heated controversy after the death of an Israeli civilian who intervened during a shooting

Yuval Kestelman, a 37-year-old former police officer, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers while confronting two Palestinian terrorists.

The death Thursday, November 30 of “hero” Yuval Kestelman, 37, mistaken for an attacker while intervening in the middle of a shooting, provokes a controversy over the proliferation of weapons in Israel since the Hamas attack.

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This former police officer was killed during the intervention of reservists, who mistook him for the third member of a commando who had just killed three people at a bus stop in West Jerusalem. Yuval Kestelman had himself arrived shortly before with his firearm to neutralize the two Palestinian attackers, members of the armed wing of Hamas and originally from East Jerusalem, the Palestinian sector of the city occupied and annexed by Israel.

Soldiers supported by the government

In CCTV footage, Yuval Kestelman is filmed shooting, then appears to throw his gun to the ground and run away, as soldiers begin to target him. An amateur video, published on social networks, shows him kneeling in the middle of the road, his arms in the air, shouting indistinctly in Hebrew. Four shots ring out before he collapses.

Police confirmed that the soldiers took “by mistake” Yuval Kestelman, “who acted with bravery”For “a third assailant”.

A supporter of the hard line within the executive, the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, hailed the soldiers as “hero”. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this death is just a “collateral damage”. “This is the price to pay if we want to distribute weapons in large numbers”he recalled. “That’s life”.

“Today it’s Yuval, tomorrow it can be anyone”for his part reacted on X Merav Michaeli, the leader of the Labor Party, in opposition, denouncing a country “flooded with guns”some of which data “without supervision or control”.