After attempting suicide, victim of Jewish mob violence says state has forsaken him

Saeed Mousa, an Arab man who was pulled from his car and brutally beaten by a Jewish mob during last year’s intercommunal violence, said on Friday he had tried to kill himself in recent days after being neglected by the state in the wake of his harrowing ordeal.

Mousa said that following his lengthy hospitalization and rehabilitation, he had been unable to work and that the government was largely ignoring his plight and failing to provide him with financial aid to survive. It was not clear what Mousa did for a living before the attack.

Despondent and humiliated by his condition, Mousad swallowed a large number of pills on Monday in an attempt to end his own life, but was rescued by family members who rushed him to hospital, he said.

“When you appeal to institutions that are meant to help you, the National Insurance Institute and the like, and they put you in a corner, they don’t ask you how you are, don’t ask anything. If they help you it’s after you go to them 20 times… [You] come and go from committees and in the end, they send NIS 800,” he told the Kan public broadcaster.

The sums provided are “whatever they feel like. Sometimes they don’t send anything until someone intervenes” with connections to the higher-ups, he claimed.

In response to Kan, the NII claimed that Mousa was “refusing to cooperate despite the many attempts to contact him” and that, despite this, he has been given a stipend of over NIS 8,000 a month.

Mousa’s lawyer said she was not aware of any such stipend, that all medical documents requested had been submitted, and that Mousa had attended all committee discussions, except for one.

Mousa said he can’t work. “I tried, I really tried… I don’t want this disability [designation]. I’m used to working. I’m used to earning a living with my own hands. I don’t ask for help or anything. I went back to work, I tried, but I couldn’t do it.”

Mousa said he was unable to work because of “pain,” and “being stressed by people. The moment I see people, I get anxious,” he said, due to his traumatic attack by a frenzied crowd.

“When you get up in the morning, the kids ask you for something and you don’t have it. Food, little things you can’t give them,” Mousa said, explaining what led him to his suicide attempt.

“There was nothing to do, I thought I don’t want this headache. I see the people around me, I’m a burden to them, I don’t know, it got hard.”

“I want to end it, I don’t want to live. To hurt just myself, not anyone else… To hurt myself and to go, that’s it,” he told the network.

“I don’t want to thank [those that saved me]. If I need to stay like this, it’s not worth it,” he added.

Mousa said his situation was much worse these days than during rehabilitation. “In the first month I didn’t feel a thing, it was like a dream” but it became harder and harder, he said.

He said welfare representatives and social services had not spoken to him or offered help since his suicide attempt.

בת ים, הערב: זה לא ניסיון דריסה, זה פחד של הנהג מההמון הקיצוני. לינץ’ בנהג ממוצא ערבי, למה? כי הוא ערבי. תוהו ובוהו. pic.twitter.com/o5Z0iLCd5n

— אור רביד | Or Ravid (@OrRavid) May 12, 2021

Mousa said he had not seen the video of his attack. “I haven’t seen the clips so far. Intentionally. I don’t want to see it.” The last thing he said he remembered was when the hooligans asked him if he was an Arab, and nothing more.

The unprovoked beating of the motorist was caught on live television, shocking the public.

One of the suspects, Lahav Nagauker, was interviewed live moments after the beating, telling a reporter, “We came tonight to fight with Arabs… if we must, we will kill them, and if we must, we will murder them.”

At least 10 people have been charged in the incident, but so far only one has been sentenced. Nagauker, who was 20 at the time, was convicted last month of incitement to violence and racism as part of a plea deal. Nagauker was not involved in the actual attack, but threw a bottle at Moussa’s car, damaging the rear windshield.

Mousa said he did not want to follow the trials and arrests. “If there’s rule of law in the country they’ll catch them all,” he said.

Mousa said his trust in Jews had not been harmed after the attack. “It’s not that I don’t trust, but I don’t like to mix with people. But I have Jewish friends, they come to my home… But I don’t want to sit with people, I want to be alone,” he said.

Asked by Kan what his daily routine looked like, he answered: “I sleep.”

Mousa said he was in pain because his pills had been taken away after the suicide attempt. “We have an NII we pay, we have institutions of the state we pay, they should care for us.”

“The most difficult thing is that the government does not ask, is not interested. That’s hard,” Mousa said.

He said it was “humiliating” to be begging the government for aid, and frustrating that it only got involved when, from time to time, powerful individuals stepped in to try to help him with the institutions.

“When it’s someone they know who can create lots of problems for them, they help, and then for a month or two they forget about it,” he said.

Ahmed Masharawi, a friend of Mousa and former Tel Aviv council member told Kan: “He’s very introverted and closed up and I feel that only when I’m alone with him I can pull out of him how much he’s suffered recently, both mentally with the trauma he’s had, and financially.”

“He tells me ‘I was used to working two or three jobs to make a respectable living, anything that was missing, I as the man of the family would take care of’ — an Arab mentality… ‘Suddenly I’m here at home, closed off, can’t see people, I’m suffering, taking pills, smoking all day,’” Masharawi said.

Masharawi said that “sometimes there are three or four days when he doesn’t sleep at all.”

“On the financial side, I ask where is the State of Israel? If I’m not here beside him, the man is lost. You feel that if you leave him for a moment, there’s no one to hold this person up, to take care of him,” he said.

Masharawi said that, in recent days, some groups supporting victims of nationalist violence were beginning to take an interest. “The man needs help. Tons of media outlets from abroad have spoken to them. I knew what they were looking for — they were looking for attacks on the country. Together we decided, absolutely not.”

“The man loves people, he loves them, but today it’s different. He’s completely shut off. I call on the State of Israel: Stand by him, get him back on his feet, get him back to being a normal human being with aspirations,” Masharawi added.

The beating, which took place in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam, occurred while Israel was at war with the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip. The 11-day war ignited an unprecedented wave of internecine Jewish-Arab violence in cities around the country.

Mousa was on his way to the beach in Bat Yam when he was set upon by a group that had gathered to attack Arabs and Arab-owned businesses in the Tel Aviv-area city, according to an indictment filed in the case.

According to prosecutors, Mousa attempted to reverse away from the mob, but hit a car behind him. He then accelerated forward, with people jumping out of the way, before crashing into another car.

He was then dragged out of the car by the mob, with some claiming he had attempted to run over pedestrians and was beaten badly.

At the time, he was taken to Ichilov Hospital in serious condition.