The State Prosecutor’s Office filed a civil lawsuit on Thursday in Haifa Magistrate’s Court seeking about NIS 2 million from four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who kidnapped and murdered soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984. The suit was filed on behalf of the Defense Ministry, with the goal of recovering money the state has paid, and will continue to pay, to Tamam’s bereaved parents, Galya Tamam and the late Eliyahu Tamam, for the financial damage caused by the attack.
The defendants are convicted terrorists Ibrahim Abd al-Razeq Biadsa, Ibrahim Naif Abu Mukh, and Saleh, formerly Rushdi, Abu Mukh, along with the estate of Walid Nimer Asaad Daka, who headed the cell and ordered Tamam’s murder. Daka died in 2024 while serving his sentence. The lawsuit follows their criminal convictions and life sentences in 1987.
According to the indictment facts cited in the filing, the four, then residents of Baqa al-Gharbiyye, abducted Tamam in August 1984 while he was waiting for a ride near Netanya. They bound him, covered his eyes, and held him for two days before taking him to an olive grove near Mevo Dotan, where they killed him brutally after five days in captivity and left his body there.
The state, through attorney Einat Shterman-Cohen of the Haifa District Prosecutor’s Office, is asking the court to make the defendants repay the benefits paid under the Families of Soldiers Killed in Battle Law, as well as future payments. The filing argues that those who kidnapped and murdered Tamam, causing profound loss to his family, should bear the financial consequences rather than the public. It says the crimes reflected a “loss of human and moral direction” and severe harm to protected social values, especially because they were driven by nationalist motives and committed by Israeli citizens. The filing also quotes the original sentencing, which called it a “horrific murder” carried out in cold blood, with planning and forethought, because Tamam was a soldier in the IDF.
