Netanyahu defends army killing of Palestinians

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has voiced support for the military forces involved in killing Palestinians in the occupied lands amid a murder probe of a soldier recently caught on camera shooting an injured Palestinian in the head.

During a Sunday cabinet meeting, Netanyahu spoke in favor of the Tel Aviv military’s conduct, describing as “outrageous and unacceptable” any challenge to what he called “morality” of the regime’s troops.

The premier also urged support for the Israeli troops, who have the blood of some 200 Palestinians on their hands amid the tensions gripping the occupied territories since last October.

Netanyahu made the comments after a video released by rights group B’Tselem showed an Israeli soldier raising his gun and executing a Palestinian man already injured by Israeli gunfire in the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron).

A murder investigation is currently underway, and the unidentified soldier has been suspended pending a military trial.

However, the murder probe has drawn an angry reaction from members of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett cautioned against the murder charges for the soldier in the footage and claimed he was “not a murderer, and that prosecution on a murder clause would be a total loss of control.”

This is while the Israeli regime has repeatedly come under fire by Palestinian officials and prominent rights groups for extrajudicial killings of Palestinians in recent months.

Amnesty International has also slammed the latest instance of Israeli violence against Palestinians, saying the shooting death of the wounded Palestinian seen in the video could easily be deemed as a war crime.

“Israeli forces have a long history of carrying out unlawful killings – including extrajudicial executions – in the occupied Palestinian Territories with impunity,” said Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Director Philip Luther.

Palestinian Health Minister Jawad Awwad also slammed the shooting assault as a “war crime,” stressing that even before the shooting, medics were not treating the gravely injured man.

The regime in Tel Aviv is still holding the body of the man, identified as Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif, in the video.

Sharif was shot alongside Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi after the two allegedly stabbed and moderately wounded an Israeli soldier at a military checkpoint in the Tel Rumeida area of al-Khalil on Thursday.

According to Ma’an news agency, the Palestinian who filmed the shooting has received threats the following day from Israeli settlers, and now fears for his and his family’s safety.

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