The Miracles of Hanit
Image at left courtesy of Haaretz.com shows the Israeli Missile boat "Hanit" being tugged into Ashdod port after having been hit by a Hizbulla missile off the Beirut shore on July 14, 2006, during the Second Lebanon War.
 A young Israeli Naval sergeant boarded the northbound train in Tel Aviv. I was on my way to a present a lecture in the Haifa area and he was returning to his base in the Haifa port. He sat down across from me, looking at me intently while I was learning my Gemorra. I looked up at him, smiled, said "Shalom aleichem!"
He sighed deeply, as if relieved, and sheepishly asked, "Can I talk to you, Rav?"
"Of course," I answered, asking him how he knows that I'm a "rav". He said that he heard me eulogize one of his fallen friends during the recent war. The sailor had a relatively new beard, an almost new knitted kippa on his head, and the beautifully pure innocence in his eyes of a new Ba'al Tshuva. To make a long story short, he was a crewman on board the Israeli Navy ship Hanit (Hebrew for bayonet) when it was hit by a missile of shore in Beirut.
The sailor, who we'll call Moshe, began to relate the dozens of miracles that happened aboard the Hanit the night that it was hit. "It was Friday night. Usually, the crew would eat Friday night dinner in two shifts. But this time, since we were in a war zone, our three religious crewmen went to Lt. Col. A - the skipper - and begged that we all need Hashem's help. The first miracle is that the skipper agreed to leave only 4 sailors on the bridge, and allowed the whole entire crew to pray together; we piled into the chapel, and said a lengthy mincha and Kabbalat Shabbat. I was bored and wanted to eat quickly then catch a few hours sleep, because I had the midnight watch. But, I stayed with the rest of the crew. Then, all of us had a Shabbat meal together - 15 different sailors said Kiddush, each in the custom of his fathers; I'm talking about guys that aren't (weren't) even religious! The meal was drawn out - I had a headache and was dying to sleep. The religious guys started to say the grace after the meal, and BOOOFF! The missile hit, but on the opposite end of the craft. It should have sank the boat, but it hit a crane right above the chopper landing pad. What a miracle! If that's not enough, the helicopter-refueling tank - filled to the gills with chopper fuel - didn't explode despite the fact that the whole end of the boat was burned..."
At least twenty other crewmen aboard the Hanit should have been killed, but they were saved by Shabbat dinner on the other end of the ship. The four on the bridge all lost their lives.
Moshe had beads of sweat on his forehead; tears glistened in his eyes. "The newspapers don't write about the miracles that we all saw. I ran to my bunk on the deck right below the landing pad. It was charcoal; my metal bunk was completely melted down and all my possessions were ashes. If I hadn't been detained in the chapel and in the dining hall for Shabbat meal, I'd have been charcoal too. I haven't stopped thanking Hashem since - I've changed my life..."
Moshe continued with more miracles, including the engine room burnt to a crisp but a pair of tefillin was found unscathed. If that's not enough, amidst the embers of destruction, the sailors found a Book of Psalms - also unscathed - opened to Psalm 124. Read Psalm 124 and your hair will stand up!
The train was nearing my station, so I gave Moshe a blessing and a fatherly embrace, and we parted. The Hanit took a direct hit from a Hizbulla missile, but Moshe has turned the navy's setback into a victory.
*******Every day, I meet more and more "Moshes". Unlike the misguided and corrupt Israeli leaders, the Israeli on the street - especially the soldiers and the reservists - are diamonds looking to be polished, and have started to ask the real questions in life. They're looking for emuna. Were it not for the wars here, they wouldn't have bothered.
The whole purpose of the wars is to bring us closer to Hashem. Once we get close to Hashem on our own initiative, Hashem won't have to send us wars anymore, amen. I'd much prefer dancing with Moshiach to eulogizing fallen comrades.
Footprints  - Lovely pictorial of Footprints
Today is Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers, may their sacred and gallant souls rest in eternal peace, amen. "Footprints" reflects the mood of the day - the battle 
  Mighty Machlouf
By Rabbi Lazer Brody
The editorial page of Breslev Israel's English website
Rebbe Nachman of Breslev teaches (Sefer HaMidot, “meriva”, 29) that a Chassid is one who suffers insult and humiliation without retaliating or without harboring any malice in his heart.
 With this definition in mind, you’re about to hear a story of a true Chassid that not only fulfilled the Rebbe Nachman’s criteria, but even surpassed them.
Some memories just never fade away, especially on Yom Zikaron, the Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers.                                Machlouf Cohen was my best buddy all through what's known in the IDF Special Forces as "maslul": basic training, advanced infantry school, NCO school, and recon school, until we became full-fledged members of the unit. We had a lot in common, even though our backgrounds were as different as night and day. I was
from the USA while Machlouf was born in Morocco. I had grown up on the Washington Redskins and Elvis Presley and he had never heard of either. Yet, we were both the underdogs of a unit that was made up mostly of "sabras", native-born Israelis, 90% of whom were from kibbutz and moshav backgrounds. As such, Machlouf and I pulled together.
I couldn’t stomach Dotan Ram (name changed for obvious reasons). He was a 6'2" blond-headed nose-in-the-air kibbutznik that wasn’t very tolerant of anyone different than him. He stereotyped Oriental Jews, and especially those of a Moroccan background. He thought they should all be cooks and dish-washers, and couldn’t stand the fact that one was actually in his unit.
Dotan did everything in his power to make Machlouf's life miserable. Machlouf, 5'4" and 125 pounds when soaking wet, was the littlest guy in the unit and easy prey for the blond bully. I never could understand how someone with such a terrible character made it into our unit. Whenever Ram would pick on Machlouf, my blood would boil. Machlouf himself would calm me down. I was vindictive and cunning in those days, but Machlouf refused to let me set any kind of trap for the arrogant and obnoxious Ram.
Probably the dirtiest trick Ram ever played on Machlouf is when he poured water down the barrel of Machlouf's FN carbine the night before general inspection at the termination of NCO school. Everybody went home that weekend on pre-graduation furlough, except Machlouf, who didn't succeed in cleaning the rust out of his rifle barrel before inspection and was confined to base for 14 days as a punishment. Machlouf made me swear to him that I wouldn’t do anything to settle the score with his tormentor.
In the summer of 1972, we finished "maslul". Ram, Mahlouf, and I served for the next three months in the same platoon that was involved in counter-insurgence in Southern Lebanon and Syria, making bi-weekly operations to thwart terrorist attacks before they happened.
On June 20, 1972, 2 Israelis were killed and 3 were injured in a rocket attack on a bus in the Golan Heights. The rockets were apparently fired by Saika terrorists, the Syrian-based arm of the PLO. Israel wanted to retaliate, and fast. Our platoon was given the task of destroying a suspected Russian-assisted Syrian-supported Saika emplacement within Syrian territory a few miles over the Israeli border in the southern Golan, a few miles east of Moshav Ramat Magshimim.
Post-1967 Israeli intelligence was nearing the height of its smug complacency before it was exposed in the near-catastrophe of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. A mile over the border, which we succeeded to cross on a moonless night without being detected, we ran into a mine field that was totally uncharted on the intel maps. Four out of the 28 of us on the mission had various parts of feet and legs blown off. While we were trying to drag our wounded buddies to safety, 2 more were injured. Then the dogs woke up. Syrian artillery shells exploded all around us. There was no choice but to abort the mission and make a run back to the border. Meanwhile, another eight of us were injured with shrapnel wounds.
The fourteen of us who could still walk on our own two legs each had a wounded buddy on his back in a fireman's carry, running on pure adrenalin in the partial shelter of a dry wadi trying to make it back alive to our side of the border. We not only had the wounded comrade on our back, but all of his gear and our own gear as well. As it was, each of us was carrying much more than his body weight. How did we do it? Ask Hashem... He gives a Jew a powerful will to survive.
I happened to be carrying my platoon commander, Lieutenant “F”, who today is one of the top people in Israel's law-enforcement system. I looked to my right, and couldn't believe my eyes - little Machlouf had Dotan Ram on his back.
Dotan was moaning and groaning more than any of the other wounded. Machlouf, panting hard from the unbelievable strain, told him gently to calm down. Yet, Machlouf had every reason in the world to let Ram lie and rot inside Syria. Ram had made Machlouf's life miserable for months. I witnessed it with my own eyes. But Machlouf, a tzaddik that surpassed many of the tzaddikim you hear about in the stories, did not let any of this get in his way to save the life of a brother in arms.Finally, a 155mm Israeli Howitzer battery emplaced east of Moshav Ramat Magshimim in the Golan awoke from its slumber to give us cover fire, and we succeeded in returning to the Israeli border. The score - 14 wounded, 4 of whom seriously, 5 moderately (which in Israel means losing an appendage, but not life-threatening), and 5 lightly. There were no fatalaties, that is, until Machlouf dropped to the ground 25 minutes later with a massive heart seizure from a strain that a body twice his size couldn't be expected to handle.
Machlouf should have received Israel's highest Medal of Valor. He didn't, because the brass did everything to put the lid on the botch mission. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that my valiant little buddy Machlouf Cohen is standing in the front of Hashem's Honor Guard, in a place where many self-righteous sermonizers that preach dedication to Judaism can't dream of reaching in a zillion years.
You can bet that there are hundreds of other "Machlouf Cohens" in the Israeli military cemetaries that we don't know about. Undoubtedly, their souls are all sitting in Hashem’s lap in The Heavenly Throne. May their sacred memories be blessed forever and ever, amen.
Original Source