Convicted by a video: the smirking Israeli executioner
He shot Palestinian dead as victim lay injured and helpless in street in Hebron
TEL AVIV // He swaggered into the Israeli military courtroom, surrounded by his family and supporters, a confident smirk on his face.
Three hours later the swagger and the confidence were gone, and his head slumped to his chest as the head of a three-judge panel delivered the damning verdict: guilty of manslaughter.
Elor Azaria, 20, an Israeli army medic, executed Abdul Fatah Al Sharif, 21, with a shot to the head as the young Palestinian lay wounded, unarmed and helpless on a street in Hebron on March 24 last year, the court found.
Despite almost daily violence inflicted on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, it was the first time in 11 years that an Israeli military court had found a soldier on operational duty guilty of manslaughter. Human rights groups said the case only reached court because the killing was filmed, and the video drew a global wave of revulsion.
The victim’s family called for Azaria to be given life in prison when he is sentenced on January 15. “For me, a just verdict will be one that is similar to the verdicts our sons get,” said Yousri Al Sharif, who watched the courtroom scenes live on Israeli television at the family home in Hebron.
“I feel good. It is fair. This is an achievement of the court that it condemned the soldier.”
Colonel Maya Heller, head of the judicial panel, took nearly three hours to read out its verdict. With every minute that passed, and in painstaking detail, it became clearer that the judges had rejected every word said in Azaria’s defence.
Col Heller said there was no evidence to support his contradictory claims that Al Sharif was already dead, or that he posed any threat at the time.
She said Azaria’s testimony was “unreliable” and that he had “needlessly” shot Al Sharif. She said his defence witnesses were problematic, and she criticised the arguments of his lawyer. “We found there was no room to accept his arguments,” she said. “His motive for shooting was that he felt the terrorist deserved to die.”
Azaria faces up to 20 years in prison. The defence team said it would appeal.
The trial, which began last May, divided Israel. Army chiefs condemned Azaria’s actions, but right-wing politicians leapt to his defence.
As the verdict was delivered, tensions boiled over in the cramped, crowded courtroom. Azaria’s family clapped sarcastically, some shouted “Our hero!” and one female relative was thrown out of the courtroom for screaming at the judges.
In Hebron, Al Sharif’s family were joined by relatives of other Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces. Some held “Wanted” posters of Azaria and one demanded he be tried at the International Criminal Court.
Video footage of the shooting showed Al Sharif, lying on the ground, having been shot along with another man after allegedly stabbing and slightly wounding a soldier minutes earlier. Azaria then shoots Al Sharif again in the head without provocation.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem, one of whose Palestinian volunteers made the video, said: “The fact that one soldier was convicted today does not exonerate the Israeli military law enforcement system from its routine whitewashing of cases in which security forces kill or injure Palestinians with no accountability.
“The exception of a much publicised trial, marked by a rare instance of video documentation, is not enough to change this norm.”
The Palestinian government said the conviction happened only “because the crime was documented on video and transmitted on TV for the whole world to see”.
Hundreds of Azaria’s supporters, many of them young hardline religious men, gathered outside the court in Tel Aviv before the verdict. The crowd, holding large Israeli flags and banners that said “the nation neglected a soldier on the battlefield”, scuffled with police.
Some chanted death threats against the Israeli army’s chief, Lieutenant Gadi Eizenkot, suggesting he would face the same fate as Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated 20 years ago by an ultranationalist Israeli. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially defended the military’s condemnation of Azaria but later softened his position and called the killer’s parents to console them. Last night, he called for a pardon for the convicted man.
The dispute over the trial fuelled the resignation last year of defence minister Moshe Yaalon, who sided with the military. His successor, Avigdor Lieberman, visited Azaria in court and education minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settler Jewish Home Party, also called for a pardon. Mr Lieberman said
The deed was done, and the offence was severe Lt Col Nadav Weissman Military prosecutor
he disagreed with the “difficult” verdict but urged the public to respect the court’s decision. He said the defence establishment would do “everything it can” to help Azaria and his family. “We must keep the army outside every political argument … and keep it in the widest consensus in Israeli society,” he said.
Sharon Gal, a spokesman for the Azaria family, accused the court of siding with human rights groups over a soldier on a battlefield.
“It was like the court was detached from the fact that this was the area of an attack. I felt that the court picked up the knife from the ground and stabbed it in the back of all the soldiers,” he said. Lt Col Nadav Weissman, the military prosecutor who is also a partner in a Tel Aviv law firm, said this was “not a happy day”.
“We would have preferred that this didn’t happen. But the deed was done, and the offence was severe,” he said.
The shooting took place at the height of a year-long wave of violence in which Israeli security forces were accused of using excessive force to handle alleged attacks. Most of the incidents involved lone- wolf attacks by young, often teenage, Palestinians using knives.
The violence, which began in October 2015, killed 246 Palestinians and 34 Israelis.