Back in December Sweden's foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, spoke out against the Israeli army's trigger-happy attitude. She was lacerated by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and barred from entering Israel.
Last week a letter from 10 US senators -- written before the Hebron killing -- was made public, echoing Wallstrom's concerns. Netanyahu was again indignant, saying his soldiers were not "murderers."
Wallstrom was concerned that, by refusing to investigate or condemn obvious examples of summary executions, Israeli officials were sending a message to their soldiers and the wider Israeli public that they condoned such acts.
It is therefore hardly surprising that most Israelis feel this soldier is being singled out. His crime was not executing a Palestinian -- that happens all the time -- but being caught on film doing so. That was nothing more than bad luck.
The Israeli public did not reach this conclusion by accident. They have been schooled in a tribal idea of justice from a young age. Palestinians are not viewed as fully human or deserving of rights.
That attitude has only intensified of late. Politicians from across the ideological spectrum have urged soldiers, police and armed settlers to kill any Palestinian who raises a hand against a Jew. The incitement has grown intense, and no one -- from Netanyahu down -- has spoken against it.
In fact, quite the reverse. The few Israeli organizations trying to protect Palestinian rights have come under concerted assault.
Breaking the Silence, a group helping Israeli soldiers turn whistleblowers, was recently accused by the defence minister of "treason." Israel is busy bullying and silencing the messengers, whether foreign diplomats or its own soldiers.
Netanyahu has left no doubt where his sympathies lie. Last week his office issued a press release highlighting that he had called the father of the soldier to commiserate with him.
Rabbis too are contributing to the mood music of this war dance.
As supporters feted the Hebron soldier as a hero, one of the country's two highest religious authorities, Yitzhak Yosef, the Sephardic chief rabbi, ruled that Israel's non-Jews -- some 2 million Palestinian citizens -- should either agree to become servants to Jews or face expulsion to Saudi Arabia.
Two weeks earlier he told soldiers they were under a religious obligation to kill anyone who attacked them.
Note something else revealing about the Hebron soldier. He was serving in the medical corps. Although his job was to save lives, he believed his greater duty -- in the case of Palestinians -- was to terminate life.
He is no aberration. The other Israeli medics at the scene -- including those affiliated with, and supposedly obligated by, the code of the Red Cross -- can be seen ignoring al-Sharif, despite his life-threatening wounds, and clustering instead around a lightly injured Israeli soldier. Palestinian and Jewish life are patently not equal to these medics.
Many recent videos tell a similar story. In November an Israeli ambulance drove past 13-year-old Ahmed Manasra, leaving him untreated, as he lay bleeding from a serious head wound after his involvement in a stabbing attack in occupied East Jerusalem.
And then there are Israel's legal authorities.
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