The father of Israeli soldier Elor Azaria, who is charged with manslaughter after he shot a wounded Palestinian assailant as he lay on the ground in Hebron on March 24, kisses his head in a military court. (photo credit:REUTERS)
By David M. Weinberg – JPost
The Elor Azaria trial should be plea-bargained to a quick end, cutting short ugly attempts to indict half the country for fanaticism.
After Elor Azaria’s shooting of that downed terrorist in Hebron in March, I immediately knew that the soldier should and would be disciplined. That mostly dead terrorist didn’t deserve to live, but it wasn’t Azaria’s decision to make.
Perhaps Azaria misread the tense situation, and sensed lingering danger from the Palestinian attacker, but still. There were commanders on the scene; soldiers mustn’t get flustered and act precipitously; and interrogation of the terrorist might have been more useful than finishing him off.
I figured that the army would conduct a quick field investigation of the incident; express regret for the wrinkle in operational conduct and sympathy for the entangled soldier; slap Azaria with an unexceptional punishment; re-clarify the rules of engagement to all its front-line field units that face tricky terrorist challenges daily; and move on.
After all, this was a minor incident in our long war against Palestinian terrorism, nothing more! Instead and unfortunately, the army brass and extreme left-wing politicians have turned this incident into a grand morality play about the ethics of Israel.
It has become a sick stage for the undermining of Israel’s legitimacy, blown out of all proportion by detractors who seek to sap the legality of Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria and to crush the influence of settlers in the army and public life.
It started with the miserable, overwrought condemnations of Azaria by then-defense minister Moshe Ya’alon and IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot. They practically branded Azaria a war criminal faster than you can say “we want to show B’Tselem, the ICC prosecutor, and all the progressive critics of Israel how holier-than-thou we are.”
All it took was a video and few yelps from human rights NGOs, and they rushed to smear Azaria with dark overtones. They didn’t even wait for the results of an orderly IDF investigation on the scene. You might say that Ya’alon and Eisenkot were more trigger-happy than, say, Elor Azaria… Read full article at: Jerusalem Post
Tag: Hebron shooting
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