Former Shas party leader Eli Yishai was in the Yaffa Military Court to lend support to soldier Sgt. Elor Azariya, who is giving testimony in the manslaughter trial against him. Azariya shot and killed a wounded terrorist on the ground on Purim in Hebron.

Yishai got his message out via Facebook, stating “I find it hard to ignore the words of soldier Elor Azariya yesterday, the feeling as if the system has abandoned him. I am very concerned about the results of this trial and the message being transmitted to soldiers in the field”.

As he left the courthouse Yishai added “I understand the need to maintain the purity of arms and the values of the IDF but it seems that in this case, the system has lost its direction. Even if there was an operation failure, the saga could have ended with a reprimand as has been the case in operational mishaps in the past in which the IDF investigated and reprimanded officers and commanders but this case has deviated from anything we have known in the past”.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)