Graphic Video Shows Israeli Soldier Killing Wounded Palestinian Stabbing Suspect
At the 20-second mark in the video above, you can see a man lying on the ground, flat on his back, clearly moving his head. At around the 1:45 mark, an Israeli soldier shoots him dead.
According to The Intercept, the video shows the aftermath of a knife attack on Israeli soldiers:
As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports, the video was recorded just after another soldier was stabbed and moderately wounded at a checkpoint in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron’s Old City, and two Palestinian suspects were killed, including the one who was shot in the video.
According to Ma’an News Agency in Bethlehem, the dead men were identified by the Palestinian health ministry as Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, 21, and Abed al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif, 21.
One of the suspected assailants is the man lying completely prostrate, not posing a threat to anyone when one of the soldiers fires a fatal round into him. At no point in the video does anyone appear to provide the wounded man with first aid of any kind. In a statement provided to The Intercept, the IDF seems to acknowledge the video as authentic:
Asked to comment on the video evidence, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, confirmed in an email to The Intercept that the army took it to be genuine. “The IDF views this incident as a grave breach of IDF values, conduct and standards of military operations,” he wrote. “A Military Police investigation has commenced and the soldier involved has been detained. All of the soldiers involved will be investigated as will the orders given.”
In a statement reported by the Times of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu characterized the execution as follows:
“What happened in Hebron doesn’t represent the values of the IDF,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “The IDF expects its soldiers to behave level-headedly and in accordance with the rules of engagement.”