An Iranian missile that hit Haifa, Israel, on Friday morning damaged a historic local mosque and injured several imams who were there.
Shortly after sunrise, Iran launched a barrage of 20-30 missiles in three waves, according to Israel’s Army Radio. Sirens were sounded in the north, and then throughout the entire country. Most of the missiles were intercepted by Israel’s air defenses; the missile that hit the port city of Haifa, where Arabs and Jews live side-by-side, was the only one that caused injuries on the ground.
It turns out that one of the damaged buildings was the Al-Jreena Mosque, one of the most important Muslim houses of worship in the city.
Muslim clerics, or imams, were in the mosque, presumably ahead of weekly juma’ah services held on Fridays.
Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, condemned the attack on civilian population centers, and on a religious building in particular, as “war crimes” by the Iranian regime.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, expressed similar outrage. In a statement, President Herzog said:
The Al-Jarina Mosque in Haifa’s Wadi Nisnas neighborhood was struck by an Iranian missile, injuring Muslim clerics and worshippers at prayer.
This outrageous attack took place in Haifa—a city that stands as a symbol of coexistence between Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Circassians, and Bahá’ís.
They try to kill Israelis of all faiths—Muslims included.
We will defend all Israelis. All faiths included.
According to an Islamic cultural heritage website: “Al-Jreena Mosque, Al-Nasr Mosque, or the Great Mosque of Haifa, [is] an ancient mosque dating back to the Ottoman era in Palestine. It is located in the old city of Haifa. It is the second oldest mosque in Haifa after the small mosque.”
Neither Iran nor its terrorist proxies, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, distinguish between Jews and Arabs, or Christians and Muslims, in their attacks.
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 Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
