Azaria is pardoned. Conservative outlets aren't covering it.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog has pardoned Elor Azaria, the soldier convicted in 2017 of manslaughter for shooting a wounded, incapacitated Palestinian attacker in Hebron in 2016. That case split Israel publicly and became an international flashpoint over military conduct. Two outlets are covering the pardon. Neither leans right. The outlets that spent years treating Azaria as a culture-war symbol — and his prosecution as a betrayal of Israeli soldiers — are not here.
Israeli president pardons ex-soldier convicted of killing incapacitated Palestinian
2 sources · hover a dot to see coverage
What happened
Israeli President Isaac Herzog pardoned Elor Azaria, the former Israeli soldier convicted of manslaughter in 2017 for shooting a wounded Palestinian in Hebron in March 2016. The Palestinian, Abdul Fatah al-Sharif, had already been subdued by Israeli troops after a stabbing attack when Azaria shot him in the head at close range. The killing was captured on video by a human rights group and circulated widely. Azaria was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison, a verdict that provoked fierce debate inside Israel over military ethics and rules of engagement. His case drew international attention and became a recurring reference point in arguments about Israeli conduct toward Palestinians. Herzog's pardon closes the legal chapter. Two outlets are covering it, and neither leans right.
Two outlets covered it; both frame Azaria as a divisive figure
The New York Times describes the 2016 killing as having 'fueled a public debate both at home and abroad over Israeli military actions,' placing the pardon in the context of ongoing scrutiny of the Israeli military. Al Jazeera specifies that al-Sharif had 'already been incapacitated by Israeli troops' before Azaria fired, keeping the physical sequence of events in the lead. Both outlets treat the pardon as newsworthy on its own terms. Neither buries the original conviction.
What one side told you that the other didn't
Right-leaning outlets that championed Azaria aren't reporting his pardon.
When Azaria was prosecuted in 2016 and 2017, outlets and commentators on the right treated his case as a symbol of Israeli soldiers being abandoned by their own government. The pardon — the outcome that crowd wanted — is not appearing in right-leaning coverage at all. Two sources in this story, both left-of-center. The vindication is complete, and the outlets that demanded it have nothing to say.
No outlet names Herzog's stated rationale for the pardon.
Neither the Times nor Al Jazeera reports what justification, if any, Herzog offered for the pardon decision. A head-of-state pardon for a manslaughter conviction in a case of this international visibility typically comes with some public accounting. Whether Herzog cited humanitarian grounds, time served, national reconciliation, or political pressure is absent from both reports. That gap leaves the pardon's logic entirely unexamined.
What to watch
If right-leaning outlets pick up the Azaria pardon in the next 48 hours, watch whether they frame it as vindication of the soldier or as a routine executive action — the framing choice will signal how much political utility the story still holds for that audience. If they stay silent past the weekend news cycle, the story will likely pass without right-leaning comment.
This kind of gap — where one side reports a fact and the other doesn’t mention it — shows up in about 40% of major stories.