A nation divided under the weight of one bullet

The vast gulf between different segments of the Israeli population has rarely been as shockingly and depressingly evident as in the past few days since the delivery of the verdict Wednesday on Sgt. Elor Azaria, 19, who was convicted of manslaughter after he shot and killed an incapacitated Palestinian assailant.

The weekend headlines in the main Hebrew-language newspapers flash like neon signs to the public, warning unmistakably that things may have gotten out of hand. The dailies focus on the sheer hatred and hostility expressed toward the judiciary system, the army and leading public officials who called to respect the court ruling.

The articles dealing with the barrage of explicit threats against the judges in the Azaria case and against IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, seen by the soldier’s defenders as having abandoned him, show that the country may soon need to deal with some serious demons in order to heal the tears in society.

Yedioth Ahronoth leads with the reckoning of Ziv Shilon, an IDF officer who lost an arm in an explosion at the Gaza Strip in 2012, in the face of the turmoil rocking the country. “I, who have not cried even in the most difficult moments, sat today and simply cried over the nation of Israel ripping itself to shreds in unprecedented hate,” Shilon writes. “The army has up to this day been a consensus, and today there are parts of the nation that are calling to assassinate the person who leads it? “I cried for the arms I left in the Gaza Strip and asked myself maybe for the first time in my life: ‘Was it worth fighting for a nation that hates itself’?”

Israel Hayom reports that the police will probe some activists who demonstrated in support of Azaria — among them far-right supporters of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club — who during a protest outside the army’s Kirya headquarters chanted “Gadi be careful, Rabin is looking for a friend,” referencing Eisenkot and assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The daily adds that several individuals suspected of threatening court justices were also arrested by police.

In Haaretz, reporter Gili Cohen notes that in the past year, 20 cases of shootings of Palestinians by IDF soldiers in the West Bank have been investigated, but Azaria was the only member of the IDF to be convicted in connection with such an incident. Cohen argues that were it not for the fact that Azaria had been filmed at the time when he shot the Palestinian terrorist in Hebron, he too would most likely have not been handed a damning verdict by the courts.

“In no other case were soldiers [suspected of unlawful shootings] arrested, and so they were not photographed being led to the military court in handcuffs,” Cohen writes. But the Azaria case was different due to the fact that the first details of the incident were released almost immediately after the shooting occurred, even before investigators had time to present their initial conclusions.

Smoking Netanyahu

Back in Yedioth, the editors of the not-so-pro Likud paper have a field day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was questioned by police, in the second such interrogation in four days. A photo of the prime minister smoking a cigar is plastered over the headline: “Five hours of investigation.” According to a police statement, Netanyahu was questioned under caution at his Jerusalem residence over allegations he illegally accepted gifts from wealthy, foreign businessmen, as well as over another corruption affair which some Hebrew media reports have said is more serious.

According to reports in Hebrew-language media, police are investigating suspicions that Netanyahu and his wife Sara illicitly accepted cigars worth hundreds of thousands of shekels and champagne from acclaimed American-Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, who himself testified with police yesterday.

In other news, Haaretz reports that Israel’s Ministry of Finance apparently attempted to strike down an initiative to enhance security measures for workers at construction sites across the country by requiring that a special inspector be present during all building hours, over concerns that such a move would result in an increase in housing prices.

In September, six people were killed when a four-story parking garage being built in the northern Tel Aviv neighborhood of Ramat Hahayal collapsed on itself. According to Haaretz, 48 construction workers were killed in accidents in 2016, and the average number of such incidents per capita is almost double that of other OECD member countries. Given the Finance Ministry’s disapproval of the measures, we may expect many more lives of construction workers to be needlessly claimed.