Tel Aviv: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday he supported pardoning a young Israeli soldier convicted of manslaughter for shooting dead a Palestinian assailant lying wounded and motionless on the ground in the occupied West Bank.
The decision to court-martial Sergeant Elor Azaria, who shot the Palestinian after the assailant stabbed another Israeli soldier last March has stirred public controversy in Israel from the start, with right-wing politicians, after the verdict, calling on President Reuven Rivlin to pardon the 20-year-old defendant.
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Verdict for Israeli Soldier divides society
An Israeli soldier who shot dead a wounded and incapacitated Palestinian assailant in the occupied West Bank was convicted of manslaughter, in one of the most divisive trials in Israel's history.
"This is a difficult and painful day - first and foremost for Elor, his family, Israel's soldiers, many citizens and parents of soldiers, among them me ... I support giving amnesty to Elor Azaria," Netanyahu said on his Facebook page.
Military commanders have condemned the soldier's conduct while much of the public, along with leading members of the nationalist ruling coalition, have rallied behind him.
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With Sergent Elor Azaria's sentencing believed to be weeks away, the country now faces a heated debate over whether he deserves clemency.
In delivering the verdict, which lasted nearly three hours, Colonel Maya Heller, head of a three-judge panel, rejected Azaria's defence in painstaking detail.
She said there was no evidence to support his contradictory claims that the attacker was already dead or that he posed any threat at the time.
"We found there was no room to accept his arguments," she said.
"His motive for shooting was that he felt the terrorist deserved to die."
Azaria faces a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars, though he is not expected to receive that much time. The military said he would be sentenced on January 15 with the defence vowing to apeal.
Members of Azaria's family clapped sarcastically as the decision was delivered, some screaming "Our hero!"
A female relative was kicked out of the courtroom for screaming at the judges, and a second woman stormed out, shouting, "Disgusting leftists."
After the judges walked out, Azaria's mother, Oshra, screamed, "You should be ashamed of yourselves."
Hundreds of the soldier's supporters, many of them young religious men wearing skullcaps, gathered outside the military court in Tel Aviv ahead of the verdict. The crowd, holding large Israeli flags and banners, periodically scuffled with police.
Israel's defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, called Wednesday's decision "a tough verdict."
"The first thing I ask of all of us -- those who like the verdict and those like me who like it much less -- we are all obligated to respect the court's decision," Lieberman said. "We are obligated to maintain restraint."
Lieberman, as a member of the parliamentary opposition before his cabinet appointment, had attended the military court to support Azaria and called the legal proceedings a "theatre of the absurd." But on Wednesday, he said, "We must keep the army above and beyond all political argument."
Politicians to Netanyahu's right and left have also called for a pardon, including the education minister, Naftali Bennett, and Shelly Yacimovich of the Labor Party, who said that "Azaria's shoulders are too narrow to bear the entire weight of the fissure" the case has exposed.
AP, New York Times