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Israeli President Isaac Herzog has pardoned former Israeli soldier Elor Azaria, who was convicted of manslaughter for shooting a wounded Palestinian man in Hebron in 2016, erasing his criminal record, Haaretz reported on Saturday.
Azaria’s pardon comes more than 10 years after he shot 21-year-old Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in the head after the Palestinian man was wounded by Israeli soldiers’ fire.
Azaria welcomed the scraping of his criminal record by thanking God, his family, Herzog and Defence Minister Israel Katz, telling Channel 14 News that it was “a blessed week”.
“Thank God we have reached this moment,” he said.
“It is important that no fighter goes through what I went through,” Azaria reportedly told Katz during a phone call.
The killing, which was captured on camera by a Palestinian photographer working for Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, led to an uproar in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
At the time, the Palestinian foreign ministry said the killing was an “extrajudicial execution”, while the Israeli military said Azaria violated the army’s ethics code.
Herzog’s office said in a statement on Saturday that “Azaria bore the consequences of his actions” for many years, adding that the former Israeli soldier expressed remorse for the consequences of his actions and, therefore, it was justified to allow him “to turn a new page in his life”.
The Israeli president said he was acting in the spirit of Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement, one of the most important holidays in the Jewish calendar.
The decision, Herzog’s statement said, was made “out of a belief in the importance of repair, reconciliation, and the ability to move forward”.
However, according to Haaretz, Herzog acted against the advice of the Israeli military, as the army’s chief, Eyal Zamir, said in a letter to the president that he was against pardoning, citing Azaria’s lack of public remorse for the killing of al-Sharif.
Defence Minister Katz, who filed the pardon request to Herzog, welcomed President Herzog’s decision, calling it “a correct, humane, and fitting decision”.
Azaria’s pardon, Katz added, also sends an important message to Israeli soldiers and their family members: “We do not abandon soldiers and do not leave them behind.”
The military said the young Palestinian man carried out a stabbing attack in the Tal Rumeida neighbourhood of Hebron. Source: MEE.