Shortly after the birth of his daughter, the great joy in the life of A., a man in his 40s from central Israel, turned into a fight for survival whose outcome no one could have imagined.
The girl was born with severe and complex medical conditions that required expensive, long-term treatments, some of them outside Israel. What had been a normative family life became a daily struggle to survive. After all efforts to finance the treatments failed, A. turned to the gray market, an Israeli term for unregulated private lenders. The debts only grew, and threats soon followed. Eventually, he found himself stealing about 1.2 million shekels from his workplace — all in an effort to save his daughter.
For years after completing his service as a combat soldier in the IDF, A. worked as an ATM technician for a subsidiary of a major bank, a position based entirely on trust. He started a family and, together with his partner, eagerly awaited the birth of their daughter. But at the moment of birth, their lives were upended, and the parents realized they would have to do everything possible to save her.
A. first tried every legal option available. He worked around the clock, used up his savings, turned to relatives and even informed his employer of his situation. The bank, aware of his distress, extended him a loan, but it was not enough. The debts mounted, the financial pressure became suffocating, and when doctors said the child needed a special treatment to survive, A. reached a breaking point.
“He had nowhere to turn,” said his defense attorney, Tali Goer of the Public Defender’s Office. “He felt alone in the face of an impossible reality.”
Out of deep despair, A. turned to the gray market. The money was transferred, but the loans came with exorbitant interest rates, and threats followed immediately. While he was doing everything for his daughter, his reality became even harsher. The fear was no longer only financial, but existential. Fearing for the lives of his family, the safety of his partner and the little peace that remained at home, A. made the mistake that would later put him on trial: taking money from his workplace.
Over a period of about three months, while assigned to repair ATMs at various locations, A. would disable the alarm, fix the malfunction and leave with cash. It began with a few thousand shekels at a time and gradually grew, eventually reaching a total of about 1.2 million shekels. He was then caught. According to the indictment, the offense harmed not only property, but the very core of the trust relationship between employee and employer. Still, the prosecution did not dispute that A. had no criminal record and acted without motives of greed or luxury. The money was not used for indulgences, but for one purpose only: medical treatments for his daughter.
In the meantime, his personal reality grew even darker. After a prolonged struggle, the medical procedure failed, and the girl died at age 6. A.’s partner fell into deep depression, and the family collapsed under the weight of grief. His son is a fighter in an elite unit who has been in combat since the start of the war, and the father was left to cope with loss, debt and a criminal indictment.
A. did not try to evade responsibility. In his first interrogation, he confessed, took full responsibility and returned some of the money. “All I cared about was paying for the medical treatments. And the debts remained even after she died. I knew I would probably be caught at some point,” he told ynet in recent days. “But that was the choice I made to stop the threats and protect my family.”
He repeated those words in court hearings, leaving a deep impression on welfare officials. Ahead of sentencing, A. told the court that “the offense I committed stems from stubbornness. All my life I managed on my own, so I was sure I could manage on my own again. Today I want to ask the court for help.” The judge acknowledged the exceptional circumstances but ruled they did not absolve him of responsibility. A. was sentenced to 20 months in prison, along with a fine and compensation to the bank. An appeal to the district court was also rejected.
That did not end the struggle. On A.’s behalf, Goer petitioned the Justice Ministry’s pardons department, which forwarded its recommendation to President Isaac Herzog. In the request, Goer laid out the full human story: A.’s acceptance of responsibility, his remorse, the positive assessment by the probation service and the argument that a prison sentence would further devastate the family.
This week, after a long period of uncertainty, a decision was made. The father received news he never believed would come: The president decided to reduce his sentence. The prison term was canceled and replaced with nine months of community service. The fines and compensation remain in effect. “This is not an erasure of the offense,” Goer stressed. “It is a different, more humane balance in an exceptional situation.”
Speaking with ynet, A. said that “when I was sentenced to prison, I of course understood the wrong in my actions — but the ones who would pay the price were my family, left with debts and left alone.” After learning of the president’s decision, he added: “Now I can continue rebuilding my family, work and repay my debts, and put the family back on some kind of life track.”
First published: 15:07, 02.07.26