RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

A guilty verdict, coupled with a pardon, would be the perfect end to this horrible story.

On Wednesday, the verdict was issued in the trial of IDF infantry soldier Elor Azaria. The military court ruled that the 19-year-old medic, serving in the Shimshon Battalion of the Kfir Brigade, was guilty of manslaughter and unbecoming conduct, for his part in the March 24 killing of a knife-wielding Palestinian terrorist in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron.

Due to the controversial nature of the trial, which from the outset was a political lightning rod, the verdict was not only broadcast live on all Israeli channels, but it was read aloud by the judge in its entirety. The many months’ worth of witness testimony and arguments from the prosecutors and defense attorneys boiled down to two main questions. The first was whether it was Azaria’s bullet that actually killed the subdued terrorist, whom he shot in the head. The second was whether Azaria’s action was warranted, or genuinely perceived as such by the soldier — who said he believed the terrorist was wearing a suicide belt under his jacket — causing him to make the kind of split-second judgment call required when facing a real-time enemy threat.

The reason that this particular case swept the country by storm had to do with the way it was handled from the minute that Azaria’s comrades came under attack at the height of the so-called “lone wolf intifada” — characterized by stabbings, car-rammings and, most recently, arson.

The left-wing foreign-funded NGO B’Tselem, which holds its own government responsible for terrorism against Israelis — on the grounds that Palestinian violence is an expression of justified frustration at their plight as an “occupied” people — was on the scene filming the event.

To counteract the group’s purposeful ambush to highlight IDF wrongdoing, particularly for international consumption — politicians and much of the public promptly came to Azaria’s defense. Many of us railed against the overly stringent rules of engagement that govern the Israeli military. The Hebrew term for the concept — “purity of arms” — says it all in a nutshell.

Meanwhile, members of the IDF top brass and the former defense minister made statements indicating that they had already decided that Azaria deserved to be punished. So, a case that should have been treated to a thorough internal investigation before it came to light was an immediate circus at which everyone had ring-side seats.