tiberias told of how she offered her house to her sister (who lived in a more endangered settlement), and offered to make Shabbat for her. For some reason, the woman's sister remained stubborn, and turned down the hospitality offer in Tiberias. That decision saved her life and the life of her family, as shortly before Shabbat went out, a rocket slammed into the house, causing extensive damage.

My hopes for "quiet seas" were also dashed, when an Iranian surface-to-surface rocket, unknowingly possessed by Hizbullah, struck an Israeli destroyer enforcing a maritime blockade off of the Lebanese coast.

This occurred over Shabbat, and was an incident that few knew about. Early reports stated that the boat was struck by an unmanned explosives-laden zodiac, a replication of the suicide attack which devastated the USS Cole in the Persian Gulf. These unsubstantiated reports were later debunked by the authoritative story, which was that the destroyer was struck by a powerful missile. Why what is considered one of the most advanced missile boats of its kind could not detect and ward off this missile was the question of the day. Senior naval officers (pre-empted by enterprising Israeli journalists) admitted that a dual failure: (1) Israeli military intelligence had no idea that Hizbullah possessed this type of missile; (2) As such, the radar and anti-missile countermeasure systems were not enabled. The devastating results were the untimely death of four sailors, and the again ravaged morale of the Israeli populace who over the past few days have seen three symbols of military superiority destroyed: armored Humvees, a Merkava tank, and now this missile ship.