Prosecutors set to indict Beersheba’s deputy mayor for assaulting Bedouin men
City official, apparently angered by Arabic music being played loudly in car, was caught on film beating gas station workers; will have chance to defend himself before charges filed
State prosecutors appeared set to press charges against Beersheba’s deputy mayor for assaulting two young Bedouin men on shift at a gas station near the Gaza border.
Shimon Tubul, who was on IDF reserve duty and passing through Kfar Aza in September 2024, was caught on security camera footage hitting and threatening the two men with his gun while in uniform.
The pending indictment is subject to a hearing, meaning Tubul will have a chance to defend himself before he charges are filed, and there is a change that prosecutors will renege on their decision to indict him. Proceedings in the hearing were underway on Tuesday.
The assault took place after one of the men had arrived at work while playing Arabic music loudly from his car. The music incensed Tubul, who allegedly told the employee to “turn that garbage off” before assaulting him.
Later on, another employee at the gas station, the young man’s shift manager Ibrahim Abu Asa, came outside to see what the commotion was. Tubul attacked him as well, hitting him repeatedly in the presence of several other soldiers.
Two weeks after denying that he attacked the two men, Tubul confessed, insisting through his lawyer that he acted to stop the employees from carrying out a ramming attack, a claim he provided no evidence for.
Prosecutors file indictment, subject to a hearing, against Beersheba's deputy mayor Shimon Tubul after he beat two Bedouin gas station employees in 2024 — he was apparently enraged because one of the men played Arabic music too loudly from his car pic.twitter.com/yt7XAZi7nH
— charlie summers (@cbsu03) November 18, 2025
Abu Asa had access to the security cameras at the gas station, allowing him to later release the footage proving that Tubul attacked them, rather than the other way around.
“He denied in the beginning, saying he hadn’t attacked. Afterwards he said that it wasn’t him in the picture and that it was someone else, and then he changed his version and said: ‘I did attack him but they wanted to run me over,’” Abu Asa’s lawyer, Shehadeh Ibn Bari, told The Times of Israel.
He said that the last claim is impossible, since it is clear from the footage that the car is standing idle throughout the video.
Tubul is known for making incendiary statements to the media. He made waves while appearing on Channel 14, where he told an anchor that “we had a golden opportunity to erase this tale called Gaza” during the war with Hamas. He went on to declare that the IDF should have been killing 100-150,000 Gazans a day, sparking pushback from others in the news studio.
“This is a behavioral pattern, we aren’t talking about a man who made a tiny mistake, it’s a behavior pattern from the very beginning,” said Ibn Bari, calling the official an “extremist and racist.”
The two men Tubul assaulted filed a complaint at the Sderot police station, but the case was initially passed between the police and the IDF’s Military Police, both of which appeared averse to investigating the incident.
Sderot police were eventually handed the case, over a year after which prosecutors are now poised to file charges against the far-right city official.
The Times of Israel Community.