Azaria’s conviction is a sign of the deep controversies inside Israeli society between the small Left-leaning judicial/media elite and the majority of the Israeli society.
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With the country still seething over the Military Tribunal’s conviction of Sgt. Elor Azaria for shooting a terrorist who was perceived to be subdued, Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan has proposed a new bill protecting soldiers from criminal convictions is found in similar situations.
According to the bill, security forces shall not “bear criminal responsibility, nor be interrogated with a warning and will be immune from any legal proceedings due to actions they carried out or refrained from carrying out, and all before, after, and during an operational activity or terrorist attack that was not part of the day-to-day operational activities of the unit in which he/she works or serves.”
The soldier can still lose his or her immunity under the bill by abusing the bill’s mandate. “Any soldier accused of looting, destruction of property, accepting bribes, bullying or sexual offenses would not be immune to criminal prosecution.”
In a statement given to The Jerusalem Post, Ben-Dahan said that “the law sends a clear message to IDF soldiers that just as they protect us, we are protecting them.”
“The law allows IDF soldiers [to] perform their duties in defending the State of Israel fearlessly and with no concern of potential criminal prosecution while providing a stipulation which allows for the removal of the immunity if violations of the rules occur,” Ben-Dahan added. “In recent years we have seen too many soldiers and commanders suffer from a delay of justice, with long trials, and then finally be acquitted just because there are no clear legal or ethical statements that we are protecting them while they carry out their duties. As someone who served as a major in the army I’m sure it will help our soldiers. I have no doubt that MKs will support the law. “
The importance of Ben-Dahan’s proposed bill cannot be understated. With Azaria being thrown in jail for an action that could easily happen to any combat soldier, the government needs to find a way that young combat soldiers do not lose morale and the ability to defend themselves in dangerous situations out of fear of being prosecuted.
Sgt. Elor Azaria, who was convicted of manslaughter Wednesday for shooting a terrorist in Hebron last March, is a symptom of what may be the most dangerous threat to Israeli society today.
Azaria, a combat medic from the Kfir Brigade, arrived at the scene of an attack where two terrorists had just stabbed his comrades. One of the terrorists was killed, the other was wounded and lying on the ground, his knife less than a meter away from him.
A cameraman from the foreign-funded, Israeli- registered anti-Israel pressure group B’Tselem filmed Azaria removing his helmet and shooting the wounded terrorist. According to the military judges, the film was the centerpiece of the case against him.
The day of the incident, the General Staff reacted to the B’Tselem film with utter hysteria. Led by Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot and then-defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s generals competed to see who could condemn Azaria most harshly.
For the public, though, the issue wasn’t so cut and dry. Certainly Azaria didn’t act like a model soldier. It was clear, for instance, that he acted without proper authority and that his action was not permitted under the rules of engagement then in effect in Hebron.
But unlike the IDF’s senior leadership, the public believed that the fact that it was B’Tselem that produced the film meant that it had to be viewed with a grain of salt.
The name “B’Tselem” was seared into the public’s consciousness as an organization hostile to Israel and dedicated to causing it harm with the publication of the UN’s Goldstone Commission Report in 2009. Among the Israeli-registered groups that provided materials to the biased UN commission charged with finding Israel guilty of war crimes during the course of Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in late 2008 and early 2009, B’Tselem made the greatest contribution.
The Goldstone Report cited B’Tselem as the source for its slanderous “findings” 56 times.
After the UN published the Goldstone Report, Michael Posner, the US assistant secretary of state for human rights, visited Israel and met with Jessica Montell, B’Tselem’s executive director at the time.
The US Embassy’s official report of their meeting was published by WikiLeaks.
During their meeting, Montell told Posner that her group’s goal in providing the Goldstone Commission with materials was to force the government to pay a heavy price for its decision to fight Hamas, by criminalizing Israel in the court of world opinion.
As B’Tselem saw it, Israel needed to come to the point where it would consider whether it could “afford another operation like this.”
Montell explained that from B’Tselem’s perspective the root of the problem with Israel is the Israeli public. The public is the source of Israel’s bad behavior, according to B’Tselem, because it “had zero tolerance for IDF killed.” As far as the public is concerned, she said, harm to Palestinian civilians is preferable to harm to IDF soldiers.
Since, in B’Tselem’s view, the public’s commitment to the lives of its soldiers meant that it would not constitute a “moral check on war,” and check the bellicosity of IDF commanders, it fell to B’Tselem to make the IDF brass and the government care more about world opinion than they care about what the public thinks.
The public’s condemnation of B’Tselem after its role in compiling the Goldstone Commission’s libelous accusations against the IDF was made public made no impression whatsoever on the group.
Following Operation Protective Edge in 2014, B’Tselem’s materials were cited 67 times by the report of the biased UN commission put together to slander Israel.
In 2007, B’Tselem launched its “Camera Program.”
The camera initiative involved providing video cameras to B’Tselem employees and volunteers in Judea and Samaria in order to document the actions of Israeli security forces and civilians in the areas.
In many cases, the videos B’Tselem produced distorted reality for the purpose of criminalizing both groups.
For instance, in 2011, B’Tselem gave a film to Ynet’s Elior Cohen that purported to show Israeli police brutally arresting a young Palestinian boy and preventing his mother from coming to the police station with him.
But as CAMERA showed at the time, B’Tselem’s portrayal of events was fanciful at best. In all likelihood, the event was staged by the B’Tselem photographer.
At the outset of the film the boy is unseen as he throws rocks at a police van. The boy is first seen as he runs toward the B’Tselem camerawoman. For her part, the camerawoman screams at the police and identifies herself as from B’Tselem.
The police are shown asking the boy’s mother repeatedly to join them in the car. As she stands poised to enter the vehicle, a Palestinian man is shown telling her in Arabic not to go.
In July 2016, B’Tselem released a film taken in Hebron during an attempted stabbing attack by a female Palestinian terrorist against Israel police at a security checkpoint outside the Cave of the Patriarchs.
The police reported that the terrorist tried to stab a policewoman who was checking her in an inspection room. Another policewoman shot and killed her.
B’Tselem claimed that its film proved that the female terrorist was shot for no reason. But the fact is that it does no such thing. As NGO Monitor noted, the B’Tselem film neither contradicts nor proves the police’s version of events.
Over the years, the public’s growing awareness of B’Tselem’s unwavering hostility went hand in hand with its growing distress over what was perceived as the IDF’s willingness to sacrifice the safety of troops to prevent it from receiving bad press.
For instance, in 2012, a film went viral on social media that showed a platoon of combat engineers fleeing from a mob of Palestinians attacking with rocks, Molotov cocktails and slingshots.
When questioned by reporters, the soldiers said that they had repeatedly asked their battalion commander for permission to use force to disperse the crowd and they were repeatedly denied permission.
Retreat was their only option.
In 2015, another film went viral showing a group of Palestinian women hitting and screaming at a soldier trying to arrest one of them for throwing rocks at his platoon. He did nothing as he absorbed the blows. And no harm came to the women who assaulted him.
Along with the films, came stories that soldiers on leave told their friends and family about the IDF’s rules of engagement. The tales were always the same. The rules of engagement are so restrictive that all initiative is placed in the hands of the enemy. Not only can terrorists attack at will. They can flee afterward and expect that no harm will come to them, because what is most important, the soldiers explain, is to ensure that IDF maintains its reputation as the most moral army in the world.
This was the context in which Azaria killed the wounded terrorist.
Although the headlines relate to Azaria, and his family members have become familiar faces on the news, the fact is the reason the Azaria affair was the biggest story of the year is that it really has very little to do with him.
There are three forces driving the story.
First of course, there is B’Tselem.
B’Tselem’s produced the film to advance its goal of obliging Israel’s national leadership, including the IDF brass, to care more about “world opinion” than about the opinion of Israeli citizens.
Second then, is the pubic that cares more about the lives of IDF soldiers than about what the world thinks of it.
Finally, there is the IDF General Staff that is being forced to pick which side it stands with.
Since Israel was established nearly 70 years ago, the relationship between the IDF and the public has been based on an often unstated social contract.
From the public’s side, Israel’s citizens agree to serve in the IDF and risk their lives in its service.
Moreover, they agree to allow their children to serve in the military and to be placed in harm’s way.
From the IDF’s side, the commanders agree to view the lives of their soldiers as sacrosanct, and certainly as more precious than the lives of the enemy and the enemies’ society.
The third side is the General Staff. In the years leading up to the Azaria affair the generals were already showing disturbing signs of forgetting their contract with the public.
The films of fleeing soldiers and the rules of engagement weren’t the only signs of our military leadership’s estrangement.
There were also the promotions given to radical lawyers to serve in key positions in the Military Advocate-General’s unit, and the red carpet treatment given to radical leftist groups like B’Tselem that were dedicated to criminalizing soldiers and commanders.
Since the shooting in Hebron, the General Staff’s treatment of the public has become even more disdainful.
Ya’alon and Eisenkot and his generals have repeatedly offended the public with comparisons of “IDF values” with alleged processes of barbarization, Nazification and ISIS-ization of the public by the likes of Azaria and his supporters.
If there was a specific moment where the military brass abandoned its compact with society once and for all, it came on Tuesday, the day before the military court convicted Azaria of manslaughter. In a speech that day, Eisenkot insisted that IDF soldiers are not “our children.” They are grownups and they are required to obey the orders they receive.
By making this statement the day before the verdict in a case that pitted society against the General Staff, which sided with B’Tselem, Eisenkot told us that the General Staff no longer feels itself obligated by a sacred compact with the people of Israel.
Azaria is the first victim of a General Staff that has decided to cease serving as the people’s army and serve instead as B’Tselem’s army. The call now spreading through the Knesset for Azaria to receive a presidential pardon, while certainly reasonable and desirable, will likely fail to bring about his freedom. For a pardon request to reach President Reuven Rivlin’s desk, it first needs to be stamped by Eisenkot.
A pardon for Azaria would go some way toward repairing the damage the General Staff has done to its relationship with the public. But from Eisenkot’s behavior this week, it is apparent that he feels no need and has no interest in repairing that damage.
As a result, it is likely that Azaria will spend years behind bars for killing the enemy.
Moreover, if nothing forces Eisenkot and his generals to their senses, Azaria will neither be the last nor the greatest victim of their betrayal of the public’s trust.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
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The Prime Minister used Facebook to make the following comment concerning the guilty verdict in the Elor Azaria case:
This is a difficult and painful day for all of us – first and foremost for Elor Azaria and his family, IDF soldiers, many citizens and parents of soldiers, myself included.
I call on all Israeli citizens to act responsibly toward the IDF, its commanders and staff. We have one army which is based our existence. IDF soldidealers are our sons and daughters, and they must remain beyond any dispute.
I support giving amnesty Elor Azeria.
Whether out of sincere conviction that a great injustice was done or a shrewd populist move, the Prime Minister has with one statement dismantled the leftwing of the country. The entire media except for rightwing sites, attacked Azaria from the start. The incessant interest to smear an innocent soldier was part of the left’s game plan to hold the IDF hostage. The problem is that most of the country has sons and daughters in the IDF and this could have happened to them. By Bibi being able identify with them, he has given energy to what will be seen in years to come as a movement to take back Israel from the judicial tryaranny it now finds itself in.
After nine long months of indescribable torture towards Sgt. Elor Azariya and his family, the army court has handed down a verdict of guilty of manslaughter. What a black day in the history of the State of Israel.
The left has been licking their chops since March when they discovered that they could take a soldier who is defending his/our country and turn him into a scapegoat. What a treasure Elor became for them. The left took it to the max and to the media and started a nonstop attack of character assassination towards Elor. Through one method or another, they have managed to control the trial. It appeared as if the trial was already signed, sealed, and delivered as time went on.
The attack continued on Elor by bringing in top officers from the IDF to testify that Elor allegedly shot an arab while not being in a situation of self defense and that he do not operate according to the rules opening of fire of the IDF. What does that mean that Elor went against firing orders? Who can know what went through Elor’s mind at the time of the alleged incident? Elor probably can’t even know. In the heat of battle you do what you have to do. Its kill or be killed. The arab came into the area in Hebron with the intention of killing Jews. No less and no more. Any soldier or for that matter any civilian who is in that situation, it is clear as day what must be done. Yes the arab was on the ground however he was not subdued, he was not handcuffed and the danger still existed that the arab could get up, and continue to kill Jews. It would not have been the first time that an arab on the ground got up and continued trying to kill Jews. The orders for opening fire are very clear in that if the soldier is in fear for his life or others around him, he can open fire on the enemy. Doesn’t IDF stand for Israel Defense Forces? Elor was just trying to defend himself and all others around him.
The judge during the handing down of the verdict, said that Elor killed a man as opposed to saying that Elor killed a terrorist. This shows how the judges themselves are corrupt and have for a long time already decided what the verdict will be. This goes hand in hand that the arab who was allegedly shot by Elor was suddenly turned into a martyr.
Elor testified that the arab in question was wearing clothes that were not appropriate for that time of year and that he was moving around the area in a very suspicious way.
At the base of this whole trial is the constant attempt by the left to regain control of the government. They have done everything in their power to make this the case of the year if not decade so that the right will fall.
Even more is what happens now? In the future we could have an eighteen year old who is getting ready to go into the army. He has to think twice now (no matter what the verdict is today), does he really want to enlist in a combat unit? What if he gets into the same situation as Elor was and thinks twice about shooting the arab and the arab gets up and Heaven forbid kills him and or other Jews and Jewish soldiers. Or what if there is a soldier who is already in a combat unit. In a normal situation he can come into contact with arab attackers on a daily basis and then what does he do? Freeze up because he doesn’t want to be arrested and therefore by doing that he can endanger his life and others. Here is where the left wants to take the People Of Israel.
This is a sad day for Israel. The People Of Israel have been taken down to a new low by the left. The country now is really torn in two. The fifth column has managed to destroy us once again from within.
The judge spoke for almost THREE hours before giving the verdict. The judge went over section by section of the charges against Elor. What an embarrassment. If Elor is innocent, then pronounce that Elor is innocent. If Elor is guilty, Heaven forbid, then pronounce that he is guilty. What an embarrassment to all of Am Yisrael. The arabs and the fifth column inside Israel will have a field day now.
The chief of staff just yesterday said that an eighteen year old is not everyone’s soldier but the army’s soldier. What happened to the ethic that all of Israel is responsible for one another? What happened to the ideal that our children who are in the army are everyone’s child? The defense minister must come out right now and censure the chief of staff for this outrageous remark. The People Of Israel do not want and do not deserve such a person to be the chief of staff. It will only lead to military disasters.
Minister of Education Naftali Bennett said this week that if Elor is found guilty he must be pardoned immediately. Prime Minster Netanyahu also spoke in favor of Elor during the trial. Similar quotes have been made by various Knesset members, from all sides of the political spectrum. With the help of God, this will happen very quickly and the fifth column here in Israel will once and for all be silenced and destroyed.
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