TEL AVIV
It was by far the trial of the year in Israel, if not the trial of the decade. It is not over yet, but Israeli public opinion, politicians and generals have dealt with it in recent months more than any other legal battle.
It was the court martial of an almost anonymous sergeant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), who became a symbol, and for part of the Israelis, even a national hero.
It was not the first execution of a Palestinian by IDF soldiers in the occupied West Bank, and unfortunately it is not going to be the last. Tens of Palestinians have been killed in quite similar circumstances since this incident.
What made the major difference was one camera; a camera held by a Palestinian volunteer of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem; a camera which documented the shooting of a helpless, bleeding, unarmed Palestinian lying dazed and already half-dead on the ground, being shot in the head.
The killing of Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif by Sgt. Elor Azaria became the trial of the year in Israel.
In the history of the endless Israeli occupation of the West Bank -- almost 50 years now with no visible end on the horizon -- the trial of Sgt. Azaria will be marked as a milestone.
After years of total Israeli apathy, blindness, lack of interest and ignorance, this trial has brought the occupation back to the awareness of Israeli public opinion.
Sgt. Azaria penetrated the living rooms of the Israelis and reminded them, at least for a while, that somewhere in their backyard, something bad has been happening.
Israelis who totally lost any interest in what’s going on one hour away from their homes were exposed to moral dilemmas which didn’t bother them for years; all of a sudden the occupation has returned to Israel’s discourse.
An Israeli soldier, the pride of the nation and its holiest cow, is shooting a dying Palestinian and then shakes hands with his soldier friends and some settlers, as if he has just done something heroic.
Was he a hero? Was he a murderer? What should he do and what should the authorities do with him now? These questions and others have shaken the Israeli public.
Nobody had any pity for the dying Palestinian, as for almost all the Israelis he was just a terrorist. Nobody asked if he deserved a death penalty without trial and nobody asked himself what brought him to try to attack a soldier standing at a checkpoint next to his home.
These questions are far too courageous for most Israelis. But at least in the coming months after the incident, which will be described below, the occupation, with its brutality, has at least begun to be mentioned again in the mainstream Israeli media and around dinner tables on Friday evenings.
It was the morning of March 21, 2016. It was the Jewish holiday of Purim, when Jews wear special costumes. A few minutes after eight o’clock in the morning, two Palestinians from Hebron -- al-Sharif and Ramzi al-Qasrawi Tamimi, both 21 years old -- arrived at an IDF checkpoint next to the Jewish settlement Tel Rumeida.
Both had knives in their hands. They stabbed one of the soldiers manning the checkpoint in his arm and shoulder, injuring him lightly. The soldiers opened fire and hit both Palestinians, who fell down on the road.
Tamimi was instantly declared dead; al-Sharif was still breathing. Some more troops arrived at the scene, including Sgt. Azaria, a medic, who first treated the slightly wounded soldier and then shot al-Sharif in his head while he was lying, bleeding, on the ground.
A few hours later, B’Tselem published a video shot by their volunteer, Imad Abu Shamsiyeh. All Israeli media broadcast the footage at once.
I remember myself getting it from B’Tselem, an organization that I work with on a regular basis, and I remember my first reaction was: what is new about this?
But, for the rest of the Israeli media, which usually hardly covers the crimes of the occupation, this video was quite shocking.
Shooting a dying young man, when it was very clear that he was totally helpless, was one shot too much -- even by the standards of Israeli public opinion and media, which is usually indifferent when soldiers shoot young girls with scissors at checkpoints and young boys with kitchen knives who in most cases could easily be apprehended and arrested without being killed.
The video had its effect. Sgt. Azaria was arrested and a military police investigation launched. One of the soldiers, who had been present at the scene of the shooting, said Azaria had told him afterwards, "He deserved to die, he stabbed my friend".
Azaria later denied that he had said so. After a few weeks, Azaria was charged in a military court in Jaffa, accused of manslaughter.
In recent months, the trial has sparked a public debate in Israel that has vacillated between two poles: Sgt. Azaria as a murderer, and Sgt. Azaria as a hero.
It is no exaggeration to say that most Israelis chose to believe the second version of the Hebron event. About 80 percent of the reactions on Hebrew-language social media were in support of the soldier; only 18 percent were against him.
A poll conducted by the leading TV station in Israel found that 57 percent of the Israeli public opposed the arrest of the soldier while only 5 percent defined the shooting as murder.
In another survey by Israeli Public Radio, 66 percent of Jewish public opinion in Israel called for releasing the soldier and closing the file against him. Only 21 percent supported criticism voiced by the minister of defense.
On April 19 there was even a big rally held in support of the soldier at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv in which thousands of Israelis participated.
Also, Israeli politicians were very outspoken and divided in their reactions to the trial. The minister of defense at the time, Moshe Ya’alon, condemned the killing and said that it contradicted what he called the values of the IDF and its morality.
Before the trial even started, he promised that the event would be dealt with in the most severe way. The chief-of-staff of the army, Maj. Gen. Gazi Eizenkot, expressed similar views, but they were in the minority.
Avigdor Lieberman, who was nominated a few months later to replace Ya’alon as minister of defense, defined the shooting as a possible mistake. But he also condemned the public attack on the soldier, adding that he preferred a soldier who made a mistake and remained alive over one who would hesitate and be killed by a terrorist.
Minister of Education Naftali Bennett wrote that the soldier is not a murderer; maybe he made a mistake, and maybe not. A few right-wing MPs defined Azaria as a hero, with one even suggesting that he be given an award.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in two voices. A few hours after the incident, he criticized the soldier and said that what happened in Hebron did not represent the values of the IDF.
A few days later, however, he spoke in a different tone, calling the soldiers "our children" and emphasizing that they confront fatal terror attacks by terrorists who come to kill them.
Netanyahu even called Azaria’s father and expressed his support and encouragement.
In the last 14 months, ever since Sept. 13, 2015, which marked the beginning of the current wave of the "knives’ intifada", or the "individual’s intifada", the Israeli army and police have killed over 260 Palestinians. A total of 38 Israelis have been killed in these attacks.
The majority of the 260 Palestinians killed were young Palestinians, male and female, who went to checkpoints with knives or scissors, trying to stab soldiers or settlers. Almost all of them did not carry guns or any explosives.
Some of them went to protest in a violent way against suppression, out of despair over living under occupation, and suffering it every day. Some others, mainly women, seem to have gone to checkpoints with knives and scissors in order to commit suicide because of personal problems.
Others tried to ram and kill people with their cars. In some cases, there were question marks as to whether it was an accident, a case of someone losing control over their car, or a perpetrated attack.
Some were shot by mistake, even according to the IDF. In most cases, not all, shooting to kill was unnecessary.
But almost none of the soldiers who took part in these killings were brought to court. In almost all cases, subsequent military investigations did not lead to charges being brought against the soldiers.
One of Azaria’s commanders, Col. Israel Shumer, had shot a Palestinian teenager in his back while he was running away from the colonel’s car after throwing a stone at its window without injuring anybody.
Col. Shumer was never brought to justice for this murder, and he continues to serve honorably as a colonel in "the most moral army in the world", as the IDF is commonly called in Israel.
Azaria’s trial is about to end soon. All the testimonies have been heard already and now it is for the military judges to reach a verdict.
Whatever the verdict, it seems that Sgt. Azaria, who has spent these last months in "open detention" -- meaning he is not in prison but kept at a military base and can even go on occasional home leave -- will not spend much more time in jail.
If the court sends him for a long period, one can expect that he will get an amnesty. In the current atmosphere in Israel, shooting a helpless, injured Palestinian is not a crime in the eyes of many Israelis; it is even heroic.
But the shadow of his trial will remain for a while at least as a reminder of the elephant in the room that everyone in Israel pretends not to see and not to hear.
Azaria’s trial will not end the occupation, nor will it stop the killings and the bloodshed. It will not even stop the soldiers from being as "trigger-happy" as they are.
Still, this trial knocked on Israel’s doors as a wakeup call. Too weak, too little and too late -- but still something that will be remembered.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu Agency's editorial policy.
