Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia terror group, fired rockets into northern Israel on Wednesday, hitting a factory that employed people with special needs, and killing a 23-year-old Druze Arab named Zaher Bashara in the facility.
The Times of Israel reported that Bashara, who worked as a driver at the Alon paper goods company, was set to be engaged and had been his family’s breadwinner since the death of his father, providing for his extended family.
The outlet also reported that roughly 30 rockets had been fired near the town of Kiryat Shemona, which has been largely abandoned by its residents since Hezbollah began firing at Israel in solidarity with Hamas in early October.
Israeli government spokesman Avi Hyman said that Bashara, a resident of a small village in the Golan Heights, was a civilian who had been killed onsite as a result of the attack, his body pulled from the “burning rubble” afterwards.
Israel’s Iron Dome typically intercepts rockets, but Hezbollah has been firing shorter-range projectiles such as anti-tank missiles, which do not fly high enough for radar to detect, making it more difficult to prevent them from landing.
In addition, the Lebanese side of the border enjoys higher elevation, giving Hezbollah an advantage in attack. The terrorist group said that the rocket attack was a retaliation for an earlier Israeli strike on Islamic Jihad terrorists.
However, Hezbollah initiated the hostilities on the northern border in October, and has generally attacked first, with Israel responding by targeting the locations from which rocket fire has come. A broader war is considered likely.
Hezbollah occupies positions near Israel’s northern border, violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 1707, which ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Tens of thousands of Israelis have fled their homes.
The attack Wednesday emphasized that Israel is fighting a war on four fronts: one inside Gaza, against Hamas; one in the north, against Hezbollah; one in the east, against terrorists in the West Bank; and one in the south, against Houthi missiles.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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