How one theft turned an Israeli repeat offender into a national hero: Moti Ashkenazi

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

He was an extremely famous person in Israel. For the most part, the policemen were familiar with him, to whom Moti Ashkenazi caused a lot of trouble. The pickpocket thief hunted all over the country and especially loved the beaches, where it was easy to steal something badly lying. Probably, he was still a good guy at heart, even though he had long and firmly become addicted to drugs. But he would have lived like a tumbleweed, and today, if not for the stolen bag, which completely changed the life of a recidivist thief.

Background

He was 30 years old, he lived in the slums of Tel Aviv and did not really think about the future. Moti Ashkenazi grew up in a very poor Turkish Sephardic family, and from childhood his life was least like a fairy tale. Moti knew what ridicule and bullying from peers were, when there was absolutely no one to stand up for you. He was familiar with the need and saw how his mother was exhausted, trying to feed her seven children after the death of her husband.

Mochi came to the gang so that his classmates would stop beating him. There he began to use drugs and learned how to masterfully pull wallets and other valuables from the bags of vacationers on the beaches. Almost all the police knew him by sight, but he worked so brilliantly that he hardly got caught, and by his thirty years he had served only nine months.

Ashkenazi spent all his unearned income on drugs, the man weighed only about forty kilograms and his end could be usual for people leading a similar lifestyle. Moreover, several times the doctors have already pulled him out of the other world.

But everything changed in one day. A week earlier, Moti Ashkenazi had been placed under house arrest after an unsuccessful attempt to steal from a car. He had no right to leave his place of residence, with the exception of visiting the police station.

Black bag

On a hot June day in 1997, Moti, returning from the police station, slightly changed his usual route and went to the Jerusalem beach, hoping for the thieves' luck. On that day, there were many tourists and schoolchildren on the beach who had just finished their school year. The teenagers were having fun by the sea, and the police were hiding in the shade from the scorching sun.

Mochi's attention was drawn to an orphaned black bag lying on a towel next to simple clothes and sunglasses. The owner was nowhere to be seen, and Ashkenazi headed straight for her. He himself will later tell about what moved him by providence, because an experienced thief indifferently walked past the expensive bags of tourists, but it was into this one that he threw his hand in a familiar movement.

Only now his fingers bumped not on the expected wallet, but on carnations and metal balls. And he saw light bulbs, switches and a clock connected to a metal box. It was impossible to make a mistake: there was an explosive device with striking elements in front of Moti Ashkenazi. At that moment, he could have simply escaped from the beach, leaving everything as it is. He had no right to be there at all.

But Moti grabbed his bag and ran to the nearest abandoned building. 300 meters before him seemed to him the longest in his life. When he talks over and over again in his interviews about what he felt at that moment, he says: he had a complete feeling that two people took him under the arms, raised him to his feet, and his own voice sounded in his head, telling him to run together with a bag away from crowds.

True, skeptics have their own version of what is happening: supposedly Moti only saw the contents of the bag in an abandoned building on Geula Street. Be that as it may, the thief and drug addict did not abandon the find in the building and ran away home. He left her on the stairs and went to the nearest hotel to report the dangerous bag to the police. He dialed the phone number of the same policeman who checked in an hour ago.

National hero

The policeman not only did not believe him, but was also going to make a serious reprimand for violating house arrest. When Moti shouted something about a bomb, the policeman decided that his ward had time to take a "dose." Mochi Ashkenazi will later talk about how he ran back to the bag, how he began to pull garbage containers onto the road to block the passage and attract attention. The police officers who arrived at the traffic jam did not immediately believe Moti. When he literally yelled about the bag in the building, the law enforcement officers went to check the dangerous find. And after that they officially blocked the traffic and called in the sappers.

True, the policeman's version is very different from the testimony of the "culprit" of the events. They claim to have arrived at the scene within minutes and immediately accompanied by a sapper brigade. They set up a cordon, began to evacuate people from neighboring houses, while Moti was simply helping to drive away passers-by.

As a result, the sappers defused the device, which, according to various sources, contained from three to five kilograms of explosives. If it were not for Moti's attempt to get money for another dose, that day could have ended in a real tragedy with dozens and hundreds of dead and wounded. Moti Ashkenazi, while the police were bustling about on Geula Street, calmly went home. When the police and security officials arrived at his house, Moti's mother was ready to swear that her son would be arrested now. But they came to thank him and give him hope for a new life.

This mother, having learned about the incident, begged the guards not to give him any awards, but to save her son. This time, justice was on the side of mercy. All deserved charges and convictions of Moti were dropped, and he himself was sent to rehabilitation courses at state expense, where Ashkenazi was able to get rid of drug addiction.

During rehabilitation in Haifa, Moti finally broke with his past and met a girl who soon became his wife. True, at first there were difficulties with work, because in front of him was the glory of a thief and a drug addict. Yet he was determined to start a new life. At first, he was interrupted by the dirtiest work, and then he was able to get up and even open his own business.

Today Moti Ashkenazi lives with his wife and their five children in his own large apartment. He actively helps addicts like him in the past to start a new life, giving lectures and explanations.

Unfortunately, on April 4, 1950, in the small Moldovan village of Giska, near Tiraspol, there was no one who could prevent the tragedy. Then 21 children and 2 adults were victims of a monstrous terrorist attack, which a person arranged for no apparent reason. And it is difficult to count how many people were left with disabilities. Moreover, grief-stricken people had to go through a terrible tragedy alone. After all, the authorities decided to simply "hush up" it. And the whole country learned about what happened on that terrible day only half a century later.