Israel’s president has pardoned a combat medic who shot dead a seriously wounded Palestinian attacker who had stabbed a soldier in the occupied West Bank, in a case that divided the country a decade ago. Elor Azaria’s 2017 conviction for involuntary manslaughter and his release after serving two-thirds of his 18-month sentence attracted enormous attention in Israel, where military service is mandatory for most Jewish men. In his first interview after his release, Azaria said he would “act exactly like Same, because that’s how I had to act.” Azaria had approached Abdel Fattah al-Sharif as he lay on the ground, unarmed and seriously injured, after stabbing a soldier in the city of Hebron. Mobile phone video captured Azaria shooting al-Sharif in the head. President Isaac Herzog’s office said in a statement Saturday that he acted on the recommendation of Defense Minister Israel Katz. The statement cited time and the spirit of the upcoming holiday of Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement, as some of the factors in the decision. Herzog’s office also said Azaria, who was 20 when he was sentenced, had “expressed his pain” in his request. The statement noted that in a previous request, he called his shooting an “operational error.” In a separate statement, Katz called it a “correct, humane and appropriate decision” and said Azaria had been on a “complex operational mission.” But army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir had said in a letter to the Defense Minister that the pardon should not be granted, Israeli media reported. The conviction was a rare case of a military court ruling against a soldier for a deadly action carried out in the field. Senior generals had pushed for his prosecution, while many in the Israeli public supported Azaria at a time when there had been a series of stabbings and car attacks by Palestinians or Israeli Arabs. Some supporters protested outside his trial. On Saturday, Israel’s hardline national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said in a statement that “expunging the criminal record of someone who killed a terrorist excites me and makes me very happy.” Some Palestinians and human rights groups had described Azaria’s sentence as too lenient. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of three to five years. The statement from Herzog’s office on Saturday said his decision “does not constitute a reevaluation of the case.” Divisions over Azaria’s case led to public polls and political pressure that led then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to resign. After the verdict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for Azaria’s pardon. Prisoner Affairs, Issa Karaka, called it a “joke.”
