Was There a Miracle of Gaza??

 Maybe George Burns was wrong.  In the movie "Oh God" as the Lord Burns said that the last miracle he made was the 1969 NY Mets. Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu points to a more recent miracle, the Matriarch Rachel showed up in Gaza and protected IDF Troops

In the Jewish tradition we owe our return to the Holy Land to the matriarch Rachel who died in childbirth during Jacob's return:

(From Jeremiah Chapter 35) Thus saith the LORD: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children; she refuseth to be comforted for her children, because they are not. Thus saith the LORD: Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the LORD; and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.

Over the centuries, Jews would a pilgrimage to Rachel's tomb to pray and show their respects to the women who's inconsolable weeping enabled our return to Israel.

Former Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu went to Rachel's Tomb a few times during the lead up to the recent Gaza war. He asked Rachel to help the IDF troops, one of the stories that filtered back was:

‘My son is in the Givati Brigade, and his unit’s job is to clean out areas around Gaza City. Outside one house, a woman dressed in black appeared and started yelling at them in Arabic, ‘Ruchu min hon – Get out of here! It’s dangerous!’ The troops thought she might be trying to protect her family, but they didn’t want to take chances; the company commander called the regiment commander, and they went on to their next target. There, too, the same woman appeared and gave the same warning. The soldiers thought she probably came somehow through the tunnel network that Hamas had set up between houses, and one of the soldiers even yelled at her… Then they went to a third house – and the same woman appeared again. This time, all the soldiers froze.

‘The soldiers then hooked up with a Golani Engineering force whose job it was to blow up houses that were found to be booby-trapped. My son’s unit asked them to check these three houses – and they found that all three of the houses that the woman had warned them away from had been booby-trapped.”

The story did not pass the level of rumor, until it reached Rabbi Eliyahu's Son:

“There are soldiers who have been telling that in some places where they went in, there was a woman who told them not to enter certain buildings because they were booby-trapped, and that she said her name was Rachel... I asked a certain Yeshiva dean about this story, and he told me that it wasn’t a ‘story,’ but that he actually knew one of the soldiers involved, and he told me his name.

"Then the Yeshiva dean asked me if it was in any way connected with the fact that my father, Rabbi Eliyahu, had left the hospital before the war and went to pray not once, not twice, but three times at Rachel’s Tomb, and went nowhere else to pray? I told him I didn’t know, but that I would ask.

“In truth, I was a little bit afraid to ask him, because he usually dismisses these kinds of stories… But I decided to go, and I asked him, ‘Do you remember that you told us one time about Rabbi Shalom Mutzafi, of blessed memory, during World War II, when the Germans seemed about to enter the Holy Land, and he prayed at Kever Rachel against the decree, and he said that he actually saw Rachel praying. [My father] said yes, he remembers.

“So I told him about this story that I had heard, and I asked him, ‘Should we believe it? Is it truth?’ And he said, 'Yes, it’s true.’ I asked him to explain, and he said - in these words: 'I told her: Rachel, a war is on! Don’t withhold your voice from crying [based on Jeremiah 31,14-16]! Go before G-d, and pray for the soldiers, who are sacrificing themselves for the Nation of Israel, that they should strike - and not be stricken.'

"I told him, “Well, you should know that she really did that.” So he asked, “Did she mention that I sent her?”

Was it Mother Rachel?  I can't tell you for sure, but I am also not a big believer of coincidences.

If you want to see the entire story click here Chief Rabbi Confirms Gaza Miracle Story