Elor Azarya: Murderer or Hero?

In the Ma'an News Agency on the Israeli court postponing Elor Azarya's prison sentence, reports have shown that the now-convicted 20-year-old IDF soldier will not start his 18-month sentence until a ruling has been made on his appeal.

Elor Azarya's story dates back to March 26th, 2016 when then IDF-medic soldier shot, an already wounded Palestinian citizen, in the head. The entire execution scene had been recorded and eventually posted on B'tselem,  a Jerusalem-based non-profit organization that was created to ensure there is a human rights culture created in Israel and to document any human right violations. After being posted on the website and seen by many, the video sparked much controversy throughout Israel and the rest of the world.

Elor Azarya at his hearing in July 2016

THE BACKSTORY: Elor Azarya was a soldier in the Palestinian city of Hebron, who shot the Palestinian terrorist, Abd al-Fatah al-Sharif. The shooting scenario occurred after Al-Sharif and companion, Ramsi al-Qasrawi, had attacked and stabbed another IDF soldier nearby. The IDF retaliated by shooting both al-Qasrawi and al-Sharif immediately. While al-Qasrawi died instantly, al-Sharif lay wounded and immobile while Azarya walked up to al-Sharif and from close range, shot him in the head. The IDF soldier that was stabbed sustained medium-level injuries and the two Palestinian were pronounced dead. A Hebron citizen recorded the entire situation and sent it online, where many voiced their concern about the soldier and his abuse of power.                        

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Azarya with his family and girlfriend

THE VERDICT: After months and months of trials and an investigation by the IDF, the Israeli military court eventually sentenced Azarya to 18 months in prison followed by a 12 month probation and was found guilty of manslaughter by a panel of three judges. Although many though 18 years was ridiculously short compared to a regular manslaughter sentence, others though Azarya should have walked free. It seems as if Azarya also believed that because on March 1st, 2017, Azarya filed for an appeal on the decision made by the court. His 18-month sentence since then has been postponed until the Appeals court make a decision on the result of his appeal. He is currently under "open detention" in his unit's base. It has been noted that a date for the appeal hearing will be set "as soon as possible."

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ANALYSIS: The reliability of this article on the news service, Ma'an News Agency, could be generally trusted due to the fact that they get a majority of their news from other services, such as Haaretz and Ynet, or even American newspapers such as Washington Post or CBS news. Although it is mainly a large wire service network for the Palestinian Territories, the network is able to be relatively accurate when it comes to reporting and relies its main new sources from other organizations. This news station does its best to stay out of factional control, unlike many other Palestinian news sources who are completely anti-Israel and pro-BDS movement. In this article, the author, who is unnamed, tends to take quotes from both sides - whether it is Azarya's lawyers or the Palestinian opposition and the family of Al-Sharif.

Supporters of Elor Azarya at a rally 

Although the article initially begins with an unbiased point of view and only begins with the facts, it slowly begins to lean towards a biased point-of-view. The quote allegedly said by Azarya, "This dog is still alive," and "This terrorist needs to die," was not mentioned in any of the other Israeli newspapers, possibly either to show favor to Azarya or to make him look more like a hero while the Palestinian newspapers make him look more like a murderer. Although it did happen to mention that Al-Sharif and his accomplice, Rams Aziz al-Qasrawi, initially started the violence by carrying an attack on the IDF soldiers, it is only mentioned in the middle or the bottom of every Palestinian-based newspaper. Therefore, any reader that stops reading after the first couple sentences will be convinced Azarya murdered a Palestinian in cold blood instead of in self defense.

The article also mentions the Human Rights Watch or other rights groups reports repeatedly throughout the article, for example, "According to rights group Yesh Din, of the 186 criminal investigations opened by the Israeli army into suspected offenses against Palestinians in 2015,  just four yielded indictments," and Azarya is the only member of Israeli forces to be charged with killing a Palestinian in 2016 -- when at least 109 Palestinians were shot and killed by Israeli forces and settlers -- according to Human Rights Watch," and two other quotes. Ma'an is using their newspaper as a platform to push their agenda of making Israeli's look more violent and aggressive than they really are by including Israel's shoot-to-kill policy at the end of the article. With this being said, they also acknowledged that the soldier received less of a sentence than a Palestinian child gets for throwing stones, declaring their stance on the situation, where they obviously feel that Azarya got too short of a sentence. 

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MY OPINION: In Azarya's defense, while it was wrong to shoot an already wounded soldier who obviously couldn't defend himself, the two soldiers did initiate the attack and had the intention to kill the Israelis. Perhaps if he let the soldier live, he would go to the hospital, get better, and come back to attack again. There are many sides to the story on a variety of newspapers such