Israel's President Clears Criminal Record of Soldier Who Killed Wounded Palestinian Attacker

President Isaac Herzog announced Saturday, September 19, that he is clearing the remaining criminal record of Elor Azaria, the former IDF combat medic convicted of manslaughter for killing a wounded Palestinian attacker in Hebron in 2016. The decision moves up a process that would have happened automatically in 2032 under Israeli law, according to The Media Line.

Herzog's office said the decision was not a pardon in the sense of overturning the verdict. "This decision does not constitute a reassessment of the case," the statement said, according to the Associated Press. It cited the passage of time, the completion of Azaria's sentence, and what it described as remorse he expressed in his request.

What happened in 2016

Azaria, then a 19-year-old army medic serving in the Kfir Brigade, shot Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in the head in March 2016. Al-Sharif had stabbed and wounded an Israeli soldier in Hebron and had already been shot by other troops. He lay on the ground, unarmed and incapacitated, for roughly 11 minutes before Azaria approached and fired, according to Arab News and Al Jazeera. A bystander's cellphone video captured the shooting and it went viral, sparking outrage on multiple sides.

At trial, Azaria argued he feared al-Sharif was wearing a suicide vest. Military judges rejected that claim. He was convicted of manslaughter in 2017, sentenced to 18 months, and released in May 2018 after serving about nine months, roughly two-thirds of his term.

A decade-old fight, reopened

The request to clear his record early came from Azaria himself in July, backed by Defense Minister Israel Katz. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir formally objected in a letter, arguing Azaria "has refrained from expressing remorse and taking responsibility for his actions, even a decade after his conviction," according to Al Jazeera and Arab News. Zamir and other senior officers did not, however, submit a formal recommendation against the request to Herzog, The Media Line reported.

That objection points to a real tension in the record. Herzog's office said Azaria's request included an expression of sorrow, describing the shooting as an "operational error." But in his first interview after leaving prison, Azaria said, "I would act exactly the same, because that's how I needed to act," a quote carried by the Guardian, the LA Times, and KSAT 12. Whether that counts as remorse is a matter of interpretation, not a settled fact, and it's the exact point Zamir and Herzog's office read differently.

Katz called the decision "a right, humane and fitting decision," writing that Azaria was in a "complex operational mission" during a period when Israel was seeing a wave of stabbing and car-ramming attacks by Palestinians. "We do not abandon soldiers, and we do not leave them behind," Katz wrote on X, according to the Jerusalem Post. That's the strongest case defenders of the decision make: a young conscript, in a violent stretch of the West Bank, made a split-second call in the field, already served his sentence, and paid what Katz called "a heavy personal and family price."

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who protested outside Azaria's trial a decade ago, called the decision "deeply moving" and said erasing the record of "someone who eliminated a terrorist" made him "emotional and very happy," per Arab News. Ben-Gvir also used the moment to call for Herzog to extend similar treatment to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, a comparison Herzog's office did not address.

The other side of the ledger

The killing drew condemnation well beyond Azaria's trial. The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time called it an "extrajudicial execution" and a war crime, according to Al Jazeera. Palestinian prisoner-affairs minister Issa Karaka called the original 18-month sentence "a joke." Human rights groups and, separately, the UN human rights office had criticized the sentence as excessively lenient at the time, according to the Guardian and material referenced by Al Jazeera. Prosecutors themselves had sought three to five years, not the 18 months Azaria received.

The conviction itself was unusual. Military courts in Israel rarely rule against soldiers for lethal decisions made in the field, and the case split the country enough that then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon resigned amid the political fallout, per the Associated Press wire copy carried by the Guardian, LA Times, and KSAT 12. Netanyahu called for Azaria's pardon back in 2017, well before this week's decision.

What doesn't change

Herzog's action doesn't touch U.S. sanctions imposed on Azaria and his immediate family in 2024 under the Biden administration, which include a ban on entering the United States, according to The Media Line. Neither Herzog's office nor Katz addressed those sanctions in Saturday's statements, and no U.S. official has commented on whether the Trump administration will revisit them. Whether Washington changes course on that ban, separate from anything Jerusalem decides about Azaria's record, remains an open question.