JNS
Azaria and his family will be barred from applying for a visa to the United States due to "involvement in a gross violation of human rights," Washington said.
The Biden administration, which has promoted voting rights for U.S. felons, announced on Wednesday that it is sanctioning a dual French-Israeli citizen and his family six years after the man served a prison term in the Jewish state.
An Israeli court found Elor Azaria, a former Israeli soldier who is in his late 20s, guilty of shooting an already-incapacitated terrorist, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, who stabbed an Israeli soldier in Judea on March, 24 2016.
Azaria served nine months—from August 2017 to May 2018—of an 18-month sentence and was demoted from sergeant to private and discharged from military service.
Despite having served time for his actions, and despite the Biden administration taking a more progressive position domestically than Republicans on rights of felons, Azaria and his family cannot enter the United States indefinitely, the U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday.
Azaria and his immediate family will be barred from applying for a visa to the U.S. due to "involvement in a gross violation of human rights, namely an extrajudicial killing in the West Bank," stated Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman.
The decision to ban the dual French-Israeli national, who hails from Ramla in central Israel, was taken due to a "broad trend of increased violence that we have sadly seen over the past months and the need for Israel to do more to hold people accountable," Miller told reporters.
"We are also taking steps to impose visa restrictions on an additional group of individuals for having been involved in or meaningfully contributed to undermining the peace, security, or stability in the West Bank," Miller added. (The Biden administration refers to Judea and Samaria as "the West Bank.")
"Specifically, these visa restrictions are being pursued against those who have used violence against persons or property, or unduly restricted civilians’ access to essential services and basic necessities to include access to food, water, electricity or medical supplies," Miller added. "The immediate family members of these individuals may also be subject to these restrictions."
Azaria was designated under the Biden administration's "visa restriction policy," under which Washington bans those accused of undermining "peace, security or stability" in Judea and Samaria, Miller said.
Azaria's trial in 2017 and subsequent conviction sparked a heated public debate that all but split the Jewish state in half, as Azaria's defense argued that al-Sharif was still moving and continued to pose a security threat.
Many Israelis were outraged by the conviction, arguing that Azaria was a hero who did the right thing by taking the fight to the enemy. Others said his decision to shoot an injured and incapacitated terrorist, who was probably no longer a threat, was a stain on the Israeli military.
In 2018, Azaria told Israel Hayom that he intended to carry out military reserve duty, saying, "I will always love my country and the IDF.
Recalling the 2016 incident, he said that "I saw him with a heavy black coat and I could hear people shouting, 'Someone shoot him.' There was a knife just next to him. I was there on site, I saw that the knife was there."
Azaria said he was sure the terrorist was carrying an explosive device.
"I acted on my instincts in the spur of the moment," he said. "It all culminated into that point, and I acted in full accordance with what I was trained to do from the moment I became a combat soldier."
Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted five Israeli entities and three people under a separate sanction regime for what Washington said was support of acts of "violent extremism" in Judea and Samaria.
The Biden administration remains "deeply concerned about extremist violence and instability in the West Bank, which undermines Israel's own security," Miller told journalists at a briefing last week.
