Late last week, Channel 2 news reported that three senior reserve officers \u2014 Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, Brig. Gen. Shmuel Zakai, and Gen. Dan Biton \u2014 will testify for the defense of Elor Azaria, the Israeli soldier who is on trial for shooting and killing a Palestinian who stabbed an IDF soldier in Hebron, though he was already immobilized.
\nZakai had previously posted on his Facebook page that Azaria\u2019s treatment \u201cis disgraceful and rife with hypocrisy, and principally unprofessional.\u201d Dayan argues that the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division (MPCID) shouldn\u2019t be the body designated to investigate such incidents, but rather an internal investigation committee.<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago Dayan broke silence in an interview with Radio Darom in which he declared his stance on Azaria\u2019s trial, explaining the normative mode of behavior the army needs to adopt: <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Late last week, Channel 2 news reported that three senior reserve officers \u2014 Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, Brig. Gen. Shmuel Zakai, and Gen. Dan Biton \u2014 will testify for the defense of Elor Azaria, the Israeli soldier who is on trial for shooting and killing a Palestinian who stabbed an IDF soldier in Hebron, though …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-79","category-27"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI had a similar more grave case, much more grave, in which five Palestinians were killed by paratrooper combatants at the Tarqumiya crossing. Not only were they not terrorists, they also weren\u2019t illegal aliens. They were people returning from work in Israel and there was some misunderstanding. I stopped the soldiers, though they really didn\u2019t like that at the time\u2026I said, for three days you\u2019ll conduct a commission of inquiry and give me the results. Not the MAG the MPCID, nor anyone else \u2013 you give me the results\u2026I saw the results. I said four things, conclusions, what needs to be done, the soldiers didn\u2019t even go on trial. Today the situation is different in the sense that there are immediate photos and the entire press is involved, there\u2019s a lot of pressure on decision-makers.
\nBut did this really happen? And if so, what was the purpose of Dayan\u2019s boasting, which by all accounts should lead to a criminal investigation against him? And what are Azaria\u2019s attorneys hoping to achieve by bringing in his irrelevant testimony? We will try to answer all these questions, but first let us focus on the event Dayan spoke about.
\nThe story
\n<\/strong>On March 10, 1998, at about 6 p.m., a white van carrying 12 Palestinian laborers heading home from work approached the Tarqumiyah crossing, between Israel and the southern West Bank. As the van entered the checkpoint, it veered slightly to the right, hitting one of the soldiers lightly. The soldier would later say that it wasn\u2019t an accident, and that he saw \u201crage coming out of the driver\u2019s eyes.\u201d The soldiers, apparently aware of an alert issued the previous day of an imminent car-ramming attack, thought they saw one unfolding and opened fire. Three passengers were killed and another two were injured.<\/p>\n