Court ups man’s sentence to 7.5 years for stealing cars from Kibbutz Be’eri closed military zone after Oct. 7

The Beersheba District Court extends to 7.5 years the jail sentence of a man convicted of using his status as a volunteer car-tow provider to steal five civilian vehicles left in Kibbutz Be’eri days after it was ravaged in the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.

The man, Guy Haddad, ran a car-towing company out of Rishon Lezion that volunteered its services to security forces, giving it unique access to the closed military zone that the IDF declared in the kibbutz.

The Beersheba Magistrate’s Court last year found Haddad guilty of conspiracy to commit a crime and five counts of car theft, and sentenced him to 5.5 years behind bars based on a legal precedent of about one year for each count of car theft.

The Southern District Attorney’s Office and Haddad both appealed the ruling, with prosecutors saying the punishment did not match the seriousness of the offense, and Haddad challenging the testimony of a key witness. The higher court accepts prosecutors’ arguments and rejected Haddad’s.

The District Court says Haddad’s offenses “are not ‘regular’ car theft offenses” and “cannot be divorced from the circumstances of their execution.”

“In our case, just days after the events of October 7, 2023, when the entire country was shell-shocked, grieving and traumatized,” Haddad “chose to conceive an unthinkable plan to make money at the expense of border residents, some of whom were cruelly murdered, some of whom were abducted and some of whom were wounded in spirit and forced to evacuate their homes and leave their property behind,” the court says.

The higher court otherwise upholds the Magistrate’s Court findings, including its ruling that Haddad pay a NIS 25,000 ($8,195) fine and NIS 5,000 ($1,640) to each of the car owners.

According to the conviction, Haddad had instructed other volunteers who were operating his tow truck on kibbutz grounds to transfer the five cars to his parking lot — three on October 18 and two on October 19 — falsely claiming on both occasions that the orders had come from the military.

Also on October 19, according to the conviction, Haddad produced a “fictitious transfer of ownership” to himself for one of the cars stolen the previous day.

One of the cars picked up on October 19 was immediately returned to the closed military zone after the owner asked Haddad why the vehicle was being towed, and another car was returned at a later date, according to the District Court.

Two of the other cars were transferred to Palestinian Authority territory on October 22, making it impossible to bring them back, the District Court says.