In the shadow of the mafia, Netanya residents fear for their lives

One resident: Today they kill indiscriminately. In the old days only the target would have been struck.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
charlie abutbul 224 88 (photo credit: Channel 10 [file])
charlie abutbul 224 88
(photo credit: Channel 10 [file])
The hardworking residents of Netanya's industrial zone just want to make their living in peace, but Monday's mob hit served as a rude awakening to the fact that they live in the shadow of the mafia. "They fired in every direction, it was wild and terrifying," the owner of the Offside kiosk - the scene of the attempted assassination of Charlie Abutbul - recounted. "I came out of the kitchen and suddenly heard shots being fired. People went down with gunshot wounds, I saw one man clutching his shoulder. I hit the floor," the man said, pointing to the bullet holes which riddled the walls of his business. The holes had been circled by police forensic officers who combed through the kiosk hours after the shooting. "Today they kill indiscriminately. In the old days a hit would have been 'clean,' only the target would have been struck. Now they shoot up everything," said the man, still visibly shaken by what he witnessed, in a quiet voice. "I get my son to work here with me often. Children and pregnant mothers could have been here," he said. Bullet holes also riddled the man's car, which had two baby seats in the rear. "We can't make a living here safely. What am I supposed to do? I've already replaced the store windows. I don't want any memory of what happened here. This is like a terrorist attack," the man said. A few hundred meters away, at the Abutbul-owned Bat Haikar ("Farmer's daughter") restaurant, two tense-looking, heavily-built men in black t-shirts smoked cigarettes at the restaurant's entrance. "Those are the Abutbuls' bodyguards. Usually there's one at the front and one in the back," a woman who works nearby said. Francois Abutbul, Charlie's son, oversees the restaurant, she added. Like many area residents, she was hesitant to speak her mind. "Even if I did hear the shots yesterday, I didn't hear the shots," she said. She did say, however, that the neighborhood was feeling highly insecure in the wake of the shooting. "We see the guards all the time," she said. A man who heard the shooting yesterday said he had quickly exited the area after the attack. "I've known Charlie since I was a kid," he said, adding that he did not wish to comment on effect the Abutbul's presence had on the local neighborhood. "I heard four shots fired. By chance, an ambulance passed by and started evacuating the wounded," he said. As police try to piece together the cause of Monday's assassination attempt, a number of theories have come forward. One possibility is that the hit was orchestrated by Charlie's own nephew, Francois Abutbul. According to some sources, one of Charlie's sons, Adam, reportedly a rising star in the Netanya underworld, had stabbed Francois. Charlie, this story goes, then called a sit-down meeting with Francois in an effort to make peace. But the meeting didn't go well, with Charlie reportedly slapping Francois and telling him he "did not know how to behave." The aggrieved Francois then arranged the hit, according to the theory. On Monday, organized crime expert Prof. Menachem Amir said the Abergil crime family may have been behind the shooting. The police's National and International Serious Crimes Unit and the anti-organized crime unit Lahav 443 have taken the lead in the investigation. No arrests have been made so far. Earlier on Monday, Knesset Member Ami Ayalon proposed putting high-risk mobsters under administrative detention to protect the public. The suggestion was dismissed by former National Fraud Unit head Cmdr. (ret.) Moshe Levin, who said it was not practical.•