Use scp to copy files to the home directory without having to specify it

Your commands are trying to put the new Document to the root (/) of your machine. What you want to do is to transfer them to your home directory (since you have no permissions to write to /). If path to your home is something like /home/erez try the following:

scp My_file.txt user_id@server:/home/erez/

You can substitute the path to your home directory with the shortcut ~/, so the following will have the same effect:

scp My_file.txt user_id@server:~/

You can even leave out the path altogether on the remote side; this means your home directory.

scp My_file.txt user_id@server:

That is, to copy the file to your desktop you might want to transfer it to /home/erez/Desktop/:

scp My_file.txt user_id@server:/home/erez/Desktop/

or using the shortcut:

scp My_file.txt user_id@server:~/Desktop/

or using a relative path on the remote side, which is interpreted relative to your home directory:

scp My_file.txt user_id@server:Desktop/

Edit:

As @ckhan already mentioned, you also have to swap the arguments, it has to be

scp FROM TO

So if you want to copy the file My_file.txt from the server user_id@server to your desktop you should try the following:

scp user_id@server:/path/to/My_file.txt ~/Desktop/

If the file My_file.txt is located in your home directory on the server you may again use the shortcut:

scp user_id@server:~/My_file.txt ~/Desktop/

You need to run the scp command from the local machine, not on the remote. You don't need the ssh at all:

dragonmnl@local $ scp -P 2222 file.ext username@domain:~/ 

You also don't need the -r:

 -r      Recursively copy entire directories.  

If you are already logged into the remote machine and want to copy from your local, you need to make sure that your local machine is accessible via the internet and has ssh set up. I don't think this is what you are after but if it is, just run this from the remote:

username@domain $ scp dragonmnl@local:/path/to/file.ext ~/