JERUSALEM\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Israel\u2019s president on Saturday pardoned the combat medic who shot dead at close range a badly wounded Palestinian attacker who had stabbed a soldier in the occupied West Bank, a case that divided the country a decade ago.<\/p>\n
Elor Azaria\u2019s conviction in 2017 for manslaughter and his release after serving two-thirds of his 18-month sentence drew enormous attention in Israel, where military service is compulsory for most Jewish men. In his first interview after his release, Azaria said that \u201cI would act exactly the same, because that\u2019s how I needed to act.\u201d<\/p>\n
Azaria had approached Abdel Fattah al-Sharif as he lay on the ground, unarmed and badly hurt, after stabbing a soldier in the city of Hebron. A cellphone video captured Azaria shooting Al-Sharif in the head.<\/p>\n
The office of President Isaac Herzog said in a statement that he acted on the recommendation of Defense Minister Israel Katz. The statement cited the time that had passed, and the spirit of the approaching Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement, as among the factors in the decision.<\/p>\n
Herzog\u2019s office also said Azaria, who was 20 when he was sentenced, had \u201cexpressed his sorrow\u201d in his request. The statement noted that in an earlier request, he called his gunshot an \u201coperational error.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a separate statement, Katz called it a \u201cright, humane, and fitting decision\u201d and said Azaria had been in a \u201ccomplex operational mission.\u201d But the military\u2019s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, had said in a letter to the defense minister that the pardon shouldn\u2019t be granted, Israeli media reported.<\/p>\n
The conviction was a rare case of a military court ruling against a soldier for deadly action taken in the field. Top generals had pressed for his prosecution, while many in the Israeli public supported Azaria at a time when there had been a series of stabbings and car-ramming attacks by Palestinians or Israeli Arabs. Some supporters protested outside the trial.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Israel\u2019s hard-line National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a statement that \u201ccanceling the criminal record of someone who killed a terrorist makes me emotional and very happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some Palestinians and human rights groups had described Azaria\u2019s sentence as far too lenient. Prosecutors had sought a sentence of three to five years.<\/p>\n
The statement by Herzog\u2019s office on Saturday said that his decision \u201cdoes not constitute a reassessment of the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
The divisions over Azaria\u2019s case led to public polling and political pressures that led the defense minister at the time, Moshe Yaalon, to resign.<\/p>\n
After the verdict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for Azaria to be pardoned.<\/p>\n
After the sentencing, the Palestinian government minister in charge of prisoner affairs, Issa Karaka, called it a \u201cjoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anna writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JERUSALEM\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Israel\u2019s president on Saturday pardoned the combat medic who shot dead at close range a badly wounded Palestinian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[281662,14992,281663,226107,4941,281661,246402,85,46,43,5161,6608,4525,25450,73800,25448,762],"class_list":["post-622972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-18-month-sentence","tag-case","tag-combat-medic","tag-conviction","tag-decision","tag-defense-minister-israel-katz","tag-elor-azaria","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-office","tag-palestinian","tag-president","tag-saturday","tag-soldier","tag-statement","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622972","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=622972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}