The Beersheba Magistrate’s Court on Sunday sentenced two men to lengthy prison terms after convicting them of stealing property from the site of the Nova music festival massacre.
Meir Hajjaj and Golan Djerbi were each sentenced to 38 months in prison, along with suspended sentences and NIS 45,000 fines, after pleading guilty to aggravated theft for entering the festival grounds a day after the massacre and looting personal belongings belonging to victims and survivors.
According to an amended indictment, the two men arrived at the Nova festival area on October 8, 2023, less than 24 hours after at least 347 civilians and 17 police officers were murdered there by Hamas terrorists. While Hajjaj and Djerbi waited in their vehicle, a third accomplice entered the site and collected property left behind in the aftermath of the attack.
Among the items stolen were jewelry, work tools, socket sets, and other valuables, some of which, prosecutors noted, had belonged to people who had been killed only hours earlier.
In sentencing the defendants, Beersheba Magistrate’s Court Judge Amir Doron delivered an unusually forceful ruling, framing the crimes not merely as theft but as a profound moral violation committed at a moment of national trauma.
'Violation of the sanctity of life'
“The morning of October 7, 2023, was one of the darkest days in the history of the state,” Doron wrote. “Israel experienced a planned campaign of murder and destruction that caused immense harm to life and property, affecting Israeli society at every level - and first and foremost the victims of the massacre and their families.”
The judge said the defendants’ actions represented a “particularly grave moral failure,” adding that they had shown a “crude trampling of the most basic elements of human compassion.”
“The defendants stole equipment from victims of the massacre, while the blood of those murdered cried out from the ground before them,” Doron wrote. “They chose, out of sheer greed, to take anything of value they could lay their hands on.”
Doron went further, describing the act of looting the dead as a violation that strikes at the foundations of social solidarity.
“Taking the property of murder victims near the time of their death constitutes a ‘violation of the sanctity of life,’” he ruled. “Theft from the site of a massacre is not only an injustice to the victims - it is a stain on our collective camp, eroding social trust and the sense of shared fate.”
During sentencing arguments, the prosecution stressed the exceptional severity of the circumstances. Prosecutor Adar Bachar told the court that the defendants had deliberately exploited the chaos and devastation that gripped the country in the immediate aftermath of the attack, acting with calculated intent rather than desperation.
Doron agreed, noting that because the offenses were committed for financial gain, a substantial economic penalty was required alongside imprisonment. Each defendant was therefore ordered to pay a fine of NIS 45,000 in addition to serving their custodial sentences.
“Even in the darkest moments, there are lines that must not be crossed," Doron wrote in closing.