Avocado Grower Ofer Moskowitz Killed by Rocket at Misgav Am

The man killed in a strike at Misgav Am, a kibbutz in Israel's Upper Galilee, on Sunday morning was named as Ofer Moskowitz, known across the region as “Pushko”. He was 60, a member of the kibbutz and the manager of its avocado crops, and he was killed when a rocket fired from Lebanon hit his vehicle and set it alight, according to the Tazpit Press Service report.

Paramedics from Magen David Adom, Israel's national emergency medical service, were called after a report of two vehicles on fire. No early-warning sirens had sounded in the area. “We arrived and saw two vehicles burning,” the paramedics Taysir Subah and Safa Abu Rafe said. “During the firefighting operations, we identified a man in the driver's seat. He showed no signs of life, and we were forced to declare him dead.” The Israel Defense Forces said they had begun investigating the incident. Hezbollah claimed responsibility, describing the attack as a defence of Lebanon and its people.

A kibbutz with the border on three sides

Misgav Am was founded on 2 November 1945 by young members of the Palmach, the pre-state strike force, and sits in the Upper Galilee immediately beside Kiryat Shmona, facing the Lebanese town of Odaisseh. Its population was recorded at 401 in 2024, according to a reference profile of the kibbutz, which also records the 1980 hostage attack in which gunmen from the Arab Liberation Front broke into the community's nursery, and the community's repeated evacuations under cross-border fire since October 2023. Moskowitz grew up in Kiryat Bialik and joined Misgav Am in 1983; he served on the kibbutz emergency team and, the community's statement said, had for years been “the prominent voice of all of us”. He is survived by three daughters and two grandchildren, one born the week before his death.

Farming a front line

Moskowitz's job, managing avocado orchards within sight of Lebanon, was itself the subject he spoke about publicly, arguing that farming had to continue under fire and describing the hazards of working near the security fence. The economics behind that argument are stark. About 60,000 people were evacuated from 32 northern communities after Hezbollah began firing in October 2023, government housing support ended in July 2025, and returns were partial, with 41% of buildings in neighbouring Kiryat Shmona damaged, the Times of Israel reported. Fields and orchards do not evacuate; someone has to drive out to them.

By March 2026 the north was under fire again. Cross-border attacks resumed on 2 March, according to a timeline of the 2026 Lebanon war, and the Associated Press reported from Kiryat Shmona in the same month that residents who had recently returned were living under round-the-clock sirens.

The systems that are meant to warn, and the ones that respond

Israel's civil alert network is run by the IDF Home Front Command, a regional command created in February 1992 after the Gulf War, which drafts civil defence regulations, runs the public alerting system and since 2021 has operated a smartphone application delivering localised warnings, according to a reference account of the command. Magen David Adom, the service whose crews reached the burning cars, was founded by volunteers in 1930, given statutory standing by the Knesset in 1950 and recognised by the International Committee of the Red Cross as Israel's national aid society in June 2006; it runs a fleet of more than 2,000 ambulances from around 189 stations, per a reference profile.

What is still unclear

The report says no sirens sounded but does not explain why, and the IDF's investigation had only just begun. It gives no location within the kibbutz, does not say who was in the second vehicle or whether anyone else was hurt, and gives no detail on the weapon beyond calling it a rocket. The stated toll of 16 dead from Iranian and Hezbollah fire is not broken down, and the reference to four women killed by a cluster bomb in the Hebron area is given without further detail.