The ultra left-wing movement Gush Shalom responded Wednesday to the manslaughter conviction of soldier Elor Azariya who killed a terrorist wounded when he carried out a terror attack in Hevron.
The movement said that the court's verdict was correct and just. "The soldier intentionally killed a prostrate wounded person who did not represent any threat at that point. The judges were right to reject the version of the defense and their convoluted claims to justify Azariya's action."
Gush Shalom claimed that if the judges had acquitted Azariya it would have opened the door to "the law of the jungle" as they put it and to indiscriminate executions without trial.
Yet the movement said that "what occurred in the military court was far from justice since the biggest injustice is that a young soldier should have to sit alone on the bench of the accused and be the only one judged for a crime that many are party to."
The movement would prefer to see next to Azariya "soldiers and officers who did exactly like him, killing Palestinians indiscriminately and without them representing a threat, except that in the other cases there was no photographer who could document the event and present definitive legal evidence.
"The bench of the accused was also missing the ministers and members of Knesset from the coalition and 'opposition' who called for IDF soldiers to do exactly as Azariya did. Missing too were the politicians who maintain in the heart of Hevron a cancerous and armed enclave of violent messianic-nationalist settlers and those who arm Israeli boys so that they should go out and kill Palestinian youths in order to perpetuate this enclave."
Gush Shalom stated that Naftali Bennett and his friends in the right-wing and "whoever sent Azariya to do their dirty work in Hevron should be on the bench of the accused, since the main criminal is the 'occupation rule' which must come to an end when IDF soldiers leave the 'Palestinian territories' and allow a new era to open in relations between the two peoples. The gates of prison should open to release all Israelis who harmed Palestinians and all Palestinians who harmed Israelis and among those prisoners will be Elor Azariya who will then be able to go free," said the movement