Israeli victim ‘paid for his kindness with his life’

Dror Khenin — the 37-year-old who was killed by mortar fire near the Gaza border yesterday while distributing food to IDF soldiers — was a volunteer fireman and doting father, his friends say.

The Beit Aryeh resident is described by his childhood friend Itzhik Cohen as: “full of humor and always willing to help,” according to Ynet. “There are few people like him, always willing to give and help.”

“Unfortunately, he paid for his kindness with his life,” Cohen says.

Khenin had arrived to a closed military zone with the Beit Aryeh security guard in a car stocked with food for the soldiers patrolling the border. Moments after they arrived, sirens sounded and Khenin, crouched behind a wall to protect himself, sustained a direct hit by a mortar. He was evacuated to the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, where he was pronounced dead.

Khenin leaves behind his wife, Racheli, and three children: 10-year-old Shaked, six-year-old Yoav, and a baby girl, Avigail.

“The children don’t know anything yet, except that their mother went to visit their father,” a neighbor told Yedioth last night. Khenin’s brother is abroad on a backpacking trip and the family has not managed to get in touch with him to inform him of the tragic news, it reports.

“It is so sad, and so symbolic that he was killed while offering moral support to the soldiers,” a Beit Aryeh resident writes in the town’s WhatsApp group.