"The client sent criminals, if a contract was put out on you, you are a dead person"

On Friday evening, four days after lawyer Arbel Feldman was shot to death by his client following a financial dispute, lawyer Hila Maimoni-Shriki received a call from the Israel Police. "They told me 'they burned your entire office, not a trace of it remains'," she recounts with pain. "I feel threatened. Since this case, I have someone guarding the house in the evening, and my husband takes me everywhere." Maimoni-Shriki opened the office that was burned only half a year ago in Netivot. She has two more offices in Be'er Sheva, all of which are in her field of expertise - National Insurance and torts, not the first fields that come to mind when thinking about lawyers who feel threatened. After what happened with the murder of the lawyer, you understand that anyone can pick up a weapon and take a person's life.

From the office of lawyer Maimoni-Shriki in Netivot, nothing remains. The office walls are black and sooty, and there is no trace of what was there before. The entire office staff, she says, moved to another branch of her office and she describes that all the employees are frightened. Everyone comes together and leaves together, they don't stay alone.

The murder of lawyer Feldman struck the legal system with shock. A client who murders a lawyer is an exceptional thing, but not unprecedented: a little over a decade ago, lawyer Nathan Zorno and his daughter Yamit were shot to death in the Clal building in Jerusalem by his client, Tadesse Gathun, who hired his services as part of a divorce proceeding. Gathun claimed that the lawyer cooperated with his wife's lawyer and demanded his money back. When he was refused - he shot Zorno and his daughter to death.

In 2008, criminal lawyer Yoram Haham was murdered using an explosive device planted in his car. The head of the crime organization Asi Abutbul, a client of Haham, was accused of the act in 2017 - and to this day, it is hard to believe, his trial is ongoing. About 30 years ago, lawyer Avraham Avi-Oren was murdered in his office in Petah Tikva, also by his client - a prisoner who took advantage of his leave from prison to commit the murder.

Tomorrow they will burn a car that someone was inside

The murder of lawyer Feldman left difficult feelings among lawyers, who feel threatened. Only some of them are willing to share the horror. It is still unclear who is behind the arson in the office of lawyer Maimoni-Shriki, but she is sure that it is one of her clients. "I gave names of clients to the police to check this direction, I really hope they find who did it. There is a line that was crossed here, and even if the fact that I gave names to the police will end my career, I am a mother. My health and security are more important to me and my daughters than anything."

Although a week has passed since the incident, Maimoni-Shriki had not revealed her story to the media until now. Following our approach to her, she decided to speak in her name, out of a sense of mission. "I think I am the face today of all the lawyers, who are afraid. It cannot work in such a way that we are constantly threatened and afraid and have to think twice before sending a fee to a client. So today they burned my office - tomorrow they will burn a car that someone was inside. I will not return to Netivot, but who guarantees me that such a thing will not happen in my other offices? Someone needs to protect us, it is our work, our role. We are people of the law." The police claim that the suspicion is of a business dispute.

When we first started working on this article - we turned to senior lawyers, some of them criminal, out of the belief that precisely those who deal with criminals are more exposed to threats from their clients. Their response surprised us: a complete denial that such a thing could happen, that someone would ever threaten them, and how we even dare to ask, as if the question itself is an insult to their dignity - even though criminal lawyers in Israel, as we have already noted, paid prices with their lives just because of their profession. Many were afraid to talk to us at all, certainly in their own name.

The reasons for the fear of speaking are varied: many told us that they would not want to share, for fear that that same client would identify himself and return to take revenge; concerns were also expressed by those who chose to give up collecting the fee in cases where they felt the danger was near; and alongside the feeling of shame, it can be assumed that there is also a fear of the lawyers who deal in the criminal field that they will tell the media about the threat, and that their clients will suspect that they are also capable of turning to the police. Not something that might be perceived favorably by those who get into trouble with the law.

But from conversations we had with many lawyers, we realized that dealing with the danger in the profession is not only the lot of criminal lawyers - and perhaps even, not at all. Even civil lawyers, who never thought there was any danger when they chose to study the profession and passed the bar exams, find themselves exposed to threats on a daily basis, some of them threats of a truly physical nature.

She simply sent criminals to me

"I suffered from several such cases throughout my career," says lawyer Ayelet Davidov-Saar, who for years dealt with divorce cases, insolvency, wills and inheritances, and recently moved to focus on the field of international commercial law. "I had a case where a couple of clients came to me, who were not married to each other, but divorced from others. The woman came to increase alimony, and the man came to arrange visitation with his daughter. They gave me checks and I deposited them, and some of the checks bounced. One day they call me from the police and told me that there are clients who are serial thieves, and that a check they brought me was stolen from a 90-year-old person."

"When I approached the woman regarding the checks - she simply sent criminals to me. Every morning I came to the car to go to work and saw four punctured tires," she recalls. "One day I was at home with my baby, and suddenly someone entered my house. I went silent. He didn't do anything, just looked and left. We had to leave the city we lived in."

The strategy that Davidov-Saar chose is simply to avoid depositing the checks and getting into a confrontation with the couple. The assistance to the police at the time, according to her, did not help, and she understood that her life is more important. "You don't know how such a story can end, when it comes to a criminal family. If a contract was put out on you, you are a dead person. I love my life," she says.

Since that case, many years have passed - but she does feel a change in trend regarding the treatment that lawyers receive. "If such a thing happened to me today, I would have a personal bodyguard, out of fear. I feel that our society has changed. That there is hatred and violence. Today children are murdering on the street, something in our society is broken. This change started generally in society and also began to be directed specifically at lawyers and judges."

The attack that left lawyer Ben-Zvi disabled

The threat to which lawyers are exposed comes not only from clients, but many times from the other side, against whom they represent. About a year ago, lawyer Ronen Ben-Zvi went to check an apartment of his client, who complained that one of the neighbors took over her house and rented it to others. Ben-Zvi, in his past a police officer and one of the founders of the Lahav 433 unit, arrived alone at the house in Jaffa, after bathing in the sea, with flip-flops and a mobile phone. He did not imagine that from this event he would come out disabled and would no longer be able to walk on his legs. That same neighbor, according to the indictment, came out of his house and confronted him, and his 17-year-old son attacked him from behind on his head. Ben-Zvi arrived at the hospital with his head crushed, with irreversible brain damage.

"My brother - it is better for him to die than to live," says Doron Ben-Zvi, Ronen's brother, with a sigh of pain. "True, he is still breathing, but this is not the person he was. The story is over. A person whose work was to talk - cannot talk anymore. What does it matter if he is breathing?" he asks. "At least in the case of the lawyer in Rishon LeZion (Feldman, ed.), the case is clear: a person came, took a gun, shot a bullet in the head and he can be accused of murder. My brother is breathing but remained with half a skull - such a thing, do you think, can be caused by fists and kicks?" he says regarding the indictment filed against the father and his son. "The police did not do their job. Did not investigate the case for 36 hours. Meanwhile, they already managed to dismantle all the cameras that documented what really happened there."

Ben-Zvi has a belly full of complaints about the police. He says that in order for the police to start investigating, he was the one who had to start everything: when his brother arrived at the hospital, no one knew where he came from. By hook or by crook, he managed to locate the place, and filed two different complaints at police stations, to pressure them to start investigating. Meanwhile, precious time was lost. The thing that most illustrates the event is the first line in the statement of claim that he himself filed before against this neighbor: he opens there on the police and writes that 'there is something to learn in the lawsuit about the helplessness of the Israel Police in protecting the public from criminals devoid of inhibitions and morals'. "Do you know how many lawyers the apartment owner tried to take, even before my brother entered the picture? There were three lawyers who were threatened and simply ran away. The apartment owners were afraid. When they complained to the police about the fact that furniture was emptied from their apartment - the police simply returned the furniture to them and closed the file."

He also has criticism of the judicial system. The fact that it was described in the indictment that the son, whose name is forbidden to be published because he is 17 and a half and is defined as a minor, attacked his brother with fists and kicks - drives him crazy. "Such an injury as my brother has cannot be caused only by fists. It is clear that a crowbar was involved here," he says. The son who attacked his brother confessed and was convicted in a plea bargain of offenses of causing serious bodily harm with intent, obstruction of investigation and trial and incitement to investigation. His father confessed, also as part of the agreement, to obstruction of investigation and trial, incitement to investigation, trespassing and obtaining something by fraud. The punishment that the Tel Aviv District Court imposed was significantly lower than that requested by the prosecution, and on this it appealed to the Supreme Court. Now the parties are waiting for a decision - whether the Supreme Court will tighten the punishment of the son, who was sentenced to only 4 years, and of his father, who was sentenced to two years.

"I would like them to pay the punishment," says Ben-Zvi. "The court needs to be stricter with them. The District Court spoke only about the rehabilitation of the attacker, who although he was 17 and a half, but he is twice as wide as me and taller. Our lives have turned completely upside down. I and my mother take care of him 24/7, he has two children in the army. It is very hard for them."

The attack in the court that was defined as a work accident

Also lawyer Dvora Shoshan, who deals with family law, was attacked by the side she argued against. About four years ago, during a hearing in the Rabbinical Court where she represented a woman who wanted to divorce her husband - the husband attacked her. The National Insurance recognized this incident as a work accident. "In the middle of the hearing he simply attacked me with a walking stick, on the head and shoulders and threw heavy binders at me. The husband's lawyer was forced to intervene physically and by force to separate him from my body, otherwise it would have ended in a disaster and a brain hemorrhage. I filed a complaint with the police, he was arrested, a criminal proceeding was conducted against him, and the National Insurance recognized me as a victim of a work accident."

This case is not the last one she had to deal with. She says that in the last two years, in another divorce dispute where she represents the woman, she experiences threats and harassment from the husband of her client. "I started representing a woman who suffered from extremely severe violence from her husband. He was released from prison after serving a prison sentence of almost two years, and immediately when he was released he started threatening my life and attacking me, claiming that I am accompanying his ex-wife and because of that she did not return to him."

"Protection orders were given against him that forbid him from approaching me or his wife, but he violates them dozens of times a day. Once he came to my house, knocked at the neighbors and looked for me. As a result, I had to move and I don't put my name on the door," she sighs. "He calls me about 50 times a day from a hidden number to block my line and exhaust me. I received an extortion message from him that if I don't return his wife to him, things will happen. I receive threats from his entire environment so that I return him and his wife to domestic peace."

"Did you file complaints against him with the police? We filed a lot. The client filed complaints about violation of orders, and I turned in detailed letters to the Minister of National Security and police commanders on this matter, but the feeling is that no one is doing anything. The situation is so extreme that the client received an exceptional exemption from appearing at hearings for fear for her life, so I appear before him alone in court and find myself as a victim and a direct target instead of her. The police simply do not function and I feel that we need to protect ourselves. There are colleagues who tell me to leave the field because of these threats."

"What message would you like to convey? That the police should wake up. It does not treat violence against lawyers properly and severely enough, and I feel that the Bar Association also. After the murder of the lawyer, one must not take any threat or violence against a lawyer lightly and one must act immediately and give us protection. I feel unsafe."

Shortly before we uploaded this article, Dvora wrote to us: "Yesterday they knocked on the door late at night and it was dark and I started to get into movies. Every knock on the door makes me jump, I check every morning if there is a bomb under the car."

Responses

Response of the Israel Police

Regarding the arson of the office of lawyer Hila Maimoni-Shriki: upon receiving the report of the incident, police officers arrived at the scene and an investigation was opened, while collecting findings from the scene. At this stage, the initial suspicion that arises from the investigation is apparently a business dispute. The investigation of the incident continues thoroughly with the goal of reaching the truth and exhausting the law with those involved.

Regarding the attack on lawyer Ronen Ben-Zvi: this is a professional and thorough investigation, in the framework of which a wide variety of investigative actions and testimony collection were carried out, including the collection of forensic and digital evidence with the goal of reaching the truth. As evidence, indictments were filed against two defendants which eventually led to their prosecution and conviction in court which sentenced them to long prison terms behind bars.

Regarding the threats against lawyer Dvora Shoshan: regarding the first file conducted at the Lev HaBira station, upon receiving the complaint an investigation was opened in the framework of which testimonies were collected, findings were collected and the suspect was summoned for investigation. Regarding the second file conducted at the Binyamin station, upon receiving the complaint an investigation was opened, in the framework of which a number of investigative actions were carried out. In accordance with the evidentiary infrastructure that was formed, the file was closed. As new evidence or information is received by the police, the reopening of the file will be considered as is customary.

Response of the Israel Bar Association

Over half a year ago, the head of the Bar Association ordered the establishment of a hotline for inquiries, which will serve as an address for an immediate response to lawyers under threat. Every such inquiry is accompanied personally by the head of the Bar Association, lawyer Amit Becher, or the CEO of the Bar Association, lawyer Vered Zeitman. At the same time, a meeting was held with MK Zvika Fogel, chairman of the National Security Committee, to promote legislation to tighten punishment that equates harming a lawyer to harming a public servant. The Bar Association will continue to act to promote legislation at the end of the Knesset recess.

With the shocking murder of our colleague, lawyer Arbel Feldman, the head of the Bar Association held an urgent meeting of the district heads and it was decided immediately on a number of additional steps: strengthening and upgrading the hotline, promoting a dedicated department for dealing with violence against lawyers, and formulating a procedure and implementing training for dealing with violent clients. The Law Conference scheduled to take place on 2.9 is postponed, and instead the opening of the legal year will be dedicated to a special day on the subject of violence against lawyers.