Aviad Moshe
Aviad MosheFlash90

On Thursday, the Beer Sheva Regional Court will hand down a sentence to Aviad Moshe, convicted last year of the attempted murder of his then-wife, Shira Iskov, in their home in Mitzpeh Ramon. The Prosecution is demanding a 27-year sentence.

Aside from convicting Moshe of attempted murder with prior intent in the presence of his infant son, the court also found Moshe guilty of child abuse, even though he did not actually touch his son at any point.

During testimony that he gave in his trial, Moshe described how his wife had suffered a miscarriage around two weeks before the incident, and that she laid the blame on his family. “Despite everything I tried, I couldn’t get that idea out of her head,” he said. “She said terrible things, things that I don’t want to repeat. A day before the incident, while I was at work, I reached my limit; I couldn’t hear another word from her. I blocked her on Whatsapp – I couldn’t bear all the accusations and everything she was subjecting me to.

“I decided to call her mother,” he continued, “so I called her and begged her to help. I told her that since she left, Shira went back to saying the same things, and that she thought they did terrible things to her, that my sisters cursed her, that my parents cursed her.”

According to the terms of the indictment, Moshe “cruelly attacked his wife with a wooden rolling pin that she was using to prepare challah for Yom Tov; strangled her around her neck, and stabbed her with a serrated kitchen knife with a 20-centimeter blade, stabbing her a number of times all over her body.”

In his defense, Moshe admitted that he attacked Iskov, but insisted that he had no intention of killing her. According to his version of events, her “provocation” caused him to “lose control over his actions and harm her.”

Sentencing was originally intended to be broadcast live in line with new policies for Israeli courts but Aviad Moshe’s lawyer has raised objections to doing so.