Aviv Agam, a recently discharged IDF soldier, was attacked violently Thursday night and robbed by Bedouin in facemasks.
“Just before 1 AM, I was sitting in the car with my girlfriend in a parking lot in Be’er Sheva,” Agam recalled, “I look back for a moment and I see three masked figures talking with an Arabic accent and armed with knives and machetes. In one second, they opened my car door and stuck a knife to my belly.”
“At that moment I didn’t think of anything and simply started begging them for my life,” he continued. “The masked men ordered me to undress and left me without my shoes and pants, which they robbed.”
“Apparently my pleas helped, and at least my life was spared,” Agam said, adding, “At the last minute the three decided to settle for just robbing my car, they got in and drove away fast.”
As a resident of the Negev, Agam is grateful for his girlfriend’s and his coming out of the incident alive, which is nothing to scoff at when you live in Israel’s Wild South of the Negev.
“My and my girlfriend’s new cell phones that we bought with our military discharge allowance were in the car, together with a wallet and other personal belongings,” he said.
The thieves threw the cell phones away so the police won’t be able to track them.
Agam posted his scary and humiliating experience on the Be’er Sheva residents’ Facebook group, out of “a desire to put an end to the growing Bedouin violence in my city,” he said, and to do something to end the feeling of insecurity and helplessness that the residents of his city experience.
“It is absurd that as a man who has contributed three and a half years as a soldier in an elite unit, and worked day and night for the security of our state against its foreign enemies, I can’t feel safe on the streets of my city and in my country.”
“This was a real danger to life, and tomorrow it can happen to anyone here in the city, including women and children,” Agam warned.
Originally published as ההפקרות בנגב: הצמידו לי סכין לבטן ונאלצתי להתחנן על חיי