Police in Israel have arrested two people accused of inciting violence against judges who convicted a young soldier of manslaughter for shooting dead a wounded Palestinian attacker.
The military court’s decision to convict Sgt Elor Azaria on Wednesday has sharply divided opinion, with some threatening the judges online.
The three judges who ruled on the case have been given a security detail.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has backed calls for a pardon for Azaria.
Police arrested a man in Jerusalem and a woman in the southern town of Kiryat Gat whose social media posts amounted to „incitement to violence“ against the judges, Reuters news agency quoted police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld as saying.
„Take a grenade and blow up the judge and scatter all of her parts in different places, let the dogs eat her,“ the 22-year-old woman allegedly wrote on Facebook, Israeli media reports say.
The post refers to the head of the judges‘ panel, Col Maya Heller, who has borne the brunt of the online backlash.
The second suspect, a 54-year-old man from Jerusalem, is alleged to have written „Col. Maya Heller will not finisher her year“ in a post condemning the verdict.
The female suspect was released after questioning and banned from posting on Facebook for 30 days, the Jerusalem Post reports .
Other posts on social media depict the judges with Hitler moustaches. Several images in support of Azaria have been posted online alongside guns and military uniforms, with one sign reading: „Elor goes to prison – we all go to prison. “
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The family of Elor Azaria have distanced themselves from social media posts threatening the judges with violence, issuing a statement saying they „completely condemn them“, according to Ynetnews.
Elor Azaria was 19 when he shot Abdul Fatah al-Sharif, 21, in the head while he was lying immobile on a road in Hebron in the occupied West Bank on 24 March.
Sharif and another 21-year-old Palestinian, Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, stabbed and wounded an Israeli soldier before troops opened fire on them, wounding Sharif and killing Qasrawi.
Footage of the scene several minutes later, filmed by a Palestinian and released by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, shows Sharif alive, wounded and now unarmed.
A soldier, identified as Azaria, is then seen cocking his rifle and fatally shooting Sharif in the head from several metres away.
The military court dismissed the soldier’s argument that the Palestinian still posed a danger because there might have been a suicide belt under his jacket.
„One cannot use this type of force, even if we’re talking about an enemy’s life,“ the court said in its verdict.
The shooting happened during a wave of knife, gun and vehicle ramming attacks by Palestinians or Israeli Arabs in Israel and the West Bank that has killed at least 42 people since September 2015, according to the Israeli authorities.
The conviction has polarised Israel and sparked a fierce campaign in support of Azaria.
A poll by Israel’s Channel 2 on Wednesday found that 67% of respondents favoured a pardon for the soldier.
Palestinian papers welcome the verdict but predictably see Elor Azaria as a symbol of „crimes“ committed against the Palestinians. Most reports refer to Azaria as a „murderer“, with Hamas-run Filastin referring to Abdul Fatah al-Sharif as a „martyr“.
Al-Hayat al-Jadidah says that Azaria „is not the only one deserving punishment but also his ‚political family'“. Pro-Fatah Al-Quds believes calls for a pardon could be „considered an instigation to commit murder“.
In Israel, the case continues to be divisive. „The court convicted him, but the public acquitted him,“ Boaz Bismuth points out in pro-Netanyahu Yisrael Hayom.
Left-of-centre Ha’aretz is relieved that „this time, the rule of law won“ instead of „mob rule“. Still, it warns that „we must continue to be on guard“.
But Yifat Erlich in centrist Yediot Aharonot laments Azaria’s treatment by the judges. They „did not see in front of them a young soldier who was sent on a difficult mission in an impossible reality,“ she says.
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Keagan Dolly has lost his case against Mamelodi Sundowns at the Premier Soccer League’s Dispute Resolution Chamber but his representatives are still hopeful that a deal can be negotiated for the player to move to Europe this January transfer window.

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The United States has „much work to be done“ to reform the criminal justice system and humanize the prison system, President Barack Obama said Thursday in a Harvard Law Review article.
In the 56-page article, the president defends his government’s actions during his eight-year term on a subject that was crucial for him before his arrival at the White House.
And he also a calls on President-elect Donald Trump — who is not mentioned in the article — to urgently pursue further reforms.
„We simply cannot afford to spend $80 billion annually on incarceration, to write off the seventy million Americans… with some form of criminal record, to release 600,000 inmates each year without a better program to reintegrate them into society, or to ignore the humanity of 2.2 million men and women currently in US jails and prisons,“ Obama wrote.
The article, titled „The President’s Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform,“ comes less than three weeks before Trump’s January 20 inauguration.
Obama, a former constitutional law professor, earned his law degree from Harvard University. He was the first African American president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, a student-run law journal that publishes eight regular annual issues.
In the article, Obama talks about the reforms he would have liked to have been able to make more progress on, such as tightening gun control laws on individuals.
„There should be no mistake that gun violence is an epidemic playing out across the country every day,“ he wrote.
„Over the past decade alone, more than 100,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence — and millions more have been victims of assaults, robberies, and other crimes involving a gun. “
Over the same period, he said, „nearly 200,000 of our neighbors, friends, and family have committed suicide with a gun. “
The president also emphasized the problem of overpopulated prisons, estimated at 2.2 million people currently compared with less than half a million inmates in 1980.
Obama said he favored alternative punishments for small crimes. In recent months he commuted the sentences of hundreds of prisoners, most of them in jail for drug-related offenses.
Obama also called for the right to vote to be restored to criminals „who have paid their debt to society. “
„More than six million American — disproportionately people of color — cannot vote because of a felony conviction that disenfranchises them,“ he wrote.

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KIDAPAWAN CITY, Philippines, Jan. 5 (UPI) — A Philippines Bureau of Jail Management and Penology official said 21 inmates who escaped from Kidapawan City’s North Cotabato District Jail have been recaptured.
„The Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines are working closely to capture the escapees. Hence, we appeal for calm and sobriety,“ a spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte said in a statement on Thursday.
Up to 158 inmates escaped after more than 100 armed men, who are suspected to be Muslim rebels, attacked the facility about 1:15 a.m. Wednesday, Philippines Bureau of Jail Management and Penology spokesman Xavier Solda said.
One jail officer was killed in the firefight that lasted for two hours. The inmates housed in the dilapidated, mostly open-air facility escaped through the back portion of the jail as the firefight occurred.
The group that took part in the attack seemed to be members of breakaway faction Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a group that sought peace with the government, acting Provincial Jail Warden Superintendent Peter Bungat said.
The breakaway faction is known as the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, The Philippine Star reported.
„It was not a jailbreak. It was a planned rescue of certain detainees. It’s to rescue their comrades under our custody. It is a rescue operation,“ Bungat said.
The escapees „are mostly our Muslim brothers and most of them are [Moro Islamic Liberation Front] members,“ Bungat added. „But the others likely just went along with the jailbreak. „

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