Academy head and teacher sentenced to 7 years for 2018 flash flood disaster that killed 10

By Jeremy Sharon

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22 April 2025, 11:10 am

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Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter

Rescue forces near the scene where young Israelis were swept away in the flooding of the Tzafit riverbed near the Dead Sea in southern Israel, on April 26, 2018. (Maor Kinsbursky/Flash90)

The Beersheba District Court has sentenced two men for their roles in the 2018 Tzafit riverbed flash flood disaster that resulted in the deaths of 10 teens.

Yuval Kahan, the principal of the Bnei Zion premilitary academy, and Aviv Bardichev, the institution’s educational director, were both handed seven years in prison. They were also each ordered to pay NIS 210,000 in compensation.

The two were convicted of negligent manslaughter last year. They were held responsible for the deaths of 10 academy and high school students hiking in the Tzafit riverbed in the Dead Sea region, after a flash flood hit the group in a deep gorge.

The pair were accused of disregarding multiple warnings of danger ahead of the trip due to inclement weather, insisting on going ahead with the plan and scorning safety concerns.

The court found in convicting the two that they should have changed the route of their hike because of the poor weather.

Yuval Kahan, who was the head of the Bnei Zion pre-military academy school at the time of the Tzafit riverbed hiking disaster, arrives for a hearing at the Beersheba District Court, September 13, 2022. (Flash90)

“The testimonies of family members heard in court, in which they spoke with great pain about their loved ones who perished in the disaster, left not a dry eye [in the room], and allowed a glimpse into the lives of the deceased, their hobbies, activities, aspirations, the values they were raised on, and their commitment to society,” the court said in a summary of the sentencing.

The court said it emphasized Kahan’s negligence and that “despite his senior managerial position and the unusual and extreme situation in which the group was traveling, he was not interested and did not know what exactly the group was doing, and when he did [finally] understand what it was doing — he did not stop it.” Kahan was not physically with the group at the time of the disaster.

The court said of Bardichev that he did not give adequate consideration to the warnings he had received “and entered the stream with a group of young people who trusted him, despite those warnings and the prevailing weather” at the time of the disaster.

“The court emphasized the high level of harm to the sanctity of life and other values, including the harm to the relationship of trust between parents and educational staff” in the wake of the disaster.

Prosecutors had sought a 12-year prison sentence, but the court found that such a sentence could not be justified by previous rulings, while also rejecting requests by the defendants’ lawyers that the two serve their sentences in community service.