{"id":621487,"date":"2026-09-20T01:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T01:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/621487\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T01:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T01:04:08","slug":"israels-president-pardons-soldier-who-killed-wounded-palestinian-in-2016-israel-palestine-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/621487\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s president pardons soldier who killed wounded Palestinian in 2016 | Israel-Palestine conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elor Azaria had shot a Palestinian who had already been incapacitated by Israeli troops, in controversial case.<\/p>\n

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Published On 19 Sep 202619 Sep 2026<\/p>\n

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has expunged the criminal record of a former soldier convicted of manslaughter<\/a> for killing a wounded Palestinian in Hebron a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Herzog announced on Saturday that he had shortened the remaining erasure period on Elor Azaria\u2019s record, effectively clearing it despite opposition from Israeli army Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Eyal Zamir.<\/p>\n

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The military had opposed the move.<\/p>\n

In a letter to the defence minister, Zamir and other senior officers said Azaria \u201chas refrained from expressing remorse and taking responsibility for his actions, even a decade after his conviction\u201d.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s office said it had taken the military\u2019s position into account but decided the circumstances justified allowing Azaria to \u201copen a new chapter in his life\u201d.<\/p>\n

Azaria, an army medic at the time, was filmed shooting Abdel Fattah al-Sharif<\/a> in the head in March 2016.<\/p>\n

Al-Sharif had stabbed and wounded a soldier but had already been shot by Israeli troops and had lain on the ground for about 11 minutes before Azaria killed him.<\/p>\n

Azaria was convicted by a military court in 2017 and sentenced to 18 months in prison, later reduced to 14 months. He was released in May 2018 after serving nine months.<\/p>\n

Herzog\u2019s office said the decision followed a request from Defence Minister Israel Katz in July and was based on \u201cthe passage of time, the completion of his sentence, and the remorse he has expressed\u201d.<\/p>\n

The statement added that the pardon was issued \u201cin the spirit\u201d of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and did not challenge the original legal proceedings.<\/p>\n

Katz welcomed the pardon, writing on X that it \u201csends an important message to [Israeli army] soldiers and their families: We do not abandon our fighters\u201d.<\/p>\n

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, called the decision \u201cdeeply moving\u201d and urged Herzog to grant a similar pardon to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption.<\/p>\n

The 2016 shooting generated intense debate in Israel and drew international condemnation at the time.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had condemned the shooting as an \u201cextrajudicial execution\u201d and a \u201cwar crime\u201d, saying the video footage \u201cdemolished all the slogans chanted by the occupation leaders about the ethics of the Israeli army\u201d.<\/p>\n

The family of al-Sharif had dismissed the legal proceedings as a \u201cfarce\u201d aimed at improving Israel\u2019s international image rather than delivering justice.<\/p>\n

The United Nations human rights office described the original sentence<\/a> as \u201cexcessively lenient\u201d and said it risked \u201creinforcing the culture of impunity\u201d.
In 2024, the Joe Biden administration barred Azaria and his immediate family from entering the United States, citing an \u201cextrajudicial killing\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elor Azaria had shot a Palestinian who had already been incapacitated by Israeli troops, in controversial case. Published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[782,737,4496,85,46,44,47,43,45,48],"class_list":["post-621487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-palestine-conflict","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-occupied-west-bank","tag-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}