Israel's President Embraces Bedouin Community After Deadly Hamas Rockets

Among the four Israelis killed this week when Hamas and its terrorist allies fired nearly 700 rockets into southern Israel was Zaid al-Hamamdeh, a 47-year-old father of seven.

Al-Hamamdeh was also a member of southern Israel’s large Bedouin population, demonstrating once again that terrorist rockets don’t discriminate between Arabs and Jews.

Neither, for that matter, does the State of Israel.

Israel President Reuven Rivlin on Monday visited the families of those killed in the massive Gaza rocket barrage, including the al-Hamamdeh family.

“You don’t know what it means to me that you came here,” Zaid’s son reportedly told the president. Rivlin responded matter-of-factly: “Why wouldn’t I come? Aren’t you an Israeli citizen?”

Zaid al-Hamamdeh was a truck driver. He was killed when a Hamas rocket slammed into the factory where he worked in the southern Israel coastal city of Ashkelon.

Rivlin later took to Twitter to call upon all Israelis to seize this opportunity to demonstrate unity in the face of their shared enemies.

Ultra-Orthodox, secular, religious and traditional, Jews and Arabs – terror strikes us all without discrimination and without mercy and we will never surrender to it. We are together in celebration and in consolation and I pray with all my might that you will know no more sorrow

— Reuven Rivlin (@PresidentRuvi) May 6, 2019