President Herzog expunged soldier Elor Azaria’s criminal record — Jerusalem Post
A Jerusalem Post column says that Israeli President Isaac Herzog decided to expunge the criminal record of Elor Azaria, a soldier convicted of killing a wounded and neutralized Palestinian in Hebron in 2016. The verdict in his case was not overturned: a military court found that Azaria shot Abdel Fattah al-Sharif after he had been wounded, disarmed, and no longer posed an immediate threat.
Herzog’s decision
The column’s author notes that Azaria served his sentence and has the right to move on. At the same time, in the columnist’s view, the public reaction to Herzog’s decision presented it as a symbolic exoneration of the soldier, although the court verdict remains in force.
According to the author, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir objected in a private letter to Herzog to the request to expunge the criminal record. The letter was later made public. The columnist also claims that Azaria has still not expressed remorse for his actions.
More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.
The NAZA film and the IDF’s position
The author links Azaria’s case to the discussion surrounding the documentary film NAZA. In the film, 24 anonymous military personnel and intelligence officers make claims of serious violations during the war in Gaza.
The Israel Defense Forces said it could not verify the identities and service records of the witnesses. The IDF also says that some film participants make statements about things they could not have known given their positions, and that, in the military’s view, the film uses legal terminology incorrectly and contains factual errors.
The columnist stresses that anonymous testimony requires verification and that accusations of war crimes should not be regarded as established facts merely because they appear in a documentary film. At the same time, he believes that categorical denials alone are insufficient to maintain trust in the army’s internal investigations.
