Azaria's pardon is not about the past — it's about who will form the next government | Dan Perry

Dan Perry analyzes the pardon granted by President Herzog to Elor Azaria as a current political decision, sharpening the choice between Benny Gantz (represented by Gadi Eisenkot) and Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming elections. The article outlines the fault line in Israeli society around the rule of law, purity of arms, and national identity, presenting the Azaria affair as a symbol of the choice between statism and populism.

Dan Perry argues that the pardon granted by President Isaac Herzog to Elor Azaria is not about the past event, but about the political choice facing Israel in the upcoming elections on October 27. The article outlines the fault line exposed by the Hebron shooting in 2016: on one side, then-Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, who saw the affair as a violation of the military's moral and institutional duties and upheld the principle of purity of arms; on the other side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who saw the political benefit in amplifying the emotional identification with the shooter. Perry notes that Azaria served nine months of an 18-month sentence and was released in 2018, and his conviction remains on his record until 2032. In July, Defense Minister Israel Katz requested a pardon to expunge the record, but the military objected because Azaria had not expressed sincere remorse. Perry argues that the affair embodies a fundamental contradiction in Zionism: the desire to be "a nation like all other nations" versus the aspiration to be "a light unto the nations." The pardon, he says, has turned the issue into a prominent topic in the election campaign and part of the legacy of both Eisenkot and Netanyahu.