THE footage left little room for doubt. A video filmed on March 24th by an Israeli human-rights organisation showed a Palestinian man lying on the ground, apparently wounded after trying to stab Israeli soldiers in a Jewish settlers’ enclave in Hebron, a city in the West Bank. Then a soldier stands over him and shoots him in the head.
The soldier, a 19 year-old sergeant, was arrested by the military police. The legal branch of the Israel Defence Force (IDF) went to work building a case against him for manslaughter. The IDF announced that the soldier had acted against orders and would face the music. But meanwhile, the political world erupted.
Despite the army’s evidence that the wounded assailant posed no immediate threat to the soldiers or to civilians, as the shooter claims, public opinion has been highly sympathetic towards “the boy”. A survey by the Midgam polling company found that 42% of Israelis believed the shooter had acted “responsibly” while 24% thought that it was “a natural response to a stressful situation”. Only 19% believed he had been “disobeying orders” and 5% regarded the shooting as “murder”. A...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1USGLXC
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