Journalist’s killing sparks outrage
Who was Shireen Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera’s iconic Palestinian-American journalist?
And why has her senseless killing triggered such an international uproar?
It will be the fervent hope of the Israeli government that Abu Akleh’s death will soon be forgotten by a distracted world. After all, hasn’t it wishfully calculated that the Palestinian cause — with global attention now focused on the war in Ukraine — is “yesterday’s issue”?
Also, if Israeli leaders have come to acknowledge in recent weeks that there is a place in this world for courageous freedom fighters battling military occupation, they hastily apply the absurd qualifier that these freedom fighters can only be Ukrainian, and the military occupiers only Russian.
But this is a double standard that increasingly makes no sense. And the monumental tragedy of Abu Akleh’s killing has helped bring the international spotlight back onto the still-unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
More ominously for the Israeli government, it may very well trigger a degree of accountability on its military forces that they have managed to evade for years.
There are at least two reasons for this.
First, the likelihood is that Israel’s military will ultimately be held responsible for Abu Akleh’s shocking death. Even though she wore a vest that was clearly marked “Press,” the veteran journalist was shot in the head and killed while covering an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank in the early hours of last Wednesday.
Witnesses said there was no doubt that the bullet came from an Israeli sniper. In addition, two independent human rights groups that examined the incident — one Israeli and the other Palestinian — both concluded that the shot came from the Israeli side.
On Wednesday, the initial Israeli claim, including from its prime minister, was that “Palestinian armed gunfire” might have been to blame. But the Israeli military has gradually backtracked from that claim, including an admission on Thursday that it is investigating whether one of its own soldiers killed the journalist.
The second reason this incident is such a threat to the Israeli government is the unique status of Shireen Abu Akleh in the Arab world. As Al Jazeera’s senior reporter covering the Palestinian territories for more than two decades, she was a constant presence in Arab homes, regarded by many as part of their family.
She was a colleague of mine when I worked at Al Jazeera, and I met her a few times. I remember her as a charismatic personality, muchloved by her colleagues and highly respected by her audience.
Only 51 when she was killed, Shireen was born in Jerusalem to a Catholic family, studied in Jordan and spent her early years in the United States, where she obtained U.S. citizenship. She was devoted to covering the human side of the Palestinian story, and was seen as a hero among Arab women and girls. Her death has rocked the Palestinian community.
There is also a wider global context to her killing, and it is frightening.
Press freedom worldwide is in retreat. According to UNESCO, an estimated 85 per cent of people live in countries where it has declined over the past five years.
Also, in Israel itself and in the occupied territories, the number of Palestinian journalists killed or injured is at record levels, and it is part of an overall increase in IsraeliPalestinian violence in recent years. By no measure is this conflict “yesterday’s issue.”
But of course, history in the Middle East has its own repetitive pattern.
In 1989, an Israeli soldier deliberately shot CBC/Radio Canada correspondent Jean-François Lépine with rubber bullets while he was covering events in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military initially denied it, until the CBC confronted them with videotape of the soldier saying in Hebrew: “We got him, we got the journalist.”
The soldier was eventually courtmartialled.
Holding governments accountable for their increasing violence against journalists is more crucial than ever.