Israel’s Iron Dome launches a missile to intercept a Gaza rocket during Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012. Photo: Nehemia Gershuni-Aylho CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

An Israel Defense Forces Commander directing an Iron Dome missile defense battery during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas rocket fire has reportedly recounted a tale of what he claims to be divine intervention that saved Tel Aviv from certain disaster.

His unconfirmed testimony was first reported by Israel’s Hebrew-language Kooker site, then translated by Israel Today and republished on Wednesday by the UK’s Daily Mail, as the story has amazed readers around the world.

“A missile was fired from Gaza. Iron Dome precisely calculated [its trajectory]. We know where these missiles are going to land down to a radius of 200 meters. This particular missile was going to hit either the Azrieli Towers [a pair of Tel Aviv skyscrapers], the Kirya [Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon] or on the railroad tracks. Hundreds could have died.”

“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.”

“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!'”

“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.”

The context of the unnamed commander’s story was left out of the Israel Today and The Daily Mail versions, but was included as a preamble in the original published by Kooker, a news site for Orthodox Jews.

In the original telling, it was a rabbi who recounted the story, describing the commander, a former student of his, who telephoned him to ask where the next Torah study meeting would take place.

The rabbi said, the commander then told him, “‘I saw the holy one blessed be he with my own eyes!’ No more, no less. So, I asked what happened.”

The Daily Mail recounted another reported miraculous intervention during the conflict for the IDF, first reported in The Times of Israel.

IDF Col. Ofer Winter, commander of the Givati Infantry Brigade, said his platoon’s nighttime raid was postponed, so they advanced on an enemy position at dawn, but the sunlight didn’t exposed them as a mysterious fog set in to cover his troops.

He described the covering as “clouds of glory.”